It was late and they were all a little tired, and she had forgotten she was supposed to act like a normal dog. She and Ben exchanged a look as he quickly slid off the work bench and took the tool from her. He leaned down and tapped Christa’s side, and then slapped the wrench into her palm when she reached out for it.
“Thanks,” she said from her mechanic’s floor creeper under the sleek black dog sled. Her legs were off and leaning against the workbench, and her stumps were pressed against the jack stands holding up the ends of the sled. She grunted as she torqued down on some out-of-sight thing below the sled, and then swore as whatever it was thumped loudly.
Smudge and Ben let out a relieved breath. She shook her head as she went to curl up with Sholto, Vuur, and Rook. The dogs were snoozing on a pile of moving blankets under the nearby overhead heater.
The large barn was dark aside from the dim light over their bay, and the work light Christa had with her under the sled. There was also a slight glow coming through the transom windows above the overhead doors from the corral where Hamish was working late with the Elkhounds.
They heard their intermittent yaps but otherwise the barn was quiet, apart from Christa’s tinkering and cursing. The wind was also softly playing with a loose roof panel high above them, and occasionally there was a hoot from a snowy owl who had nested up in the rafters.
A few minutes later the glow from the transoms went dark and they heard the door at the back of the barn slam closed.
Hamish stomped the snow from his boots before he walked out of the shadows with Spot following along behind him.
“I fucking give up,” Hamish said, “I’m throwing in the bloody towel.”
He stood next to the napping police dogs and turned his face up to the blast from the heater. His face was red, and Ben suspected it wasn’t all from the cold.
Hamish said, “I told him not to use that breeder. I told him, and the stupid fool wouldn’t listen. I’ve trained fifty teams of Weegies and never have I seen a lot so damn glaikit.”
Hamish removed his tam and ran his hands over his buzzed head a few times. He said, “Why have I spent the last thirty five years plottin’ bloodlines and hand selecting, I ask you?”
Ben got the sense it wasn’t really a question he should try to answer.
Christa rolled out from under the sled and sat up on the creeper. As she sucked on a cut on her finger she said, “I know you know this, but we have a call with him in a week. You promised they’d be ready by then. You’ve never missed a deadline. Not ever. I’ve been working with you since I could spit, and if anyone can find a way, it’s you.”
“Your arse and parsley,” Hamish said as he stomped off into the dark of the barn. A moment later they heard the front door slam closed.
Spot waited for Christa to drop back under the sled. He signed to Ben about what he’d seen transpire between Hamish and the Elkies, and then added, Ask her.
Ben said, “Christa, what’s the issue with the sled dogs? I mean, I don’t know but they seem to listen and pull the sled alright.”
“They do, and they do,” Christa said as she rolled back out from under the sled again and sat up.
She nodded at the cart and Ben tossed over her bottle of water. After she took a long pull from it she and said, “Ben, you have to understand that we’re talking about an elite team here, not just runners that obey orders. Hamish doesn’t just train dogs that are going to run in a fancy race where they have corporate sponsors and a support team. These dogs are the real deal. They will probably run some races and be used for a bit of show, knowing their owner, but he came to us because dogs that graduate from Hamish’s training are reliable in a way that gives new meaning to the word. They will pull a sled through a blizzard up the side of Everest and back down again. Emphasis on the back down again. They simply won’t quit you, not ever. When you’re air-dropped a thousand clicks from the nearest research station they’ll make sure you make it back, or none of them will. Hamish understands his dogs could very well mean the difference between living and pushing up daisies.”
Before she rolled back under the sled Christa looked at the pair of metal legs leaning against the workbench and said, “I know, believe me.”
Ben thought about that for a minute. From the time he was a little kid he knew Hamish trained dogs. Even though his parents and Mimi had always said Hamish was a good dog trainer Ben had just assumed he was one of those guys with a stapled up sign in the vet clinic with tear-out numbers at the bottom who taught cocker spaniels not to crap on the rug.
