Of Birds and Beagles

by Leslie O'Kane

  “Yeah, I feel that way about my short-people brethren sometimes.”

  “Uh, oh. Should I make myself look shorter than I am and do a duck walk?”

  “Would you? That would be very thoughtful.”

  “How’s this?” He did a Chaplinesque waddle, with his knees bent and widely spaced.

  “Never mind. You’ll alarm the dogs.” I was feeling jittery, hating to think how hurt Russ would be if he saw us joking around like this. Trying to get my mind onto another subject, I babbled, “I’ve always wondered what the feminine version of ‘brethren’ is. I hope it’s not ‘cistern’.”

  “Since they changed the ‘o’ in brother to an ‘e,’ it’s probably sestren, don’t you think?”

  “Ah. Much better.”

  He and I continued to make idle chitchat. He’d offered to take both Barker’s and Doppler’s leashes. We’d gone fifty yards or so when I spotted Kelsey crossing the park with a middle-aged man who had a camera bag over his shoulder and was carrying a tripod. Judging from her gestures, Kelsey was obviously giving him instructions about what she wanted him to do. He was nodding.

  I actually felt a little relieved to take Doppler’s leash from Baxter and head toward Kelsey and the photographer. It was true that I was starting to feel attracted to Baxter, but it was probably just a passing fancy, and heaven knows I had more important things to think about.

  “You brought the blue leash.” She grabbed Pavlov’s leash and held it taut across her bluish-green jogging shorts. “See what I mean?”

  “You look nicely put together,” I said in a monotone.

  She flicked her wrist in the direction of the photographer. “This is George.” With no hesitation, she went on to say, “George, let’s have you do some playful athlete-loves-her-dog shots, then I’ll take the dog in a loop and head toward you, then past you, in full stride, yes?”

  “When you want Pavlov to run with you,” I instructed, “pat your thigh, say her name, then ‘heel.’”

  I was not especially confident that Pavlov would respond well to Kelsey’s instructions. Indeed, when Kelsey gave her the heel command, Pavlov hesitated and looked at me as Kelsey tugged on her leash. “Okay, Pavlov,” I said, gesturing at her to follow Kelsey. After a couple of seconds of thought, Pavlov decided to go along with the plan.

  Despite my dislike of Pavlov’s current companion, it was fun to watch her romp around with a professional photographer there to record the images. For someone who professed not to like dogs, Kelsey was demonstrating quite an affinity for mine. Doppler, however, had grown tired of sniffing at Barker and was once again whining. He clearly felt he should be with Pavlov, or at least with Sage; Mom had resituated herself so that she and her collie were underneath a shade tree.

  I glanced at my cell phone. It was after four, and Tracy still hadn’t called me back about giving me the receipts from Bailey’s vets. No sooner had I dialed her number than I saw her heading toward me, with Bailey in tow. I cringed at the sight. Not only did I dread her having another confrontation with Kelsey, but she was carrying her portable microphone and recorder, which made me nervous. She sometimes recorded special segments to air on future shows. Bailey was still wearing a cone, but it was smaller than the one I’d seen on him before. Resembling an Elizabethan collar, this one looked almost stylish while surrounding that cute doggy face.

  Tracy greeted me, but then, while I was doting on Bailey, promptly turned her attention to Baxter. As I’d suspected, Tracy wanted to record an interview with him to air on tomorrow’s broadcast. Baxter agreed, and I decided to engage Doppler in a game of fetch so that he wasn’t audibly whining on air, which would hardly be good publicity for my services. To my knowledge, no dog owner ever said, “I need to hire someone who can teach my dog how to whine.” The most common mistakes we dog owners make is to reward their bad behavior of whining for attention by giving them our attention—even if that meant merely looking at them and saying “no.” The key, rather, was to refuse to look or speak to whiners until they are quiet—and then rewarding them with our attention.

  Currently, Doppler was quiet and, like me, was watching Bailey. Not counting his brown ears and brown fur on his head, most of Bailey’s coat was white, with a brown and black saddle. He could be a floppy-eared version of the mixed-breed terrier in the old “His Master’s Voice” commercial for RCA, if the RCA dog was wearing the phonograph’s cone instead of listening to it.

