by Dale Mayer
He nodded and held out his hand with a dog treat. “Come.” Obviously the training was warring with the dog’s instinct for survival and her need to run away from any threat. He could only surmise how much of the last few weeks of her life had been a fight and how difficult it would have been for her. Still it was obvious she still responded to her training. He kept his voice firm and calm as he talked to her.
“You’ve had a pretty rough time of it, haven’t you?” he asked, his voice neutral.
When she took another step toward him, he smiled and held the treat out farther.
She stretched her neck out, sniffing.
Then he put it on the ground in front of him, took one step back and crouched down again. “Shambhala, come.”
She took several more hesitant steps closer to the dog biscuit and him, still fighting off her training, and yet, at the same time, understanding somewhere in the back of her mind this was what she used to do.
He waited until she got closer, then he said, “Stop.” Immediately the dog froze, quivering. He smiled at her gently, then said, “Okay.”
She bent lower to the ground, snatched the treat and inhaled it.
He hated to see she was obviously starving. He pulled out a second dog treat out, knowing she needed much better food than just this, but it was something. Giving her almost no time, he held it out, put it down a little bit closer, took a half a step back and waited until she came.
As soon as she got there, he ordered her to stop.
She quivered and glared at him, hating the command, but helpless to override her training. Then he released her to have the treat. She gobbled it up and seemed to relax slightly.
He had a third one in his hand. This time he didn’t pull back but placed it between them. As soon as she got there, she hesitated, waiting for him to give her the command. He smiled and told her it was okay.
She gobbled it up and then looked at him again. He had a couple little pieces in his hand still, but that was it. He held out his hand with the pieces on his flat palm, his fingers outstretched, the treat on the surface.
Sensing some trick, she froze, wanting the last little bit, but not sure she could trust him. He kept talking to her in a calm gentle voice. He had looped a rope over his arm so as soon as he could get closer to her, he would drop it around her neck. She stepped up a little closer and closer again.
He kept talking to her calmly and gently. In the background he could hear little Sari’s voice calling out for the doggy. But neither he nor Shambhala broke eye contact. It was too important right now.
She took another step forward and sniffed his hand, wanting the treat, but it was just a hair out of reach. He kept still and kept talking to her. As soon as she reached for the treat, he eased his spare hand up under the rope and carefully looped it over her neck. She froze as soon as the noose dropped down, then looked at him in shock.
He stood up slowly and gently, told her to heel. With the leash on, she stepped up to his left side and stood at attention. He reached a hand down and gently stroked the top of her head.
“That’s a good girl, Shambhala,” he whispered. He walked her back toward where Sari and Daniela waited for him. Sari had a biscuit in her hand and so did Daniela. He held out his hand for the one from Daniela. She gave it to him. He turned to face Shambhala and ordered her to sit. She did. He held up part of the treat for her.
“She looks starved,” Daniela murmured at his side. Then took Sari’s treat from her to hand to Weston.
He fed Shambhala the remaining treat. “Looks like she’s had a pretty rough time,” he said. “Maybe just since the accident, I don’t know. But there’s blood on her haunch too.”
“You seem to have her under control now,” she said in surprise. “You made that look easy.”
“Nothing easy about it,” he said. “That’s her training. She’s responding to the command style she knows.”
“Maybe, but she still looks like she has suffered.”
With that all the treats were gone. Shambhala looked up at him as if to see what was next. He smiled at her and reached a hand down to scratch her ears. “We need to find a place where we can take you, girl.”
“I have a fenced yard,” Daniela said.
He looked at her and hesitated. He’d already taken advantage of her generosity, more than he would have liked. It was as if she could sense his hesitation.
“Look. No reason not to,” she pointed out quietly. “I know you’re trying to be independent, but you need a place where the dog can be safe. I do have a good fence, and she needs a few days to recover. What will you do with her after this?”
“I don’t know,” he said in surprise. “I didn’t allow myself to think to this point. Honestly, I wasn’t sure I’d catch her.”
“And here I thought you always had everything planned out,” she said in a light teasing manner.
He didn’t take his gaze off Shambhala, who was much more relaxed now. He gave her a hand command to lie down, and she dropped and lay down. When he gave her another one to relax, to say she was off duty, she sprawled out on her side. “She is very well trained,” he said.
“I don’t know if you just made her do that last bit,” Daniela said, “but, if you did, that’s amazing. I’m surprised she remembers any of that training.”
“It’s not a case of remembering as much as it was what she was. It was how she lived for the longest time, so anything other than her training would have been uncomfortable and scary. This is giving her that sense of security and routine again.”
“Well, it’s obvious you’ve won her over.”
He nodded. “Yes, but she needs real food.” He hesitated and looked back at the feedstore and could see the same young man, watching him in astonishment. “I’ll need a large bag of dog food,” he said. “Something extremely high in protein, if you have it. I can give you a credit card, “he said. “I don’t want to leave her or take her inside just now.”
The young man nodded. “No problem. I’ll carry it out. Where to?”
Daniela stepped back, smiling at him. “In my vehicle over here.”