As Ben took a drink from his own bottle he noticed Spot and Smudge were mulling it over as well. For a while they listened to the wind, the owl, and Christa’s fiddling and cursing until Spot got Ben’s attention and signed again.
“Okay, so what’s the issue with these dogs?” Ben asked as Christa rolled back out from under the sled.
She motioned for her legs and as Ben handed them to her she said, “Our client insisted we use his breeder. Which we are now pretty sure was a cousin, or a concubine, or both, despite his assertions of their provenance.”
When she was slipping her legs into the knee sockets Spot quickly signed to Ben what the words concubine and provenance meant.
Christa finished strapping on her legs and sprung to her feet faster than Ben or the pups were ready for. Had she been looking in his direction she could have caught Spot with his paw split open. The pups shared an impressed nod with Ben.
As Christa wiped her hands on a rag she said, “Essentially, Hamish is seeing the signs that these dogs lack heart, and it’s preventing them from gaining the confidence they need to work as an effective team. Good trainers can teach a team to make decisions about their environment, but Hamish pushes them to make decisions about themselves, the rest of the team, and even their handler. Decisions that indicate what would happen when amplified a hundred fold in a real emergency situation, and that’s why he’s the best. He looks at dogs like they’re one of his damn complex puzzles. He enjoys figuring out how they’re put together, and he’s happiest when he unlocks their secrets…the ones no one else could.”
As she started to organize her tools and clean up the bench Ben pitched in.
Christa said, “Take Vuur and Rook. When Hamish trains a security dog they aren’t just specialists in drug detection or guard duty. He hand selects them as pups and raises them for as long as it takes. When he’s done they can perform every possible duty a service or police dog is capable of, and with a high degree of autonomy when needed. Did you know Rook and Vuur can sniff out a flash memory stick hidden in a wall?
Ben didn’t, and neither did Spot or Smudge.
“Yeah,” Christa said, “He flies in a guy from Connecticut who specializes in canine detection of the polycarbonate adhesives used in the chip manufacturing process.”
“You wouldn’t have thought that possible if you saw those two lanky dolts when they came here as puppies,” she said, “Truth be told I didn’t see it at first. Rook and Vuur come from great stock but were passed over by the first few people who looked at them. Trainers have their little trait tendency tests like flipping the puppy over, putting it in a corner, or other kinds of Schutzhund or dominance bullshit. They would have failed those tests, and it was probably the reason they were left behind until Hamish saw them. He could see what the others couldn’t. Those two lumps over there have a rare gift, and the rest we do with training.”
She leaned against the bench and gave Spot’s staring little face a scratch as she said, “Not easily mind you. Half of the battle is the education we provide here, and they’re far from perfect. We’re behind as Hamish has had to spend so much extra time with our Elkies. Vuur can’t cross a high beam and Rook is afraid of some types of gunfire, and he couldn’t find a cadaver if it fucking landed on him. That aside, the combination of the best training on the planet and the best dog makes for one pretty unstoppable force. But if you want them to perform at this level it starts with the gift. It starts w
ith, and sadly often ends with, heart.”
Ben looked at the pups, and when Christa had her back turned Spot signed to Ben.
Christa switched off the power strip on the bench, cutting off the work light under the sled. She put an arm around Ben, and as they walked towards the front door together she whistled for the dogs. They rolled off their blanket and padded along behind them.
Ben asked, “Can heart be learned?”
“Sometimes,” Christa said, “but usually at a high cost…and once in a while it’s only learned in the last few seconds.”
Ben clicked off the switches for the light above their bay and the overhead heater before they all walked out into the cold.
Christa said, “The crazy part is Hamish knows he could sign off on the Elkies and no one would probably ever know. There’s a one in ten thousand chance that it would ever make a difference. When he’s done they’ll be fine sled dogs. They’ll work hard for their human partner and out-perform any other team around. But it’s that one time, that one unforeseen event that happens in a split second and everything changes. If that ever happened to this group and he had let them go without knowing they were absolutely solid he could never live with it.”