  I told Doppler what a good boy he was, then patted my thigh. Doppler heeled as we walked a short distance away. I grabbed a soft rubber ball from my purse and sat on the grass beneath a tree, playing a severely limited game of fetch within the radius of Doppler’s leash.

  Unfortunately, Tracy decided to relocate herself and Baxter in order to take advantage of the shade, as well. This in turn made Bailey desperate to escape from his leash and join Doppler and me. Tracy sent a pleading look my way, and I gave her the okay. She released Bailey’s leash, and he dashed toward me. I snatched up his leash after a brief scramble. Bailey then climbed onto my lap, which of course caused Doppler to plop onto my lap as well, rubber ball and all.

  Finally able to listen, Tracy said to Baxter, “I learned that the victim in the ongoing homicide investigation was one of the biggest donors for Saturday’s Dog Jog.” Tracy then held the microphone to his lips.

  “That’s right, Tracy. Shirley Thorpe was a major dog lover and animal advocate in this town. She’ll be dearly missed. We’re honored to fulfill her wishes by holding this race. The proceeds will be equally divided among twelve dog-rescue groups in the area.”

  “Isn’t it also true, though, that Ms. Thorpe had been a thorn in the side of hunters? She wanted to ban hunting and fishing in the state, did she not?”

  “I believe that’s so. Although I didn’t research her past history on the matter. That’s simply what I’ve gathered from her anti-hunting stance that she mentioned to me.”

  I resumed Doppler’s mini-chase game, which Bailey tried unsuccessfully to join. More often than not, the cone would redirect the path of the ball, and Doppler would snatch it up and return it to me.

  “Dogs have been used for hunting for centuries,” Tracy was saying. “As a major canine advocate, what’s your personal take on hunting?”

  “Well, I’m not a vegetarian, and personally, when hunters make an effort to consume or to sell the meat from the animals they kill, and provided they’ve abided by all the legal limits and rules, I support hunting. Many Coloradoans don’t realize that, next to skiing, Colorado’s second-most popular tourist activity is hunting and fishing.”

  “Thank you, Baxter,” Tracy said, then shut off her microphone. Baxter waved at a couple of people in park-ranger who were heading toward us, and started off to meet them halfway. They were probably conferring about the setup for the race.

  Tracy caught sight of Kelsey and Pavlov trotting toward us and cursed under her breath. She walked over to me and said in a half-whisper, “You’re actually allowing that woman to handle your pet?”

  “I am, Tracy. You got my message about her reimbursing you in return for my lending her Pavlov, though, right?”

  “Right.” She took Bailey’s leash from me and swept him into her arms. “But that isn’t a good enough reason for you to associate with her. That chick is a cuckoo bird, if you ask me. You shouldn’t have anything to do with her. What if she killed her neighbor in cold blood? If she wants to come after me, I can take her out with a right-cross to the chin. The only thing you’ve got going for you is you’re so short, skinny, and agile, if she tries to shoot you, she’ll probably miss.”

  “But maybe she’s completely innocent.”

  “Of murder, maybe. But if we’re talking about ‘innocent’ in general, that’s an: Oh, hell no.” Tracy did a double-take at my mother in the distance. “Is that your mom?”

  “Yes. She dropped off Pavlov and brought Sage and Doppler down, too, to enjoy the park.”

  Mom looked up right then, and Tr
acy waved. Mom waved back, then returned her gaze to her paperback.

  Tracy returned her focus to Kelsey and Pavlov as they loped across the grass. I had to admit that the woman’s stride was positively gazelle-like.

  “Damn, but the bitch is graceful. And fast. So is Pavlov.”

  “She sure is,” I said. “My friend Jana Bock is entering the race with one of her English pointers, and I was hoping she could win. But I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

  “Not unless your friend is on a steady diet of Kryptonite. Maybe you should reconsider and have Russell run in the race, instead of you.” She chuckled. “With that many dogs running toward him, he’d be so terrified that they were chasing him, he’d be able to run the mile in under four minutes.”

  “I know you’re only joking, Tracy, but Russ’s fear of dogs is a painful subject for both of us right now.”

