Ruff Way to Go (17 page)

“When was
this?” I asked, slightly offended that she’d never mentioned this to me in all
these years.

“A couple of
months after your father had died. I got the impression that, once he got too
full of liquor, Harvey was taking it on himself to act like he was running the
entire neighborhood.”

“But he hasn’t
done that in some twenty-five years? And now he’s taking to trying to pry our
windows open as well?”

Mom frowned.
“It does sound more than a little odd. Maybe he’s just acting drunk or
incoherent to cover up his actions, once he’s already been caught in the act.
All I know is that his DUI charges led to his getting his driver’s license
revoked last year. Then the bank foreclosed on his store. That’s when he and
Betsy decided to close up shop.”

“Huh. I
guess that was pretty lucky for Edith. She got to rent his store, which was in
a prime location.”

“Yes. The
retail space she’d been renting earlier had been half the size at twice the
cost.”

“I’m
surprised that Harvey didn’t resent Edith for that.”

“Oh, he did.
Still does, in fact. You know the way that man holds on to a grudge.”

I silently
wondered if he had any grudges against Cassandra Randon. And what possible
motive he might have had for trying to break into our house.

The next day
I got my first opportunity to work with Boris, the schipperke that belonged to
Susan Nelson. My plan was that as soon as the opportunity presented itself, I
would ask her about her father’s behavior the night before.

Susan and I
stood in her messy living room, watching the dog whip through the house like a
Tasmanian devil. Although he would stop by Susan’s feet, he seemed to think
that “sit” meant simply touching his haunches down, then off he’d go again.

“First and
foremost, Boris is in need of some basic training. I highly recommend that you
buy a clicker and a Gentle Leader. I’ve got extras in my glove box, which I’ll
sell you at cost, if you’re interested.”

“At cost?
Meaning what you paid for them?”

“Right. They
aren’t expensive, and they are absolutely invaluable.”

She came
outside with me to look at the training items. Then we rounded her dilapidated
house to work with Boris in the backyard. It was going to be a scorcher today;
not even ten
a.m.
and the
temperature was over eighty degrees.

I showed
Susan the clicker, a rectangle an inch thick and wide and two inches or so
long, with a circle cut out for the thumb to access the metal noisemaker
inside. I rarely use the clicker for my own dogs now that they’re well trained,
though I don’t admit that to clients.

“This method
was initially developed by a trainer of dolphins at Sea World. It gives the
animal immediate feedback, indicating precisely what you want. For example, the
trainer can click the moment the dolphin reaches the highest point of its jump,
so that the dolphin realizes the trainer wants it to go high.”

“Huh,” Susan
said, snapping her chewing gum. “If only Boris were as smart as a dolphin, I’d
be more optimistic. Unfortunately, he’s dumb as a doornail.” She knelt and
stroked his black fur good-naturedly as she spoke. “You saw him trying to catch
the rainbow from the crystal.”

I had also
seen that Susan hadn’t even figured out that the rainbow was what Boris was
trying to catch, though that had struck me as obvious. It was something of a
matter of opinion regarding which party was the less intelligent. But no sense
in alienating a client, even though this one wasn’t paying. “I’ve heard the
clicker method works on almost all species, except snakes and other deaf
animals.”

“Snakes are
deaf? That can’t be true. What about snake charmers that get ‘em to dance?”

By now Boris
was trying to get into the shade for a nap, and I couldn’t say that I blamed
him. When would I learn not to delve into mini-lectures about my techniques? “Snake
charmers use vibrations, I think. Anyway, let’s do a few minutes of basic
training here.”

I took a
couple of steps, then said, “Boris, come.” He took a step toward me, mostly out
of curiosity, but I clicked, then gave him a treat. I did the same with the sit
command. “Notice how I made the noise the very instant that the dog rose, then
again when he sat down. Dogs need immediate feedback.”

