Beware of Flight Attendant

by Cactus Moloney

  The crunch sound of his spinal cord snapping was satisfying. The trainer dropped to the ground with a sliding thud. Blood began pooling around his head to form a cone of shame. His eyes remained locked on mine—blinking rapidly—blood gurgling from his open mouth. Less than a minute later, his eyes stopped blinking and remained open. Fixed on me. The offensive music was beating against his ears. The band continued to rage for the lifeless audience.

  I slowly backed up, taking measured steps with my white paws, making sure not to get messy. I didn’t want to leave prints behind as evidence that I had been there. I backed into the dark hallway, dropping my body onto the cold concrete to watch Lenny die. His head wound continued to gush large amounts of blood, mixing with the sudsy mop water.

  Sitting as still as a gargoyle statue on the gray concrete, I waited for any sign of movement from Lenny for some time—nothing.

  I was dog-tired and felt like joining my mates in the comforts of my kennel. The office door was even easier returning, with only a push bar across the middle of the door. I jumped up and bumped my hefty shoulder against the bar. I wasn’t concerned about the noise this time. It popped open, allowing me easy access to the kennels. I listened to door close behind me with a click. Trudging past Songbird, I could see she lay mostly hidden in the dark cage, her kind black eyes looking back at me with concern, one light-brown eyebrow raised curiously.

  Fred was sleeping fitfully in the next cell, his legs kicking sporadically. He wouldn’t need to hide from Lenny anymore. Finding my own kennel, I wrapped my teeth around the chain-link gate, and pulled it shut with a clink.

  Plopping down on my soft bed, I said to Fred, “You are safe now, my friend.”

  2 Cindy Stiles

  Driving over the speed limit heading for Doggy Stiles Training Center, Cindy came around the corner, hitting the curb with a hard jolt. Her favorite worn cassette blasted Melissa Etheridge's Come to my Window, out the open windows of her dark blue 1996 Ford Explorer.

  The inside of the Explorer was covered in short brown fur. Tiny brown dog hair quills carpeted the floor—each impossible to vacuum. A few difficult-to-remove, short brown hairs didn’t matter much, when the entire 4x4 was covered in the gamut of all dog hair ever created: long white hairs, short black, brown, red and blond hairs of every length. Fur balls were knitted to the edges of the seats, congregating in all the corners of the carpeted flooring. The windows were smeared with dog slime, snout kisses, and licks from their pink tongues.

  “It smells like wet dog in here!” she hollered at her mutts in the back of the "Mongrel Mobile."

  She parked the Explorer in a space at the side of the training center, making sure to leave the handicapped spot in the front available.

  “Ready kids?”

  She cast her gold-speckled brown eyes into the review mirror to admire Zeek; her black long-haired Pyrenees mix, who she had adopted from the Humane Society shelter several years prior. Luke sat next to him; an intelligent three-year-old black German shepherd rescue dog, who assisted Cindy with the training sessions. On the passenger seat, sat her two, shining fawn-colored Dachshunds, Bonnie and Clyde. Clyde was licking the inside of Bonnie’s open mouth, giving her sharp teeth a polished sheen.

  Rehabilitating animals was something Cindy was passionate about. She was living the dream, owning her very own dog school for rehabilitation and service dog training, in her hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico. “There is no such thing as a broken dog,” Cindy said, believing any dog could be fixed with patience, time, training and love.

  “Come Bonnie…come Clyde,” she commanded the wieners.

  Clyde happily complied, with Bonnie following behind reluctantly. She opened the Explorer’s back hatch; it was covered in dog sticker regalia. Cute stick-on paw prints ran from one side of the explorer to the next. Bumper stickers plastered the vehicle: Honk to see my WEINER, I heart my shelter dog, Pitbulls are for hugs—Not thugs, and Flop don’t Crop. Shadow stickers of her dog family could be found on the rear window, with the family line ending with two human stick figures, representing herself and her wife, Tamara.

  Tamara was an ash blond, who stood four inches taller than Cindy at five-foot-nine in her bare feet. Her bone thin body lived in yoga pants and soft, organic cotton, cropped yoga shirts, revealing her sharp hip bones and exposed ribs.

