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While Baxter walked the Millers to the door, I remained seated. Kiki’s final remark had left me nonplussed. Maybe she hadn’t meant to imply she was going to try to vie with me for Baxter’s affection. On the bright side, her obvious attraction to the love of my life might be all that was setting off my alarm bells. That I could handle—she wasn’t going to be able to steal him from me—I just dreaded the possibility of this simmering animosity erupting into violence.
Baxter returned and gave me a big smile. “You were right. They gave me a generous offer.”
“Which I’m not sure you should accept. For one thing, Kiki has the hots for you.”
“I suspect she’s just a compulsive flirt.”
“Maybe so. But I’d prefer she be ‘compulsive’ with someone else.”
He chuckled. “No worries. If she puts her hands on me, I’ll step on her foot. That always works with dogs.”
“I wish we knew why they hang onto Cooper till the last possible moment. They haven’t taken the common-sense steps to assure Terrier owners that the judging is going to be impartial. Judges are not supposed to judge the class of dogs that they own themselves.”
“Right, but if Julie has a good reputation—”
“They easily could have hired another respected Terrier judge from Utah or Kansas, for example. And they could have courted other less-popular breeds of Terriers by offering lower entry fees. Instead, they claim to have struck some sort of mutual agreement to get rid of Cooper. If anything, that will have enflamed the situation. Furthermore, they didn’t allay my fear that they’re setting you up as the fall guy. Nothing’s to step them from throwing you under the bus when their lack of due diligence bites them in the rear.”
Baxter’s posture spoke volumes. His arms were crossed, and he was glowering at his feet. “I can help them set better boundaries. I’ll start by talking with the warring parties. Jesse and Valerie are already willing to agree to hire you as their handler, in order to keep the peace.”
“By making a totally illogical decision to have the girlfriend of the man in charge handle both dogs. They’re putting us front and center, and they’re doing this so late in the game, we’ll be everyone’s bad guys.”
Baxter held my gaze. “On the other hand, Allie, we need the money.”
I winced. There it was again—Eleanor McCarthy’s lawsuit. Were we ever going to get out from under that curse? “You want to say yes.”
“Yes. Besides, you said you were really enjoying working with Sophie at improving her speed.”
I grinned a little in spite of myself. The Westie’s full name was Sophie Sophistica the Third. Running around on the agility course with her was fun and brought out my competitive spirit, like in my old college-basketball days. I was able to compensate for my lack of height by being agile and quick-footed. “I’ve never met Jesse’s dog. Valerie has basically gotten volunteer spies to time his practice runs. If the dog and I don’t click, it’s going to put a kink in their strange little peace pact.”
“It isn’t really all that strange.”
“The Fort Collins Dog Club is embroiled in a lawsuit that involves the biggest Terrier breeder in the state and an up-and-coming Airedale breeder. They’re allowing those breeders’ dogs to compete against each other, even though both breeders are currently suing the other. And they’re suddenly asking me to be the handler for both dogs.”
Baxter gave me a comical grimace. “Okay. When you spell it out that way, it does sound odd. But you’re perfect for the job. You’re a former college athlete. You’re a dog whisperer.”
“I am not a dog whisperer.”
“Okay. You’re a dog...cooer.”
I laughed.
He wrapped his arms around me. “It’s all going to be good. We can handle anything they throw at us.”
“I don’t like the way Kiki Miller keep giving you googly eyes.”
He chuckled a little. “She did seem to stare at me. She probably does that to all men. In any case, it doesn’t matter. She’s not my type. She isn’t you.”
My heart made a little thumpity thump. “I only have googly eyes for you,” I replied.
After a long phone conversation with Jesse Valadez, I drove to his house in Table Mesa, located in a southern quadrant of Boulder. My knocking on his door set off a cacophony of dog barks, which lasted so long that I knocked a second time.
“Coming,” he hollered. The door slowly opened. Jesse was a nice-looking, compact, fortyish man with dark hair and the beginnings of a dark beard. He was on crutches, a cast on his left leg. I had been mentally prepared for the cast. I was not, however, prepared for his knitted brow; he looked ready to bite my head off. Six Airedales trotted into the spacious great-room behind him, observing me from a distance. One of them came up beside Jesse. Most likely, he was the alpha-dog of the pack.
“Hi. I’m Allida Babcock. You can call me Allie.”
“Jesse Valadez. In case you hadn’t heard, I broke my leg by falling off the dogs’ seesaw in my back yard.” He turned around awkwardly to get away from the door so I could enter. “Hopefully, it was an accident. The motion detectors failed to pick up anyone breaking into my backyard,” he continued, speaking over his shoulder at me. He rotated again on his good leg. “But it could have been sabotaged.”
“You really think Valerie Franks would booby-trap an obstacle in your yard?”
“Valerie will sink to any level to thwart me.” He tried to spread his arms despite holding onto his crutches, one of which hit an Airedale in the chin. The dog made a small yelp but clearly one of surprise, not pain. This second dog was a female—smaller than the likely alpha-dog. “These damned things!” He shifted one crutch to his left hand and hopped to a mustard-colored stuffed chair nearby.