“Doggy!” Sari screamed, clearly on the verge of being upset.
Daniela hesitated, looking at Weston.
He held out his hands. “If you want to be close to the doggy,” he said, “you have to be quiet, and you have to sit nicely.”
Sari looked up at him and reached out her arms. And, just like that, for the first time ever, he picked up his daughter and held her in his arms. It didn’t matter that her entire focus was on the dog at his feet because his entire focus was on her. And that special smell, a sense of holding a small and precious life, that sweet innocence, it was so hard to even understand what he felt, but Sari had just such a sense of wonder and lightness about her.
She bounced on his hip and laughed at the doggy. Shambhala looked up at her, not disinterested but more curious, as if she hadn’t had any exposure to children either.
“You and me both,” Weston said to the dog. He held his daughter firmly but with a little hesitancy. She appeared to have absolutely no fear of falling and completely trusted he would hold her. The trouble was, she was small, slippery and moved very quickly. He knew he’d get the hang of it, but, at the moment, it was like holding a wiggling eel as she kept leaning down toward the dog. He crouched with her in his arms and told Shambhala to guard. Immediately she stood up and sat down, attentive now. But she looked at him curiously, as if to say, Guard what?
It wasn’t the best command Weston could have given Shambhala, but he’d been looking for something to make her pay attention as he held his daughter a whole lot closer.
“Sari, this is Shambhala.”
“Schambach,” his daughter mumbled happily. She clapped her pudgy hands together and waved them in Shambhala’s face.
Shambhala looked at Sari, as if she were an oddity. But Shambhala was completely relaxed and calm around Sari. For that he was grateful.
When he could, he rea
ched out a hand to gently stroke Shambhala’s head and scratch behind her ears. Then he held out one of Sari’s hands for the dog to smell. Shambhala gave them both a good sniff and then lay back down again. He put Sari on her feet, not sure how well she walked, and she leaned forward, reaching for the dog’s ear. He showed her how to gently pet the top of the dog’s head and to stroke Shambhala’s ears. Sari was beyond delighted and chortled happily every time she touched the dog. She wasn’t sure what was going on, but it was obviously something she was desperately enjoying.
But that didn’t mean he knew the dog enough to trust Shambhala with his little girl’s life. He had assumed Shambhala would guard and look after her, but what if the child accidentally hurt the dog? Would Shambhala accept it as a young person’s accident, or would the dog turn on Sari? Again, the dog was an unknown. She might have been well-trained, but she’d also suffered. It was hard to say what the outcome would be.
Behind him, he could hear Daniela’s voice. “Weston, the dog food is loaded.”
“Okay,” he said, standing up with Sari in his arms. Sari screeched and tried to get back down to the dog. “She’s really hung up on Shambhala,” he said.
“But is it safe for her?”
“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “This is the first I’ve met the dog too.”
“That’s the problem,” Daniela said. “I get that she’s well-trained. I just don’t know what she’s like around a child.”
“I know,” he said, “it’s an unknown situation.” As he stepped away, Sari cried out some more. “She’s really focused on the dog,” he said with some concern.
Daniela stepped up to his side, reached out to take Sari from his arms and walked firmly back into the store with the little girl screaming. He looked down at Shambhala, reaching for the rope again. “Come, Shambhala.”
The dog hopped up and walked at his side. Weston walked around the building to where the truck was parked. There he had to make a decision about bringing her inside or putting her in the back of the bed. There was no canopy to keep her in safely, and loose inside the bed of the truck was not something he was willing to risk. But the car seat was in the back seat. Still, that was probably where the dog was better off. He looked at Daniela. “Do you want to move the car seat to the front?”
Daniela frowned and said, “Maybe if you want to put the dog in the back, you should sit back there too.”
He nodded. “That’s a good way to handle this.” He opened the door to the back seat, sat beside his daughter and then Shambhala jumped up on the other side of him.
Daniela hopped into the front and said, “Your credit card and receipt are here, by the way.”
“Thanks, I’ll grab it when we get out,” he said.
She didn’t say anything but started up the engine. “Now that you have the dog,” she said, “what do you want to do next?”
“I want to get a set of wheels.”
“Will you be staying on?”
He looked at her. “Why wouldn’t I?”
Chapter 5
Daniela didn’t know what to say. “I thought you were only coming to get the dog, and you’ve already accomplished that.”
“No, not necessarily,” he said. “We found the dog, yes, but I don’t really know what the circumstances are, and what’s best for her. So that’ll take a bit to figure out.”
She smiled and relaxed slightly. “I hear you,” she said. “I guess I was hoping you wouldn’t turn around and take off right away.”
“No, that’s not the plan,” he said.
Her smile brightened, then she nodded and drove out of the parking lot. “Good. A rental agency is up here, if that’s okay?”
“As long as it’s one of the big companies, it will be fine,” he said.
Once she had parked, he hopped out and went inside. Daniela got Sari out of her car seat and held her as a precaution, not knowing how Shambhala would react with Weston gone.