  Cindy’s muscular squat body seemed exaggerated when she stood next to her paradoxical wife. With her short, mousy hair trimmed close at the sides and spiked tall at the crown of her head. Tamara told her the style gave height to her round face. A chain connected her leather wallet to knee length, tan cargo shorts, along with a revolving white or black Doggy Stiles logotype t-shirt. She kept strong from her commitment to the arduous labor required by a dog trainer; cleaning the dog kennels, hiking with the dogs, playing fetch at Sandia Lakes, and running the service dog intensive training course.

  Most of Tamara’s time was spent managing the yoga studio and teaching Bikram classes twice daily. She complained about her clients regularly.

  “I can’t believe that bitch said Om louder than me again!”

  “Today a lady slipped on a man’s sweat during hot yoga, while holding Virabhadra.... She signed a waiver...so we’re not liable.”

  Tamara had demonstrated the pose with perfect balance, holding her toned arms out to each side. She appeared to be flying while balancing on one leg.

  “You know the fierce pose. So, while balancing on one foot—I guess she slipped in this guy’s sweat—landing on her face and breaking her nose. Blood spurted everywhere. We had to close the classroom down and disinfect the mess. The woman acted like it was our fault!”

  Interrupting the yogi rant, Cindy changed the subject to dogs.

  “Tammy you aren’t going to believe what I saw at Sandia Lakes. One of those ‘carbon leash’ kind of lazy owners, running the dog next to their vehicle,” Cindy would become haughty thinking about all the ignorant dog owners. “I always give the dogs my full, and undivided attention on walks.”

  “Do you have any idea how many owners have ‘accidentally’ run over their own dogs?” She asked Tamara rhetorically, making quotation marks with her stumpy chewed fingernails.

  Tamara had tried to induct herself into the dog business, bringing Cindy grand ideas she thought would help build clientele. After she had presented the off the wall idea to offer ‘Yoga in the Dog Park,’ Cindy had had enough.

  “You keep your nose in your own dog business Tamara,” she scolded her wife. “I don’t tell you how to run the yoga studio…or how to pose like a cat.”

  Cindy offered basic dog-training classes for the community, on Wednesday nights at 6pm; walk INS were welcome. However, she chose to focus the majority of her energy and time on the monumental task of training service dogs.

  “It takes a dog park to raise a puppy,” she would tell clients.

  Blue skies and a cool desert breeze welcomed Cindy to the training center. A new wooden business sign hung above the center, the background was painted bright orange, with red-stenciled lettering Doggy Stiles Training Center. In the right-hand corner, a pointed-eared German shepherd was painted leaping over a stocky American Pitbull Terrier. Today, she was going to pair a person with Buster, her most recently trained and licensed diabetic alert dog.

  “What a day!” she exclaimed to her mutt pack.

  Smiling, she unlocked the double glass doors, and walked in the entryway, flipping on the lights. It smelled of antiseptic cleaner. Even a month after the accident, she continued to hold her breath each time she flipped on the lights.

  She hoped she would never again witness a scene as horrifying as the day she found her assistant Lenny lying dead in a pool of blood and soapy water, his headphones still blasting music amidst the grisly scene.

  A clean stark lobby greeted her; she exhaled with relief. Walking over to the front desk, she booted up the computer, and then ambled back to her office to start a pot of coffee. She could hear the dogs’ friendly barks c
oming from their kennels in response to her movements.

  The dogs were familiar with the sounds of her morning routine. They were telling her it was time for breakfast. She headed down the hallway, opening the windowed door facing into the boarding kennel. Rarely did Cindy have all eight kennels full to capacity. She wouldn't be able to give the attention needed to train so many service dogs, even if she still had her assistant’s help.

  Lenny, may he rest in peace, had realized his passion for working with animals in a prison Pitbull training-program. He had been a vital resource for training the dogs. Gifted with the intuitive ability to sniff out aggressive animals. He had the knack for finding easily trainable dogs, those possessing the qualities required of a service animal.

  Cindy was a firm advocate for adopting dogs from the pound, pushing people never to purchase animals from breeders.