“She wouldn’t have wanted to hurt your dog. She’s just not like that.”
He shrugged. “No, but I weigh a lot more than my dog. The teetertotter snapped apart when I stepped on a spot that was halfway to the ground.”
Jesse wiped some sweat off his brow. He truly did seem to be in serious pain. “If you don’t mind, go ahead and grab your new charge and head out back yourself. A generic course is set up, with both weave poles and a pause table.” (Both of those obstacles were never in the same competition course, but that made little difference for training purposes.) He pointed at the male Terrier I’d labeled as the alpha. “That’s Dog Face right there.”
Surprised, I looked at the handsome, mostly grey Terrier. “Is Dog Face his actual name?” Most breeders followed the AKC practice of giving their purebred show dogs the same first initial to keep track of the lineage, and typically it was grandiose or a person’s name.
Jesse chuckled. “It is now. I changed it and registered it. He’s the infamous sire of Valerie’s litter from last year’s competition.” He paused and grinned. “I just wish I could’ve heard her voice when she had to tell her hoity-toity clients that the puppies were from ‘Miss Bella Beauty...and Dog Face.’” He started laughing so hard he had to dry his eyes. “Anyway.” He made a couple of air-sweep gestures to indicate the route to the back door. “Take as long as you need, then report back to me if it’s a go or not.”
“Okay, Jesse, but I feel like I should say one last time that agility training isn’t one of my specialties, and this show will be my very first competition.”
“And I just want to assure you one last time that my options were limited. So I’m truly fine with hiring you as Dog Face’s trainer and handler.”
I studied him. He was brusque, certainly. For all I knew, he could be either a fabulous person or a complete louse. I’m much better at picking up on dogs’ personalities than I am at people’s. Yet here he was, with the crushing disappointment of having a broken leg and being unable to handle his own dog in the competition. If I were in his shoes, that would have stuck in my craw for a long time, too.
“I am really sorry this happened to you.”
“Especially since it happened just four days ago. No time to sign anyone up. Other than you.” His expression softened. “No offense. Kiki Miller told me she watched you work with Sophie once. She said that, even though you use the chase technique, she thought you had extraordinary potential.”
I used the “chase” technique of encouraging the dog to chase me only infrequently, but that was beside the point. That Kiki had seen me training Sophie was news to me and unsettling. “It’s strange that Kiki could have seen me train Sophia. Valerie’s exercise ring is under lock and key. She explained that she didn’t want the competition to get a leg up on her.” I winced a little as the inappropriate image of a dog lifting his leg popped into my head.
“You’ll have to ask Kiki. Or Valerie. Maybe Kiki was lying. Although, believe me when I say it’s a given that Valerie would’ve lied to you if that’s what served her purposes. Such as claiming I pushed those cages together when she did it herself. Valarie’s way too on-the-ball to miss all the signs that Bella was in heat. She just didn’t want to concede her obligation to give me the pick of the litter for owning the sire.”
Last year, I hadn’t known which one to believe and still didn’t now, nor did I need or want to take sides. Even so, I felt obliged to say something kind about Valerie. “She’s been really nice to work for.”
“Yeah? Well, wait until it’s show time. That’s when her ‘Mr. Hyde’ comes out of her Dr. Jekyll shell.”
Not wanting to continue the conversation, I turned and headed toward the sliding glass back door. Dog Face responded to my casual, “Come on, Dog Face, let’s go.”
“One more thing,” Jesse said. “I fixed the seesaw. It’s safe for Dog Face to use. Just don’t try it yourself.”
“Got it,” I said as I let the dog trot outside ahead of me. It was far too late in the dog’s training to be on the actual obstacles myself, which begged the question of why Jesse was on the seesaw four days ago. Just then, however, I thought of a more pertinent question about Dog Face’s training. “Have you been varying your course direction every couple of days or so?”
“Yeah. Every other day. Hope this goes well. I’ll hobble out there myself after you’ve had a chance to get accustomed to each other.”
With that, I shut the door behind me, walked across the concrete patio, and surveyed the obstacle course. I had a little shiver of delight. Although I tried to convince myself otherwise, I’d found agility training to be the most enjoyable, natural-to-me task of my career. Having been a guard in basketball, I was perfectly happy to lead dogs through any of their challenges. It was not unlike leading my teammates down a court and dodging as competitors tried to steal the ball from me. Yet trainers weren’t allowed to even touch an obstacle or the dog in a competition, so the bulk of the training was dedicated to the dog understanding and obeying my commands, especially when I was pointing at one of two side-by-side apparatuses and instructing which one to attempt first and which direction to go.
Dog Face had been trained exclusively by Jesse. Not only did the dog and I need to establish a fruitful camaraderie, but Dog Face would need to be able to concentrate solely on me, despite his owner and established coach watching from outside the fence at the event itself. Sophie Sophistica, for example, had grown accustomed to me handling her with Valerie watching from the actual arena she’d built in her barn. Valerie also frequently recruited an audience so that dogs would grow accustomed to noise and distraction in the show arena.