  “Oh, gosh, Al. I’m sorry. Leave it to me and my big mouth to find any sore subject and plow right into it.”

  “No worries. As they say, it is what it is.”

  “You and Russ have been dealing with that all along, and yet you’re buying a place together. I’m sure the two of you can persevere. I know you can, in fact.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You are still buying a place together, aren’t you?”

  I was getting a painful lump in my throat and shook my head.

  Kelsey was coming toward us, her lips set in grim determination as she spotted Tracy. As they arrived, I focused on Pavlov and promptly gave her a hug and told her how proud I was of her.

  While I was still cuddling my dog, Kelsey glared at Tracy. “If you killed my neighbor, thinking it was me, I hope you rot in jail.” She handed me Bailey’s leash.

  “No such luck,” Tracy growled. “I’m innocent. Which I’m sure you already know. You did a good job at setting me up, but sooner or later, Allie’s going to help me prove my innocence to the police. They’ll arrest the real killer.”

  “As some famous judge or something along those lines once said, ‘No one proclaims his innocence as the guilty’.” She gave a haughty toss of her hair. “I assume you brought the vet bills with you?”

  Tracy turned toward me and made a show of handing me her now-squirming beagle, as if to protect him from Kelsey’s proximity. She then pulled out a pair of receipts from her pocket and handed them to Kelsey. “The total of the two bills plus a hundred dollars comes to three-eighty-four and forty-five cents.”

  “I’ll do my own arithmetic, thank you,” Kelsey snarled. She fetched her checkbook from her purse and wrote out the check. I rose, planning to thank Kelsey for the photo shoot in order to diffuse the tension between her and Tracy.

  Tracy glanced at the check that Kelsey thrust at her. “You gave me ten dollars too much,” Tracy said.

  “Consider it a tip.”

  “Allie,” Baxter called. “Barker and I have to run. Good seeing you!”

  “You, too,” I called back with a wave.

  When I returned my attention to Kelsey, she was staring at me and shaking her head. “I just now emailed you and Baxter the best photo that George snapped. Just for the record, Allida?” she added, her cheeks flushed and her gaze fiery, “I’m not the evil other woman that you seem to think I am. I try to do the right thing, just like everyone else in this world. And from my perspective, you’re about to make the same mistake I did and drive Russ away. But don’t go blaming me for trying to undo my mistake.”

  Chapter 19

  With Bailey in tow and her check finally in hand, Tracy left. I smiled as I watched them cross the grassy expanse toward her car. Her beagle’s tail was wagging, and he had such a proud-looking trot, his plastic cone held high.

  After I’d thanked my mom and said goodbye to her and our dogs, Kelsey’s parting words weighed heavily on my mind. Maybe I’d judged her too harshly, because it had been so obvious from our first encounter that she was trying to win Russell’s heart. If I’d been confident and self-assured in that relationship, her interactions with me might have seemed humorous.

  Then again, she’d allowed her pet to injure a friend’s adorable beagle, and she was self-absorbed to the point of narcissism. Furthermore, my relationship with Russ was crumbling not because of my mistake of not realizing how wonderful he was, but because my life’s focus was on dogs, and Russ was phobic. If Russ’s dream was to live in a treehouse or in a twenty-story penthouse, he’d have much the same problem with me.

  Thankfully, before I could get so caught up in the vortex of my romantic life, Jana called and asked me to come to her place and give her a hand. She needed a second opinion on Fang’s lack of response to her current training methods.

  We met in the shared open space for her townhouse-development in East Boulder. She first showed me her own Pointer’s responses to various elementary training steps. “Jabber is, of course, way beyond all of this, but he doesn’t mind a few brush-up steps.”

  “I’m sure.”

  She was equipped with children’s toys—a cork gun, a plastic launcher, and an inflatable pool. “Obviously, this isn’t what I use when I’m training puppies, but I figured I could emulate a hunt on a backyard scale, in order to get Fang familiarized. So I tested out that theory with both of my well-trained hunting dogs, and they were all over it immediately. Let me show you.”