  “Too many good dogs need a home,” she would tell her clients. “Raising dogs for the sake of making money could turn people’s good intentions bad. With inbreeding and puppy mills…adopting a shelter dog is the only way to go.”

  Before Lenny’s accident, they would take off on road trips, seeking out hidden canine candidates by scouring the states surrounding New Mexico. They would check Craigslist, the Humane Society, and numerous dog pound and rescue websites throughout Utah, Arizona, Colorado and Texas. Sometimes they would drive ten hours, across the flat yellow, sandy desert reservations, passing the newer modular homes build beside the traditional rounded Navajo hogans of the Native American people. They would witness packs of stray dogs, clearly inflicted with distemper, parvovirus, infested with mange and ringworm, roaming the reservation wastelands. Cindy suffered the heartbreak from driving through the Third World—slap dab in the middle of the USA—anything to save a dog with potential. Most of the time they would return home empty handed. Cindy was looking for dogs that did not bark or cause a nuisance; the dog needed leash understanding, good behavior, discipline, basic prior training, and an acceptance of strangers. It was a lot to ask from a shelter dog, and that was just the beginning, before the intensive training began.

  “Hola, buenos días, Buster,” Cindy greeted her newest canine achievement.

  Buster was an enormous muscular silver Blue Nose Pitbull Terrier, with a white apron chest, velvet black nose, and knobby-cropped ears. His entire wide-stance body wagged to compensate for his stubby tail. He welcomed her with a Cheshire Cat sly grin from ear to ear.

  She hadn't had to go far to find Buster, he had been held at a shelter in Los Ranchos, a suburb outside of Albuquerque. The shelter rang Doggy Stiles Training Center to inform Cindy of an exceptionally obedient Pitbull, scheduled for euthanizing due to its breed and overcrowding in the shelter.

  “We need to find him a home within the next twenty-four hours,” the shelter worker had explained. “This dog has a sweet disposition, and a clear understanding of hand commands, plus he’s gorgeous.”

  Cindy rushed to the suburban shelter to assess the dog. She found the abandoned animal sitting calmly on the shelter’s cold-cemented kennel floor, his white paws positioned attentively in front of him. The arrested dogs in the cells surrounding him continued barking and whining, causing a roaring echo of chaos in the cemented chamber; it was an ideal first meeting place to assess an animal.

  “Sit,” she commanded the shelter dog.

  The silver dog continued standing, smiling up at her with its piercing yellow eyes. Her heart dropped.

  “You told me he knew commands?”

  “Try using your hands to signal him and see what happens,” suggested the curly-haired shelter worker.

  Cindy put her hand out, motioning for the dog to Sit. He immediately complied. She motioned her hand toward the floor. The dog obeyed by lying down. She rolled her hand over and he did the same. Reaching into her fanny pack, she pulled out a chicken nibble to treat the dog for his tricks from the pouch around her waist. It held the reward treats, along with other doggy paraphilia: green plastic poop bags, the dog clicker training system, an additional leash, and her keys. She kept her phone in a leather holster on her hip, alongside her trusty Leatherman.

  These were all fun games, but she wondered why he hadn’t understood her verbal commands?

  “Is he deaf?” she asked the uniformed man.

  “Maybe his previous owner was mute…or maybe the dog speaks a different language?”

  She motioned for the massive dog to stand back up.

  “Sientate,” she commanded the silver stray.

  He immediately plopped down on his backside. She again handed him a small bite of chicken

  “Quedate,” she held her palm out, in a stop motion, as she backed out of the kennel.

  The dog stayed. She took measured steps, backing down the hallway; dogs on each side were barking and jumping against their kennel’s chain-link gates. High-pitched small scruffy dogs yipped, and low double bass barks erupted from each side, then howling from a sad-eyed Bagel, a Basset Hound-Beagle mix, commenced. She waited, counting to thirty.

  “Four, five, six…twenty-eight, twenty-nine… aqui,” she commanded the dog, calmly, not changing the timbre of her voice.

  Buster came bolting from his kennel, sliding around the corner, trying to catch his footing as his nails skidded along the smooth concrete floor. His speed and urgency caused his lips to slip back into a goofy grin. He touched her hand with his wet nose. Sitting at her side, he acted amused, beaming up at her.