I ran
through a quick come-sit, come-sit routine a few times, using the clicker and
tidbits. “Pretty soon, Boris will catch on that good things happen every time
he hears that click. Then he’ll put it together that he hears the click each
time he does what his trainer tells him to.”

“That’s
pretty simple. I think I can handle it.”

“Next I’ll
show you how to get the Gentle Leader on him. That’s really important when you’re
training, because it fastens around the muzzle and controls the dog’s head
position. Where the head goes, the dog necessarily follows. It’s an outstanding
way to teach leash training, as well as to teach the dog not to jump up on you,
and so forth. Some dogs are so easily distracted that this is about the only
way to keep them focused. A gentle tug on the leash forces them to look
straight at you.”

I went
through the procedure of putting on the collar using tidbits to get him to put
his muzzle through the leash, and we waited through the typical period of the dog
struggling to pull his collar off. Some dogs are so persistent with this that
they flop around like a hooked fish, but the Leader doesn’t hurt and is in no
way a muzzle.

Once he’d
calmed down enough, we resumed the training. At the same time, I explained, “The
keys to successful training of a dog are consistency and putting the time in
each day. I wouldn’t overdo it with him, though. Just a couple of
fifteen-minute-a-day periods should work wonders with his behavior. But don’t
allow anyone else to get hold of the clicker and play with it or use it for
anything other than training Boris. Dogs can’t extrapolate the way we humans
can and conclude that the click means nothing unless
x
and
y
are
also happening.”

“Yeah, yeah.
I get it.” She watched me as we expanded into a lie-down-and-stay. I was really
pleased with how quickly Boris was catching on, but just as I handed the
clicker to Susan, she gave me a haughty sneer. “So, this is what you do for a
living? You click a little plastic thing at a dog and you charge people a pile
of dough?”

“Yes,” I
shot back, “and the benefit of working with dogs instead of people is that my
canine clients never insult me.”

She
shrugged. “I’m in a foul mood, I guess.”

“Which
shouldn’t qualify me as a target. If you would rather not continue with our
agreement, we can end this right now.”

“Nah. Sorry.
Like I said, it’s just that I’m in a bad mood. The parents of that little girl
who was over here yesterday canned me. They found a day care center that could
save them a few bucks.”

At the
mention of a “little girl,” I thought of Melanie and worried about her, but
replied only, “That’s too bad. I know you needed the money.”

She shrugged
and pushed at her curly head of hair. “It’s a dog-eat-dog world.”

An
expression I’ve never cared for, but I said nothing. Drat. I wouldn’t have
minded if she’d said to forget our agreement. Sure, I’d been anxious to work
with a new-to-me breed, but Susan herself was every bit as uncooperative and
demanding as she’d been more than twenty years ago. On the other hand, she and
her parents were perhaps the likeliest suspects in Cassandra’s murder, and my
continuing work with her and Boris might just lead me to uncover some clue that
I could pass along to the police.

Boris was an
interesting character, I thought as I removed the Gentle Leader. He had a real
stubborn streak when it came to taking direction and yet was also playful. As
was so often the case, I liked the canine much more than the owner.

Partway
through my supervision of Susan’s use of the clicker, a squirrel ventured into
the yard behind Susan, and Boris tried to go straight through his owner in his
anxiousness to get at it.

“Your dog
shows strong aggressive tendencies.”

“Do tell,”
Susan said with a sigh. “That’s probably the main reason the girl’s parents
canceled. After you left yesterday, Boris grabbed hold of the skirt on her
dress and wouldn’t let go. I had to pry his jaws apart, and the fabric got
torn. I wound up having to offer to sew her a whole new one for free, but they
wouldn’t hear of it. Their loss. I’m one hell of a seamstress.”