The longer I worked with Dog Face, the more attached to him I became. Certain dogs are just so overjoyed to do what you’ve asked of them, you can read in their eyes that you are just their all-time favorite companion ever. Admittedly when I was training for agility, I totally let my hair down and raced around the course myself as fast as I could, and mimicked the body motions the dogs would have to use as closely as made sense to up their pace.
One of the downsides of being so physically active myself on the course was I could get thrown off my game by the judge standing in my way. Competitors never know in advance where the judge would be standing on the course. The judge would intentionally stand in front of the dog’s logical path to one of the obstacles, and it would be my job to show the dog which side of the judge to run past. Because I sometimes ran backward for a few steps I needed not to bump into the judge and essentially end the dog’s chances.
Dog Face was great at leaping over the various jumps, weaving through the posts, and racing through the tunnels. He was beginning to pick up on my cues nicely and was giving me an excellent race time overall. If my calculations were correct regarding the speed handicapping for small versus large classifications, Dog Face could really give Valerie’s Sophie a good run for the money. He frequently missed his foot placement as he took his last step down from the triangular “bridge,” however. That fault was a three-point deduction—meaning three seconds were added to the dog’s race time. He also tended to leap sideways off the see-saw, a second three-point deduction. I retrained his foot-placement by yelling “pow” as I slapped the spot I wanted him to step and acting happy. He quickly got the message as I said “pow” and praised him when he stepped on the same spot.
I was unabashedly gleeful as he recorded his best time with no foot-faults. I knelt and held up my had for a high-five and said, “pow” as he slapped my hand. I hugged him. “You are just the best dog!” My definition of “best dog” was always fluid and applied to many, many of these wonderful animals I’d had the enormous pleasure to know. “Yes, you are.”
My smile faded when I caught sight of Jesse, glaring at me through the window with an expression of utter contempt. The instant our eyes met, he ducked out of sight.
Deciding it was best to confront Jesse’s reaction promptly, I led Dog Face and back to the house. He was still standing near the kitchen window. “Is something wrong, Jesse?”
He grimaced. “Not really. Sorry if you caught me at a bad moment just now. My leg was hurting.”
I saw a pill bottle by the sink, along with an empty water glass. “Can I get you anything?”
“Nah. I just took a dose now. I can’t take strong pain killers. Not even Ibuprofen. I used to have a problem with alcohol. Anyway. I just...got an attack of the green-eyed monster.”
“From seeing me hug Dog Face?” I asked, already feeling sympathetic.
He nodded. “I’ve been working with Dog Face for just under a year. Started right after last year’s show...when they gave my dog and me the boot. You know, Allie, even if none of my dogs were any good at agility, I’d have trained one of ’em as best I could and entered the contest.” He shrugged with the one shoulder that wasn’t above a crutch. “It keeps me fit. Gives me a sense of purpose. Not to mention joy and exercise.” He glared at his left leg. “Not no more, though.”
“You’ll be able to compete again next year, right? This hasn’t been an incapacitating injury, has it?”
“Yeah, I should be all right in another year. It’s just that....” He let his voice fade.
“You wanted to compete against Valerie’s dogs?”
Again, he nodded. “To be honest, Valerie and I have had a feud going for five years now, ever since I moved here and started breeding Airedales. There’s like a hundred types of Terriers out there. But she wants the whole AKC class, all to herself, in the entire state.”
To the best of my knowledge there were only thirty types of AKC-recognized Terriers, but I wasn’t going to quibble with him. “You’ve decided against entering the conformation competition?”
He shook his head. “I’m on the fence.” He peered at me, still not giving me the impression that he wanted to be in my company. “I don’t see the judges giving me much of a shot after last year’s scandal. I’ve only got him and one other three-year old that are up to AKC standards. One’s too young. One’s too large, one’s ears are too floppy, and Chelsea there has knee problems.” He gestured at the female he’d bopped with his crutch earlier; hopefully she didn’t now have jaw problems, too. “I’m not going to enter Dog Face in conformation, and I would just be putting the three-year old in for the experience. It kind of feels...I dunno. Like I’m conceding that this was my fault. You know?”
“By entering a dog to gain experience in the ring?” I shook my head. “You should do whatever is best for you and your dogs. No matter what, Dog Face and your three-year old won’t be going head to head with Valerie’s bitch from last year.” Valerie had told me she would never even think about showing a dog less than a year after she’d had a litter. I assumed Jesse had also heard her stance on that matter.
“All I asked for in my counter-lawsuit was the pick of the litter. She, on the other hand, insists on a guarantee that I won’t sell any puppies for the next five years. It’s vindictive and just plain nasty.” His knuckles were turning white while he gripped the kitchen counter.
I forced a smile. “So, are you ready to come out and time us and stand in for the judge?”
He managed a small smile. “Sure thing. Looked to me like you were doing as good a job with my buddy as I could have. And it sure would be satisfying if I got to see Dog Face smoke Valerie’s Westie. Even though I can’t be the handler. That’s the only means I have to get a little revenge.” He snorted. “The only means that’s legal, that is.”