  “Is he always so eager to please?” She asked the dogcatcher, who was standing out of the way, near the door.

  “This dog is at your beck and call,” the curly haired man responded. “Usually with pits, I always take the extra precautions, but not with this dog."

  The dog continued to stand at attention next to Cindy.

  “Did anyone call in about a missing dog?” she asked.

  “No mam, not matching his description anyway. I was sure within a few hours someone would be looking for the big guy. He had a blue bandana around his neck, but with no name tag.”

  His eyes squinted looking worried.

  “He was well fed and obviously cared for, but we haven’t heard a peep from his owners. If you don’t take him, I’m worried he’s a goner,” the shelter worker said.

  “These breeds are difficult to rehome, with a bad reputation. I already got me four pits I adopted! Usually I’m able to put down Lab/mix as the breed on the adoption card. It helps get these Pitbulls adopted out, but this guy is such a standout giant…” The man motioned like a mime, with his hands three feet apart, representing the massive size of the dog’s square head. “He’s the epitome of the American Blue Nose Pitbull, with his cropped ears…I just don’t see adoption happening.”

  “What is this scratch on his hind leg?” Cindy asked the man.

  “He had it when we picked him up.”

  “I’ll be honest,” Cindy responded. “I don’t usually deal with Pitbull’s from shelters because I don’t know what the previous owners were like, or what bad habits the dog might have picked up.”

  She reached down, rubbing her hand along the dog’s smooth back.

  “Just like with any dog from the shelter…you just don’t know,” she paused for affect. “However, this dog will be training to be a service dog. I need to know it has the correct disposition for this position. How would you feel if I took him for a week in order to assess if he would be a candidate for the program?”

  The shelter worker agreed to the return conditions, but Cindy already knew the dog was a keeper.

  Leaving the shelter that hot New Mexico afternoon, she rolled down the windows to release the heat and the wet dog smell from the sealed car. The massive silver dog leaned its head out the window, catching the wind in his lips, letting the insides of his freckled pink flaps vibrate in the breeze.

  “You’re a handsome boy,” she told him with a soothing voice.

  After Buster and Cindy returned to Doggy Stiles Training Center, she had been able to eva
luate him further. Lenny offered him chicken treats from several feet away, trying to entice the dog to disobey. The dog didn’t budge. They increased the distractions; Lenny used bikes, rollerblades, he threw balls to the other dogs, while inviting Buster to join. The dog didn’t budge. Always keeping its focus on Cindy.

  It hadn't been all work and no play. Given the opportunity, Buster was thrilled to romp with Cindy’s family dogs, and the service program dogs’ Fred and Songbird. He loved the little wieners, and wrestled gently with his big furry pals, gnawing at one another playfully.

  One week after Lenny’s death, Tamara, watched the silver dog leaping higher than her head each time he retrieved the bright pink Frisbee disk she had tossed. He became a darkening twister in the air, the dog’s muscles shuttering with excitement. Tamara had insisted on retaining the one assignment she took seriously at the center.

  “It is time for me to name the new dog.”

  The large pit had helped pull Cindy from her funk after Lenny’s terrible fall; her energy was spent on training the service animals, instead of crying over Lenny. Her wife had become distraught after finding his soaked body in the front lobby. Tamara had watched Cindy’s hands turn pink and raw from the bleach she used to clean the sudsy mess from the porous concrete floor—after the police had cleared the area—ruling it an accidental death. Cindy had worried the rescue dogs would become distressed by the smell of the dog trainer’s blood, after all the animals had been through.

  “He is an extraordinary athlete,” Tamara simpered. “No doubt about it he’s mightier than most mutts.”

  She tossed the Frisbee further than the previous throws. The massive dog caught it, but upon returning it stopped mid-run to gaze intently at Tamara with his gleaming golden eyes.

  “That’s it!” Tamara jumped up from her cross-legged position on the grass, “I Tamara, best doggone wife ever—designated dog namer to my darling Cindy, the dog tamer—proclaim this indomitable dog to be known as Buster the Extraordinaire!”