A dog
grabbing on to a little girl’s dress was a much more serious problem than
anything I’d witnessed so far and my mood immediately switched accordingly.
Nothing bore the potential for disaster like a small child versus a badly
trained or aggressive dog. “Boris’s behavior has to be curtailed immediately, especially
if you intend to babysit at your home. That means you’ve got to train him not
to give chase, such as to squirrels or to cars.”

“How?”

“The instant
you spot something he’s going to chase, you distract him with something he
enjoys more. Next time you see him spot a squirrel, before he can chase it,
call him to you, use the clicker, give him a treat. Or you engage him in a
favorite game, so long as it’s not tug-of-war. That’s only encouraging him to
grab and pull, like he did with that girl’s dress.”

“But I
always win when we play tug-of-war. He’s just a little dog, and I’m stronger.”

“And once
you get the item from him, what do you do with it?”

“I toss it
and won’t grab it again.”

“Then, by
Boris’s way of looking at the world, he’s won. He who winds up with the toy
wins.”

“Huh.”

“Furthermore,
even if you consistently ‘win’ at tug-of-war, Boris might seek to challenge a
smaller, inferior opponent, such as a child. And you’ve got to be consistent
with the rules. Dogs are eager to please their owners; they just need to know
exactly what they’re supposed to do.”

I needed to
make sure both Susan and her husband understood the importance of curbing Boris’s
aggression. “Is there a good time for me to come back to speak to your husband?”

“No, he’s...out
of town for the day.”

She spoke so
hesitantly that I began to wonder if she was telling the truth. “It would be
best if I could work with him and Boris at least once. Is there a good time for
me to come back and find him?”

She
shrugged. “You could try tomorrow afternoon. It’s possible he’ll be back by
then.”

Boris
finally gave up on his pursuit of the squirrel and returned to us. I worked
with him with renewed interest. When Susan’s eyes seemed to be glazing over
from my dog behavior talk, I said, “By the way, your father scared me half to
death last night.”

Her eyes
widened but she made no comment.

“He was over
peering into our kitchen window and had removed the screen. Your mother said he
was sleepwalking, but—”

Susan
furrowed her brow. “Dad’s having a hard time accepting his retirement.”

“I hear that’s
quite common with retirees. But what would
his adjustment problems have to do
with his poking around our property?”

“Mom says he
goes on a lot of walks at night these days. He fancies himself as something of
a vigilante. He’s harmless.”

“But Susan,
our neighbor was murdered a couple of days ago. It isn’t safe for him to be
wandering around like that.” Nor was it safe for anyone else, when no one knew
for sure that Harvey wasn’t the killer.

“I’ll talk
to Mom.” She glanced at her watch. “Listen, Allie, I gotta get going. I
promised a girlfriend in Boulder I’d come over ten minutes ago. I’ll call your
mom before the end of the day to schedule when she wants me to mow your lawn.”

“No rush.
The grass isn’t that long yet.”

“I want to
keep even. But this had better be the last time. I think I have changed my
mind, after all.”

“Excuse me?”

“I think we’d
better cancel our arrangement. I don’t know if I want to keep the clicker and
the special dog collar yet. I’ll either pay you for them or give ‘em back in a
couple days.”

“Is this
sudden change of heart because of what I told you about your father’s actions
last night?”

“No. Jeez,
what gave you that idea? Listen, I really have to get out of here.”

“Okay. Sorry
things didn’t work out.”

Susan locked
her front door while I got into my car, surprised and confused by her rapid
change of heart. Her mood swing seemed to occur directly after I’d mentioned
her father’s behavior last night.

Feeling
suspicious, I drove to the nearest intersection and parked to watch for Susan’s
car. My discomfiture only increased moments later when I spotted her. She
turned not toward Boulder, but toward Berthoud.

Susan had
given me the impression that she knew more than she was telling. I replayed our
conversation in my head as I drove to my office. Could she know what her father
was up to last night? Could he have been trying to steal something out of the
house, such as some piece of evidence that he thought I had? Or was he after
the puppies? None of the possibilities made any sense to me.