They entered the path towards the ranch house and could see Hamish in the kitchen starting dinner. Christa slid a little in the snow, and steadied herself on Ben’s arm.
She said, “He has trouble living with it even when he knows he did his best work.”
Chapter 27
“Igjen to me boys!” Hamish yelled as the sled moved up an embankment and started to slide sideways on its crest.
Hamish made a kissing sound and the team dug in and pulled harder, and the sled straightened as it drove through the heavy snow. The dogs were wearing leather boots tied to their feet that made soft smacking noises as they pounded through the deep drifts. Spot and Smudge were riding in the sled with Ben, and the pups were wearing the same boots to keep their feet warm when they stopped and walked around in the snow.
At the bottom of the slope Hamish called, “Whoa, stoppe.”
He set the foot brake when the team came to a stop, got off the sled, and walked past Ben and the pups to the dogs harnessed to the front. As Hamish stomped past the team they eyeballed him with a submissive stance. Their tails were down, heads were lowered, and their ears were lying flat. Ben could tell they’d done something wrong, and the sled dogs certainly knew it.
When Hamish reached the front he knelt and grabbed T’nuc by the muzzle and looked the dog dead in her eyes. He said something sternly in Norwegian, and then, “You are going to do this until you get it right. I don’t care if you freeze your fud off. You know when to pull them hard and ease before the crest, not on it, and have those lazy fucking wheels do the work on the tip. They rely on you to know when to let on so do it right, you dozy cunt.”
Hamish stood and pressed his mittens into his back as he stretched. He said, “You lot okay in there?”
Ben lifted his goggles and twisted his head out from under the fur covering. He smiled and said, “This is the single coolest thing I have ever done, Uncle Hamish. Thanks for taking us out here.”
Hamish didn’t notice Spot and Smudge nodding agreement. Their noses just poked out past the blanket.
“Aye,” Hamish said, puffing out steam in the chilly air, “Well you’re helping me out too, lad. They gotta learn to pull people steady.” Hamish mounted the sled and they did the same quarter mile loop a few more times until they were blasting over the ridge smoothly and Hamish was happily yelling, “Meget gud!” to the team of panting dogs.
Ben could see the change in the dogs’ demeanor. He had witnessed enough of his pups and the coyotes to tell the sled dogs’ movements were the equivalent of high fiving each other.
That lasted a full minute until they made another mistake and Hamish tore one of the guilty looking wheel dogs in the back a new one for missing a turn.
Eventually he took the team farther north and along the river until they entered the national park. He drove them hard, sometimes diving off an obvious path at the last second to drive up an almost vertical slope, or slam through thick pines that whipped at the dogs and the sled.
Ben wasn’t sure what the next problem was but Hamish stopped the team again in a small clearing and had a chat with the same wheel dog in the back of the line, E’sra. He was one of the strong pullers and apparently had done something wrong, again. Hamish took him to task in both English and Norwegian, and to Ben he said, “Watch this numpty closely, Ben. You can see him lose focus when distracted and his rear legs get out of sync and it puts the whole team off. Remember, it’s a game of conservation of energy and every errant tug and wasted step costs precious horsepower.” Hamish read the skepticism on Ben’s face and said, “It wouldn’t matter over a few kilometers, but when they’re hundreds of clicks from home and being chased by that cold fucker old man death, running together is the only thing that’s going to save them, and the poor bastard at the helm.”
Ben nodded, and asked, “What distracted them?”
As Hamish stood up he nodded behind them, towards the far side of the clearing.
Hidden in a stand of pine trees was a huge bull moose. When it stepped into the clearing and turned to look at them Ben thought its antlers were wider than a car.
“Yikes,” Ben said, “He’s huge! Pups, you seeing this?”
The pups were seeing it. They had pulled off their front boots so they could communicate and Spot felt his sister’s paws moving under the blanket.
She signed, I’d like to see One Ear try to take that down.