Once inside, Weston asked to rent a truck, preferably one with a large cab and a canopy. It took about fifteen minutes to get the paperwork done, and he came out with a set of keys. Walking to the back seat, he pulled out Shambhala, then turned and walked around to where Daniela was buckling Sari back in.
“I’ll take the dog to the police station to make sure there’s no paperwork involved in keeping her, and then I’ll head back to your place.”
“What about going out to Grant and Ginger’s house?”
He frowned. “I forgot about that. I guess I’ll wait and see what the cops say, then maybe head there next. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to see if Shambhala has things there. Maybe she needs to find some closure herself.”
“That’s probably a good idea. On the other hand, I don’t know about just leaving the two of you alone.”
“Why not?” he asked with a frown.
She shrugged. “I get the feeling you can get into trouble without much effort.”
He chuckled. “Maybe so, but we’ll be okay.”
She looked at Sari and said, “Maybe I’ll just take her home then.”
“Is there anything you need for the next couple of days that I can pick up?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I’ll just pick up a few groceries on my way home.”
“Well, here. Let me give you some money at least,” he said, pulling out his wallet, and he gave her a few hundred dollars. “Go ahead and stock up on whatever you need. I’m pretty low maintenance. I can live on coffee, bread and something for sandwiches. A steak once in a while.”
She nodded and smiled. “I can handle that.”
“Okay, give me an hour or two.” He checked his watch. “I’ll give you a call and check in.” With that, he said goodbye and headed to his new vehicle.
Weston loaded Shambhala into the front seat of the rental truck and hopped into the driver’s seat. He could see that Daniela was heading back out the way they had come, while he was heading to the police station.
As soon as he got there, he parked and took Shambhala out, still with just the rope on her, and walked up to the front door. Once inside, he asked to speak to Detective Kruger. The woman looked at him in surprise. “I spoke to him about this dog earlier.”
She nodded and told him to wait a moment. She made a couple calls, but Weston couldn’t hear what was going on. A few minutes later he looked up to see a salt-and-pepper-haired man walking through a side door with his hand out.
“I’m Detective Kruger,” he said.
Weston smiled, shook his hand and introduced them. “This is Shambhala.”
He looked at the dog in surprise. “Wow. How did you get a hold of her so fast? You appear to be on first-name basis already.” He studied the dog. Shambhala was alert but not aggressive.
“We found her behind the feedstore,” Weston said. “I was hoping to take a trip up to Grant and Ginger’s place, take a look around to see just how Shambhala was living.”
The detective nodded. “That’s fine with me, and nobody’s living there at the moment.”
“Did they own the property?”
“Yes, it appears they did,” the detective answered. “We contacted Grant’s brother, Gregory, but haven’t heard anything since.”
“Right,” Weston said. “If you’re not from Alaska, it would be hard to know what to do with property up here, I suppose.”
“Exactly.”
Weston handed over a Titanium Corp business card with his cell phone number and his name written on the back. “If you get any information on the case, I’d appreciate knowing about it.”
“You don’t think their deaths have anything to do with the dog, do you?”
“Not sure, I just want to make sure it doesn’t,” Weston said.
“And if it does?” the detective challenged.
Weston frowned at him. “I’m staying at Daniela Rogers’s place. She’s adopted my daughter. The last thing I want to do is introduce any danger to them.”
“Is picking up a dog that’s been ru
nning wild going to do that?” the detective asked with a frown.
“I want to make sure that’s not the case.” On that note, he said, “We’ll head out now, so we can get back in time for dinner.” As he turned away, pulling Shambhala’s rope, he noticed she seemed to be keeping an eye on a nearby detective a little too closely. Was it his suit? Bringing back memories of her old life?
Weston and the dog walked back outside, where they both hopped into the front seat of the rental truck. Weston pulled up his GPS and plugged in the address where Shambhala had been staying. It was a good twenty minutes there as he had to cross town, but then they’d been homesteading, so that made sense. He set the GPS for directions, and, following the computerized voice, he headed out toward Shambhala’s old home. Almost as soon as they hit the outskirts of town heading in the right direction, Shambhala sat up with interest.
“I’m sorry you can’t stay out there anymore, girl,” Weston said. “It just won’t work now.”
Shambhala didn’t appear to notice what he was saying, and the closer they got to the homestead, the more she seemed to relax and to be more comfortable inside the vehicle. When he turned onto the driveway, she barked excitedly.
“They’re not here now,” he murmured. If the dog didn’t know her owners were gone, this wouldn’t be the homecoming she wanted.
Sure enough, when they got to the place, he opened the truck door, and she jumped out and raced up to the front porch. She started to whine, then jumped up on the door, which creaked open. It was a single-story log-cabin-style home with a couple bedrooms off the back. He walked in to see just the barest of furnishings and no obvious signs of anybody having lived here in several weeks.
Shambhala raced through the cabin, whining and barking, obviously searching for her family.
Weston leaned against the door, hating to see her anxiety and her sense of loss, but it was better if she got used to this now.
She came back, looking for them still, then darted out the front door and headed to the fields. Weston followed, giving her a chance to check out everything she could because that was the only way for her to come to terms with it.