He knew his pain-in-the-arse young Elkhounds to be a flighty lot. They had almost no attention span when food was around, but all seven of the dogs were sitting upright and staring as their leader huffed and snorted with these black pups. They would give a quick head shake or body shift when Spot or Smudge would turn to look at them but otherwise they were still and silent. They had not touched their bowls.
Hamish stopped pouring the soup and stared.
Ben was suddenly at his side holding his own bucket. Loudly he said, “So Unc, we just dump a little in each bowl?”
Spot looked up at Ben, and then at Hamish.
He wagged and bumped Smudge and they trotted away from T’nuc, bounding around and playing with the other dogs. Spot looked back once and caught Hamish’s eye.
“Unc?” Ben repeated louder, bumping Hamish with the bucket.
“Aye lad, just a little in each bowl,” Hamish said, still watching the pups play with the dogs who were now starting to eat.
“They don’t look so stubborn,” Ben said as he stepped in front of his uncle, finally getting his attention.
“Stubborn as your Mimi and likely to turn gee when I say haw,” Hamish said.
Ben furrowed his brow and cocked his head.
“Gee and haw?” Hamish said, “Right and left? Oh we’ve got leagues to go to turn you into a proper musher.”
With the bowls filled Hamish and Ben tossed the empty buckets towards the back door and watched the sled dogs burying their noses in the steaming soup. Spot and Smudge had sampled some from two of the dogs’ bowls and Hamish was again surprised. Rarely would one of these dogs let another stick its nose in their bowl, especially new dogs, but these Elkhounds didn’t seem to mind and even moved over a little to let Spot and Smudge in.
Eventually Hamish looked down at Ben, folded his big arms across his chest and asked, “So, dog whisperer Ben, what do you think of my Elkhound team?”
Ben folded one arm under the other and rubbed his chin as Spot and Smudge stopped to watch him.
He asked, “You named them as pups?”
“Aye,” replied Hamish, “After I got to know them.”
“I see,” Ben said, “just like Dr. Herriot suggested. Good, although I don’t know what their Norwegian names mean.”
Hamish smiled as he looked down to watch Ben’s face working.
Ben pointed around the circle with his finger, starting with the dog next to the leader he said, “K’cuf there, I guess she’s the second in command, then S’ufud, and the triplets K’naks, T’sohg, and T’raf, at least I assume their littermates, they all seem to be a little younger and I guess those are your swing dogs. And then those two powerhouses R’ekcuf and E’sra are your wheels, right? What exactly is the problem you’re having training them?”
Hamish laughed a booming laugh and slammed Ben on the back with his huge mitt. “Okay grandnephew,” he said, “We’ll get to that at some point. Nicely done, you annoying little bastard.”
He turned to kick the empty buckets back into the barn and said, “Dr. Herriot was not officially a doctor, nor was he really named James Herriot, although he was a sight quicker than any doc I’ve ever known. A right genie-arse Scot that one. His true name was Alf Wight.”
“You knew him?” Ben gushed as he followed behind his uncle, “He sure was a genius, and I’ve read everything he’s ever wrote!”
“Written. And he’d be happy about that,” Hamish said as he pointed to a large sink next to the exam table. Ben started to rinse out the buckets as Hamish watched him.
After a moment he smiled and said, “I know you were just having me on with that ‘gee’ and ‘haw’ thing, you cheeky bairn. I’ve bet you’ve read everything you can get your little mitts on about mushing, too. Aye?”
Ben smiled but didn’t look up from his bucket.
“Okay lad,” Hamish said, “But just so you’ve been warned, I serve revenge up cold. Finish this up and come out front when you’re done.”
Hamish walked through the barn. While stepping through the front door he took out his cell phone.
After finishing with the buckets Ben called the pups and joined Hamish on the barn’s porch just as Christa pulled up in a pickup. She parked it next to Hamish’s truck and Ben noticed the two big trucks were virtually identical. They both had dual rear tires and four doors, and were the same maroon color.
