forty-four

Dog training is a bit like meditation with movement, noise, and fur. It’s all about the moment. Becoming one with the dog. Calming what the Buddhists call our monkey mind, the one that flings one thought willy-nilly on top of another. At least that’s how training feels when I focus, which wasn’t easy after my chat with Hutchinson. Once Marietta started calling commands in the practice ring, though—forward! slow! about turn!—my monkey mind settled down and my dog-handler brain kicked in. Jay was attentive as usual, and feeling him prancing beside me pushed scar-faced thugs and dead bodies out of my consciousness.

Our training community is fairly stable, so when a new dog-and-handler team shows up for anything other than basic obedience classes, they stand out, especially when the dog is as gorgeous as the one I spotted in the ring. Her person was warming her up with a series of tricks—sits, downs, spins, paw waves—and the grin on the dog’s face showed how she enjoyed the game. Maybe those nuts who think owning and training animals is abusive should see some of this. As I watched, I realized that I’d seen this pair before. It was the cute black tri-color Aussie I’d seen at the herding event wearing sunglasses and a pink floppy hat with her name embroidered across the front. Lilly, if I remembered correctly.

Lilly’s owner spotted Jay and smiled, then shifted her attention to my end of the leash and walked toward us. Her reaction was not unusual. Dog people are a bit tribal, and people with the same and similar breeds tend to pack together. Conversations often begin with reference to the dogs, as this one did.

“Nice Aussie,” she said.

“Ditto!” We introduced ourselves and our dogs, who were busy wiggling and sniffing as well as they could through the accordion fence that edged the ring. Lilly and her owner, Jean, were in Fort Wayne for a four-month work assignment. I added Jean’s phone number to my contact list and we promised to get the dogs together soon for some Aussie fun.

Aside from an occasional loudly voiced opinion from a couple of canines and a few squeals from human members getting their first glimpses of Winnie, it was a quiet session. No “loose dog” alerts, no knocked-over ring barriers. There wasn’t even much gossip, which surprised me in light of Ray’s death. Granted, most Dog Dayz members were not involved in herding and hadn’t known Ray or the Winslows, but a death at any sort of canine event was news.

It wasn’t until we were lining the dogs up along one side of the ring for the stay exercise that I realized I had forgotten to tell Hutchinson what I had seen at the Winslows’ farm. In my own defense, my chat with Evan seemed days rather than hours earlier. I considered skipping the stay practice, but Tom moved Drake into the line next to me and Jay, winked, and said, “This sit taken, ma’am?”

On Marietta’s drill-sergeant bark we told our dogs to sit and stay and walked the forty feet to the other side of the ring. Members of the group ranged from novices fresh from basic obedience to dogs with advanced titles and handlers with many years of experience. As a result, some people stayed in the ring to supervise their novice dogs, and six of us left the ring to hide behind a barrier set up for that purpose. At least we said we were hiding, but since the dogs watched us with the focus they’d give frolicking squirrels, we all knew it was a shared fiction.

“Winnie is quite the hit,” I said, picking a clump of black hairs off Tom’s sweatshirt.” “Where is she?”

“In her crate. She’s worn out.”

“She’s very quiet for a puppy in a strange place,” I said.

“For now,” Tom said. “Don’t jinx it!”

We whispered with the rest of the out-of-site dog owners and, after a long three minutes, returned to the ring on Marietta’s command. Five of the dogs were right where we left them. The sixth, Sandy Braun’s Wire Fox Terrier, Diva, had chosen to confirm her breed’s reputation for being fun-loving free thinkers. She was in the middle of the ring, on her back.

“Don’t laugh at her,” Sandy said in a stage whisper. “It just encourages the little devil.” But Sandy was smiling when she went to get her dog.

As soon as we had finished the down-stays, I found Hutch. He was sitting outside the ring with Spike, formerly Precious, on his lap.

“I see you have a new buddy.”

He grinned. “He’s a cool little dog.”

“What does Amy think of him?” Amy was the calico litter sister to my Pixel and Goldie’s Totem. Hutch had fallen head over paws for her when the kittens were about five minutes old.

“They get along great.” He looked at me with wide eyes. “I’m amazed. I always thought, you know, dogs and cats—” Jay poked Hutchinson’s arm with his nose, and Hutch looked at him and said, “You’re right, Jay. The joke’s on me.”

“So, Hutch,” I said, watching Giselle approach from the back of the building. “If you have a minute, I forgot to tell you something.”

He gave me an uh-oh look but held his tongue. Giselle took her dog, and Hutch and I found a relatively private place to talk. I told him first about the number of sheep in the Winslows’ pasture. “I’ve never counted them, you know, but I have a sense of how big the flock was. It looks like it always looked. I mean, not like a quarter of the sheep are missing but—”

“Jeez, I know nothing about sheep. How would we even tell one from another? I mean, they all look alike.”

I stifled a laugh. “They don’t, actually, but more importantly, they all have ear tags that identify them. So I guess that could be checked.”

“I’ll get somebody to look into it.” He started to turn away.

“Wait! There’s more.” I told him about watching the Bouvier open the pasture gate.

“But it’s not their dog?”

I shook my head. “Evan said Summer had it there for training.”

“Okay, I’ll get up there first thing in the morning and talk to her. If she’s the one training the dog—”

“That’s the thing, Hutch. She’s not there.”

“What do you mean?”

“Evan hasn’t seen her since Monday. At least, that’s what he said this morning. But her truck and her cell phone are there, and her dog.” Now I had his attention. “And then there’s the notebook …” I knew as soon as it was out of my mouth that Giselle hadn’t told him about finding Summer’s notebook. She probably didn’t think it was important. Well done, whispered my inner nag. You’ve set up their first lovers’ spat.