Page 67 of Every Little Kiss
CHAPTER 13
“How is this my fault?” Ford asked, because there was no way his friend could be serious.
“You asked for volunteers who had the interest and the time,” Harris said with a shit-eating grin. “So I found you volunteers who have all the time and interest you could hope for.”
“But can they walk without a cane?” Ford grumbled.
“I don’t know, let’s ask. Ladies,” Harris said, addressing the group of ten, who came in all shapes and sizes. The only thing they had in common, besides dogs, was a senior discount card for the Bunny Slope Supermarket. “How many of you can walk without canes?”
Every hand went up, except Mavis, who had no dog, but she did have a wheelchair that could do zero to speed-of-light in point four seconds.
“See.” Harris clapped Ford on the back. “Now, get to teaching, Officer Doolittle. I approved that permit, so you have two weeks to train four of these teams so they can handle some basic crowd control.”
Harris disappeared back inside the station, leaving Ford in the back lot, standing in front of his first volunteer search-and-rescue training class, which consisted of a handful of Sequoia Lake citizens on his personal top-ten list of Most Likely to Get Lost While Shopping.
He spotted Dorothy Pines in the front of the class with Bubbles. Dorothy was holding a leash so bright it almost distracted from the sports bra she was trying to pass off as a top, and Bubbles was dressed in an orange construction vest. Right beside them were Patty and LuLu Moberly, dressed in matching jogging gear.
Kill him now.
Leading Bullseye to the front of the group, Ford began. “Why don’t we start by sharing a little about ourselves. My name is Officer Jamison. This is my partner, Bullseye, and he is a scenting dog, which means he can detect and follow human scents. We’ve been partners for six years, and I’ve been a part of search and rescue for eight years.”
Bullseye, knowing the drill, sat tall and proud as if he were waiting for someone to pin a silver star on his chest.
“Ms.Pines, you want to go?”
“My name is Dorothy Pines, and this is Bubbles. She lives a vegan lifestyle, believes in pet equality, and likes long walks on the beach. Oh, and she is working hard to overcome her fear of small, enclosed places. Like air vents.” She shot a glare at Patty. “And we signed up as a way to give back to the community that has given us so much, and because when we heard that the personal-statement part of Wagon Days Darling was canceled, we thought we could up our tricks for the talent section.”
Ford gripped the back of his neck. “Ms.Moberly, are you here to increase LuLu’s chances for being the Wagon Days Darling?”
“Heavens no.” Patty clutched her chest as if horrified by the idea. “LuLu and I are here because we heard Dorothy was trying to get face time with the judge. So we put on our best hiking gear and signed right on up.”
“It’s called being a responsible citizen,” Dorothy argued.
“It’s called being a brownnoser.”
“All right,” Ford said, loudly enough to silence the crowd. “Is anyone here for something unrelated to Wagon Days Darling?”
One hand went up, and Bullseye let out a whine and lay on the ground. Ford was ready to call it a day as well. “Mavis?”
“I’m here because I’m in the market for my own partner, and I heard you were some kind of whisperer.”
Okay, not what today was about, but at least she’d come with the idea of dog training as the focus. “You mean a dog whisperer?”
Mavis grinned. “No, son. I heard you were a panty whisperer.” Patty started snickering.
And so went his first day of search-and-rescue training.
He instructed them on how to walk a dog on a lead, and he lost two candidates when he explained that dog strollers weren’t allowed in searches. They’d covered the different types of search dogs and gear, and they quickly moved on to the basics of sit and stay—which to his surprise most of the dogs already knew.
In fact, the dogs were well socialized and trained. It was the owners who needed some training. So when Ford spoke about the importance of leash rules and Patty announced that Dorothy was leash-aggressive and should be disqualified, Ford put them in a time-out.
It wasn’t until Ford addressed their main job for Wagon Days—wandering kids and crowd flow—that something clicked.
“I don’t know, that sounds a lot like my house when the grandboys come over,” Prudence Tuttman, a retired mill worker turned senior pro bass fisherman, said. “Which is why I installed a trampoline in the yard. First sign of trouble and, pow, I put them in the trampoline and let them jump it out.”
“Last Christmas, we got the grandkids one of those bounce houses,” Patty said. “It’s like our own personal MMA fighting cage. Thirty minutes in there and they’re too tired to argue.”
“I live in the over-fifty-five community, so we don’t have yards,” another said. “My girls get fussy and I get them busy—baking cakes for the church raffle.”