Christa lifted the rear glass window and dropped the tailgate, and then headed towards Hamish and Ben on the porch.
“Have them wait here,” Hamish said to Ben as he looked down at the pups, “And lace up those boots, ya numpty.”
Ben nodded for the pups to stay put and tied his boots before joining Hamish and Christa at the front of the trucks.
As the pups watched Ben shuffling down the porch Spot’s ears pricked, and he sniffed at the air.
Smudge confirmed her brother’s reading of the smell. They tried to get Ben’s attention but Ben waved them off, looking annoyed, and asked Hamish to repeat what he’d asked.
“Clean the shite out of your ears boy,” Hamish said, “I said can you please be a lad and run up to the house. I left my phone on the kitchen counter. Be double quick about it.”
Ben saluted him and sprinted off across the small lot. He ran onto the packed snow path that sloped up to the back of the house. The deck stairs that led to the kitchen sliders were a little over a hundred meters from the barn.
Smudge started to stand but Spot stopped her. He was pretty sure he had heard Hamish on his phone a few minutes earlier. He said, Wait just a sec, sister, this should be interesting.
Christa looked over as the pups fidgeted and then settled. She walked over to stand in front of them, and then turned back to Hamish.
“Okay, go ahead,” she said.
Hamish pursed his lips and made a little chirping sound.
Two huge dogs with light brown, short-haired coats and black faces deftly leapt from the back of Christa’s truck and ran to Hamish’s side. The truck had creaked and rose up a little when the massive dogs left the tailgate. He made a hand gesture and the dogs turned a quick circle, making eye contact with the pups and noticing Ben who was about half way down the path.
Hamish made another gesture and the dogs kicked up snow as they blasted off across the lot and onto the path. In an instant they had closed the gap and were at Ben’s heals.
Spot and Smudge leaned out from behind Christa to watch, and wag, but didn’t move as she looked down to make sure they weren’t going to give chase.
Ben saw the two huge dogs bearing down on him at the last instant and screamed as they tripped him off the path and sent him tumbling down the snowy slope behind the house.
The dogs stopped in the middle of the path and snapped back to attention. They turned their floppy ears and alert black faces back to Hamish. He made another hand sign and they bound off the rise and down into the deep snow. They dragged Ben by his jean cuffs and jacket hood back up to the path and started pulling him through the snow towards the barn.
Ben was protesting, and using words Mimi would not have approved of.
Hamish whistled and the dogs immediately stopped and looked at him. He made another hand sign and they turned Ben loose and casually trotted back down the path to his side.
“Well that was a belter of a test, I’d say,” Hamish said, smiling as he patted their heads.
“Seems to have been,” Christa said. She called the big dogs over to let them meet the wagging Spot and Smudge before she walked up the path to help the still-cursing Ben straighten his jacket and brush himself off.
Hamish watched the four dogs getting acquainted in that same odd way as with the Elkies. It was a comical scene as his brown police-dogs-in-training were three times the size of Ben’s black dogs. He scratched under his hat and said, “Spot and Smudge, meet Vuur and Rook.”
Chapter 25
“Hello Mr. Preston, I got you. Can you see me?” Ben asked.
“Yes we can Ben, how are things
in Canada?” the teacher said as he turned to put the tablet on a stand on his desk. He plugged in a monitor cable and Ben appeared on a large screen in front of the class.
Ben could see the class on his tablet and he waved to them, “Hey guys!”
The class waved back. There were a few hoots and some of the boys and girls started a low chant of, “Ben, Ben, Ben...”
Christa took the tablet so Ben could take a few steps back.
“So Ben,” the teacher said as he hushed the class with his hand, “What have you learned about Quebec du Nord so far?”
“It’s friggin’ cold!” Ben said, and got laughs, “Mr. P, the average high here at the ranch in January is minus fifteen Celsius, or about four degrees Fahrenheit. As you can see I’m wearing just about everything I own.” He breathed out a puff of steam for effect, and showed he was wearing a tattered one piece quilted coverall with two heavy sweaters underneath.
