Rachel Alexander 03 - A Hell of a Dog

charmed the pants off Audrey last night.
    On the other hand, many of the students had arrived last night, and their names had been gleaned from lists of people attending previous seminars, including Alan’s. For years I had heard stories about certain male trainers who crisscrossed the country teaching seminars, hopping from bed to bed instead of hotel to hotel as they moved from city to city. One of them had even bragged to me about how much money he’d saved, revealing the name of the lady who’d so kindly put him up, and making sure I knew he hadn’t slept on a foldout couch or in a guest room. A real gentleman.
    “It is character, dear people,” Beryl was saying, “that makes or breaks a relationship, character that becomes the red thread of a life, no matter if we are discussing a canine or a human, and therefore understanding character should be a prerequisite for choosing a dog and for educating a dog as well.”
    “Rotten piece of luck about Cooper,” Woody said, his voice serious.
    “Along with the issues of size, strength, activity level, and trainability,” Beryl was saying.
    “What did I miss?” Chip said, taking the seat next to mine.
    Woody leaned across me. “I was saying to Rachel here that it was a rotten piece of luck, Alan’s accident.”
    “Not so rotten for dogs,” Chip said. He was watching the stage, Beryl at the mike, the screen down for her slide show.
    I’d been wondering exactly how long respect for the dead would stave off comments about Alan’s training method. He’d been dead only five or six hours, and apparently the moratorium had already run out.
    “So it is the work function of the dog which must be examined,” Beryl was saying, “for therein lies the blueprint for understanding the animal, the way he thinks, moves, gets on with others.”
    “Still, I found the news shocking, didn’t you?” Woody said.
    “It certainly has everyone talking,” Chip said.
    “What have you heard?” I asked, watching Beryl imitating a golden retriever waiting to be sent for a duck. And then doing exactly the same expression again, saying it was the same dog, now waiting for its owner to chuck a ball.
    “Rumor has it that Beau stood up and pulled down the shelf with the radio on it,” Chip said.
    “Poetic justice,” Woody said.
    “Most dogs, like the Golden, will happily swap some game for the function for which they were created and bred, as long as that game contains the elements that were genetically strengthened over the years in order to make the dog a more efficient and dedicated worker.”
    “That the ASPCA hired the mob to—”
    “Will someone in the back please turn down the lights?” Beryl said. A young man across the aisle jumped up, and in a moment we were sitting in the dark.
    “And the usual stuff. ‘How did Alan Cooper find the dog-training seminar? Electrifying.’ You know, that sort of thing. I mean, if they did it when the Challenger went down, why not now?”
    The first slide was on the screen, a border terrier digging for a rodent. “This very tenacity—” Beryl began. Then Chip leaned across me to speak to Woody again.
    “Where’s Sam? Did she say if they’re doing an autopsy?“
    „She’s probably still with Elizabeth. It’s too soon for any results,” I said.
    “So that if you are training a proper terrier, it should—” Beryl said as the next slide clicked into place.
    “It’s not an easy way to go,” Woody said. “Better to die in your sleep.”
    “I wonder if he had time—”
    I turned to look at Chip. Woody leaned across me.
    ‘I’m just saying, they said he fell. They didn’t say if he was knocked out before the radio hit the water. So I wonder if there would have been time—”
    “To try to get out after the radio fell in?” Woody said. “Trust me. That’s not an option.”
    When I was kid, my sister Lillian used to take me to horror movies, and I would put my hands over my eyes when the scary parts came on so that I wouldn’t get nightmares. But then, I couldn’t help it, I’d spread my fingers apart and look anyway.
    “Time to what?” I couldn’t resist asking.
    ‘To rethink his training method,” Chip said, watching Beryl on the stage, the podium light throwing weird shadows onto her face.
    Woody and I groaned.
    “I hope the students don’t find out,” he said.
    “Do you think they’ll miss him?” I asked. “He’s on the program. And some of them must have come just to see him”
    “I