  We led Jabber and Fang to the opposite side of the long, narrow open space from the pool and the launcher. She gave me Fang’s leash and told him to stay. Then she held the toy “bird,” which looked like a cat toy with some feathers stuck onto it, in front of Jabber’s nose. She explained to me that she was going to put the bird into a spring-loaded, windup launcher at the far side of the open space. The toy catapult would send the bird into the air so that it would fall into the inflatable pool.

  After Jabber had sniffed at the feathered toy, she put him into a sit-stay, trotted behind the pool and set the timer on the toy catapult, then trotted back to us. When the catapult had launched the bird about twenty feet or so into the air, she shot her pretend gun, which made a popping sound. The fake bird plopped into the pool.

  “Dead bird!” she cried.

  Jabber raced the short distance, hopped into the pool, grabbed the bird in his mouth, and returned, dropping it at her feet.

  Fang watched the proceedings eagerly.

  “Impressive,” I said, thinking that this looked really fun. I wished the toy gun was more powerful so that I could take a crack at trying to hit the fake bird with a cork.

  “Now we’ll trade dogs.” She unfastened the leash from Fang’s collar and attached it to Jabber’s and gave it to me.

  We tried to run the same training exercise with Fang. No matter what we did, we couldn’t get him to stay until the bird was launched, let along the cork popped. Waiting for the “dead-bird” command was out of the question. We tried my holding him and then releasing him upon hearing “dead bird,” but he ran into the pool, shook the bird until its feathers fell off, then played keep-away with us, which dissolved into a tug-of-war until Jana released her grip. Fang promptly lost interest, deserted the thoroughly chewed toy bird, and started drinking from the kiddie pool. He wouldn’t obey Jana’s “come” command, and when Jana walked up to him to grab his collar, he raced over to the launcher, snatched it up, and tried to play keep-away again, which at least slowed him down sufficiently for Jana to grab his collar.

  She shook her head in frustration. “I’m thinking I just plain have to give up on the idea of transforming him into a hunting dog after three-plus years of bad habits.”

  “I honestly don’t know how I can help you,” I told her. “I’m not a hunter myself, and I don’t know the requirements or expectations for the dogs. But, the cliché ‘You can’t teach an old dog new tricks’ didn’t materialize from nothing.”

  “I know you’ve made remarkable progress with dogs’ behavioral problems. Even with older dogs.”

  “I have. And I’ve seen older dogs who’ve been taught circus
tricks. But I think, if it was me training Fang to hunt, I’d have to look at this as at least a six-month process, while working with him every single day. He needs to be retrained in everything, all of the basic commands, from square one.”

  She sighed. “That sounds right to me.”

  “Fang’s a smart dog. He wants to learn.” I couldn’t help but smile as I saw him look at me and wag his stubby tail. “Yes, you are a—”

  “Allida,” came Malcolm’s deep voice behind me. “I wasn’t expecting you to be here.” I whirled around. He was standing near Jana’s backyard fence, a can of beer in his hand.

  “Hi, hon,” Jana said. She strode to him and planted a kiss on his check. “I invited her over. I wanted to get her feedback on Fang’s retraining.”

  “He’s gonna be just fine at hunting,” Malcolm said. “You’ll see. All you gotta do is sic him on some critter. Betcha he’d be able to take out a rabbit just fine, if we was to hunt something like that.”

  “We don’t want Fang to maul what we’ve shot. The point isn’t for him to kill the prey, that’s what our guns are for. It’s to point at it, or flush it, and retrieve it, once it’s been shot.”

  “Yeah? Well, we can work on the particulars as we go along.” He gave Fang a tummy rub. He pointed at me with his chin. “You heard Allida say just now he’s a smart dog.”

  “I did. I also heard her say she thought it’d take six months of intensive work, every day. Which, if you’ll remember, is what I guess-timated the other day.”

  “Yeah. But that don’t mean we can’t take him out on hunts right now. It won’t hurt anything.”

  “Actually, it’ll hurt my training of the puppies,” Jana countered. “Plus, he’ll get in the way of the older dogs. I don’t want any of them or Fang to get hurt.”

  Malcolm rolled his eyes and popped the lid on a can of beer. His icy gaze met mine. “If you want a cold one, Jana’s got some in the fridge.”