Ben knew he’d have to pepper the call with facts if he wanted to get a good grade, and Mr. P would let him skip a ton of social studies homework if he didn’t just phone it in.
He introduced Christa and she toggled to the front camera briefly to wave hello to the class. Everyone waved back.
Christa panned around slowly as Ben walked in the snow, keeping him in the corner of the shot. The class saw the ranch house, the barn, the river, and then the valley and the mountains beyond. Ben described them each briefly with some data tossed in, and then said, “And as you can see we’re in the mountains here, well, in a valley in the mountains. It’s about four thousand feet up, which is higher than mount Greylock, the tallest point in Mass.”
Mr. P added some random Greylock Mountain facts of his own, apparently not wanting to be upstaged. Ben knew enough to hang back. Mr. P liked to be adored by his audience.
Christa followed as Ben walked backwards towards the barn. Spot and Smudge came into the shot next to him and most of the class yelled the dogs’ names. The pups turned to look and wagged, and everyone laughed.
Mr. P asked, “Where exactly are you, Ben?”
“I have no idea,” he said to some more laughs, “You guys down there in Pembury are about two hundred miles from the Canadian border, and I’m about six hundred miles north of that. But by road it was way more than a thousand miles, partly because I came through Nova Scotia and New Brunswick first, but the roads bend and twist a lot up here once you’re in the mountains. Everything is in kilometers, so the thousand miles we travelled was about sixteen hundred kilometers, or clicks as my Uncle and Christa call them. There is a tiny mining town a few kilometers away but beyond that we’re a hundred kilometers from the nearest anything.”
Mr. P added some more distance facts that seemed a little unrelated, and even a little incorrect, but Ben let that slide. His teacher asked, “How was your trip up there?”
Ben said, “It took two trains, a bus, two ferries, and two days in a pickup truck to get here. On the way up we drove through the Acadian part of Canada, where most of the people speak French but also eat British food for some odd reason.”
As Ben tried to keep the class interested by describing the more colorful highlights of Quebec Mr. P kept peppering him with boring social studies related questions. Ben had correctly assumed his teacher would be firing these at him as the man seemed obsessed with any topic that would bore a preteenager to tears. Christa had helped him to prepare so he was able to quickly blow through details about the local mining and logging industries. He tried to steer the answers to the more engaging topics like fishing, hunting, and Nordic skiing. Tourist groups frequently stayed at the ranch and the river here held the current records for trophy size trout and pike.
It seemed every time Ben was just warming up a good story Mr. P swept in with a stream of questions about parliament or free health care, and the class would immediately glaze over.
Ben answered a question about iron ore by pivoting to some of the ranch’s more colorful logging history and then quickly moved on with, “Let me show you what we do here today.”
As Ben walked into an open bay in the barn he said, “There are two things my Uncle Hamish and Christa are working on.”
“The first is this,” he said. In one hand Ben held up a large plastic dog collar with a black bump in the middle, in the other he held up what looked like a thicker version of a large smartphone.
“This is a radio collar,” he said, “And this is a radio telemetry receiver. They are used to track the pack of gray wolves my uncle is reintroducing into this part of Quebec. Gray wolves are common in northern Canada and in Alaska. So common they aren’t even protected in some places and are hunted for sport but in the southern parts of eastern Canada they were driven out years ago. Mostly by over hunting or by mining and logging encroaching on their homes. The habitat here will still support them and now the people are starting to understand the importance of bringing the wolves back here. So my uncle and his partner are doing it, with help from the community.”
There were a million questions about the wolf reintroduction, and wolves in general. A cute girl in the front raised her hand and smiled when she said hi to Ben. As she tugged on her hair she waved to Smudge, and asked Ben how wolves reproduced. The class laughed and Ben’s hands and face got hot, but thankfully Mr. P moved them along to the rest of the questions which ranged from the astute to the downright stupid.
Ben answered them all and was a font of knowledge about all things Canis lupus. Whenever Christa thought she’d have to jump in Ben would come up with the answer, even if he had to think about it for a second, which he usually did while looking at Spot.