Spot signed back, I want to know how E’sra noticed that thing at a full run in deep snow from the rear of the team. I’ve been watching for wildlife and missed it. We could learn a thing or two from these guys, Sis.
As they went deeper into the national park they were going higher as well, and climbing out of their valley. Some of the trails took them inches from precarious drop-offs and under walls of rock and ice.
Hamish brought them into a clearing on a high plateau. He stopped the sled and Ben let the Elkies off the harness while his uncle unpacked some food and gear. Smudge took a break with the sled dogs as Hamish waved Ben over, and they walked down the slope to the edge of a ridge with Spot tagging along.
The view was breathtaking. Two snowy valleys filled with pine forests met far below, and they could see for tens of kilometers down each of them. A wide river wound through the bottom of one valley and dropped at a set of rocky falls before snaking away down the other.
They chewed on some jerky and granola bars, and while Hamish explained where they were in relation to the ranch he connected a small antenna to the radio tracking tablet. He uncoiled the antenna’s cable and swung his arm in a long slow arc as he showed Ben how to read the display. Hamish handed both of them to Ben who held the antenna high, sweeping it back and forth slowly a few times until he got the hang of it. He swung in smaller arcs until the signal pegged at a spot just above the falls. When Hamish had his back turned Ben showed the device to Spot.
As Ben played with the tracker Hamish watched the dogs. Smudge was eating some chips of hard-tack jerky with the sled dogs, and apparently having a carry on. She was animatedly posturing and the sled dogs were responding in kind. It wasn’t aggression, but there was definitely something heated happening. Hamish rubbed his frost covered beard as he watched them carefully.
He trained his first dog to sit and stay fifty years ago when he was eight, and had trained hundreds since. He’d never seen dogs communicate the way Ben’s pups did. He saw these odd dogs do the same thing with Vuur and Rook after sitting on the side of the corral in the cold for three hours watching them train.
Hamish took a long drink from his water pouch and then said, “Ben, your pup’s got her knickers in a twist about something, and her front boot came off again. What is it with that dog?”
Ben spun and watched his girl dog. He said quickly, “Oh she’s just play
ing, Unc. They’re kinda excited about seeing the moose.” He whistled and yelled, “Settle down up there you.”
Smudge looked at them, and Spot caught his sister’s attention and nodded his head in Hamish’s direction.
Smudge stopped in mid conversation and looked at Hamish. Before picking up her boot in her mouth and hopping back into the sled she said to K’naks and T’sohg, We’ll continue this later but there’s no way you two Nancys can pull more than me, and certainly not more than E’sra.
E’sra agreed with a snort.
Chapter 28
On the trip down from the ridge Hamish told Ben to be absolutely quiet as he switched the team to some kind of stealth mode. The sled dogs trotted at half speed, and every dozen meters T’nuc looked back quickly over her shoulder as Hamish flashed her hand signs for course or speed corrections. The pups watched from under their blanket on the sled, and were riveted. The coordination and silence of the sled team was truly impressive.
Spot and Smudge had learned to stalk with the coyote pack and One Ear had taught them a vocabulary of non-verbal cues to coordinate hunts. She had also taught them how to move silently over all different kinds of ground including dry leaves, muddy trails, and icy stream banks. She showed them how to detect and avoid even the smallest obstacles at a full run, anything that might make noise and give away their position and direction. The pups had expanded on both of those tactics and felt their coyote hunters were truly a dead-silent machine, but this sled dog team took noiseless movement and communication to another level. The pups were fascinated by the team’s ability to pick up on each other’s signals with lightning speed and use each other’s footsteps to move as one quiet body. Being tethered feet apart and moving quickly through the snow was hard enough, but to do it absolutely silently they had to be perfectly in sync. The set of the harnesses, angle to the sled, foot placement, and pull timing all had to be perfect to avoid slapping lines and crunching snow.
The Glasgow Gray: Spot and Smudge - Book 2 Page 14