Mr. P was pretty silent for this part. Apparently wolves were a little out of his social studies wheelhouse.
The questions dried up and before the teacher could jump in Ben said, “And this is the other reason we’re here.”
Christa panned again and Ben took the class around the circle of Norwegian Elkhounds, introducing each one and explaining their role on the team. He also showed them the sleds and the steel soup tank, complete with decapitated rabbits which drew the typical sounds kids make when being grossed out.
There were a million more questions about the sled dogs, including how much can they pull, and does T’nuc fart in S’ufud face when pulling the sled.
Mr. P was now dead silent and looking a little annoyed. Apparently he didn’t know crapola about sled dogs either.
Christa gave Ben the high sign as they were getting near the end of the class period.
“Mr. P, if we have one more minute I’d like to show you guys the other dogs that we are training here at the ranch,” Ben said.
“That’s fine Ben,” Mr. P said but clearly not meaning it, “We have a few minutes left but I wanted to leave room for any final questions about the local indigenous people and the geography.”
Ben gave him a wave and turned away from the camera, pulling up his hood and putting on his heavy gloves as he walked out of the barn and into the snowy corral. Spot and Smudge trotted with him for a bit before they walked off camera to the right.
Ben turned and stood with his hands on his hips, and waited.
The class watched, and waited. Just as Mr. P was going to say something two huge light brown dogs with black faces tore into the picture from the right at full speed and knocked Ben off his feet, carrying him several meters to the left. Christa zoomed in on the action as the dogs attacked. They growled and barked and chomped down on his legs and arms. Ben screamed and pounded at their sides and kicked at them. The muscular dogs were much bigger than Ben and they tore into him like a sack of fresh meat.
The class gasped and one girl started to cry. Mr. P’s mouth dropped open.
The camera pulled back and a tall man with a gray beard and a hat that looked sort of like a beret walked into the scene. Spot and Smudge were standing next to him. He whistled and the massive dogs immediately let Ben go and went to his side. They calmly sat down next to Ben’s much smaller pups.
Ben slo
wly rolled to his knees with his old coveralls in tatters.
He pushed the hood back from his red face as he stood up on wobbly legs and put his hands on his knees.
Between panting breaths he said, “That was Vuur and Rook. They are twins. Hundred and fifty pounds, or about seventy kilos, each. Police dogs that my great Uncle Hamish over there is custom training for his friend in the Kwazulu-Natal. Sometimes it’s called Zululand…that’s in South Africa. Their names mean fire and smoke in Afrikaans, which is kinda like an abbreviated form of Dutch. Say hi, Unc.”
Hamish smiled a big smile at the class.
Christa slowly moved the tablet so Ben was back in the middle of the frame, and then she zoomed in a little.
Ben continued, “Rook and his brother Vuur are boerboels, or South African mastiffs. The breed is part of a category of strong dogs called Molossers. As you can clearly see they have big bones, big necks, big teeth, round floppy ears, and short snouts. Bulldogs and pit bulls are Molossers, too. Unc says these boerboels are commonly used for security dogs ‘cause they’re smart, protective as hell, and real bad asses. Luckily they were just playing with me. He could have had them remove my head and limbs with a simple hand sign.”
Ben stood all the way up and said, “Any questions?”
Mr. P just stared with his mouth still open. The class erupted into applause.
Over his friends’ hoots and chants Ben heard the period end bell ringing in the background.
He waved goodbye just as Hamish sent the wagging dogs at him again with a flick of his wrist, and a smile. Spot and Smudge joined in and Ben was knocked to the snow with each growling dog taking a limb and tugging. Ben laughed and fought, and tried to wave goodbye as Christa ended the video chat.
Chapter 26
“Hand me that Allen wrench, the one with the white handle,” Christa said.
Smudge put her front feet up on the rolling tool cart, split open a paw, grabbed the wrench, and froze.
The Glasgow Gray: Spot and Smudge - Book 2 Page 13