Rachel Alexander 03 - A Hell of a Dog

I’d opened the door.
    “Martyn looked so upset when he realized Rick was gone.“
    „It must be just terrible, to work on someone like that and fail. I’m sure watching your talk will help him take his mind off this tragedy. It’ll be the best medicine for all of us, to stay involved in what we’re here for, isn’t that so?”
    I could see towels on the bathroom floor and dog hair all over the gray rug, but the bed was neatly made. Cathy hadn’t slept here last night. She’d just come back in the morning to shower. Without thinking, I glanced over at the clock radio, happy to see it safely on the nightstand where it belonged. “Do you want to change?” I asked her.
    “No, I’m okay.” She had stopped in the middle of the room, near the foot of the bed. She didn’t seem to know what to do.
    “You look great,” I told her. “Do you have notes for the talk, or slides?”
    “No. I don’t need notes, Rachel. I’ve been doing this talk on puppy basics for six years. Sam’s booked me all over the country and in Canada, but even before I met her, the local kennel clubs were inviting me to speak at their meetings. The breeders like to invite the pet-owning public to this talk because they want their pups to start out right. They care about them, but it also means fewer headaches for them, if people know what to do.”
    As she spoke, her voice got stronger and deeper; her confidence returned. I glanced back at the clock radio. We had ten minutes left
    “Do you use Sky in your seminar?” I asked. He cocked his pretty head at the sound of his name, got up, picked up the tennis ball, and with a flick of his muzzle, tossed it right to my hand. I snatched it from the air and threw it back to him.
    “He’d only drive everyone crazy,” Cathy said, cocking her head toward her dog. “If I didn’t throw the ball for him, he’d go looking for some sucker who would.” She smiled at Sky’s latest sucker.
    “Does he need a walk? Or food?”
    “I had him out earlier, playing Frisbee. He’s fine.”
    “Shall we go, then?” The tennis ball came back, like a bad penny. “The room is probably full already. And you might want to take a look at the puppies before you work with them.”
    I tossed the ball to Sky, closed the door, and slipped the key into my pocket. Cathy, too preoccupied to notice, wouldn’t have cause to discover it was missing until after her talk, which, alas, I was planning to miss.
    I did sit in the back of the room long enough to watch Cathy begin. She was every bit as terrific as I’d heard, demonstrating beginning training with the puppies that had been brought in for a morning’s work. She used no collars or leashes, just her voice and high energy, mesmerizing each pup in turn so that it saw nothing but her. In no time seven of the pups, one at a time, none over twelve weeks of age, were following Cathy back and forth across the stage.
    The audience, trainers and wanna-be trainers from all over the country, were mesmerized too, hoping that they would be able to work as gracefully and effectively with their clients’ pups when they got home, considerably richer in knowledge than when they’d left.
    I stayed longer than I’d planned, watching Cathy teach sit and down, still without a leash and, even more surprisingly for a Californian, without food rewards. She lured a little blue-flecked Australian cattle dog, nine weeks old that very day, to follow her and then sit when she stopped. Her hands, moving like birds, were as exciting to the pup as toys or treats. His eyes stayed on Cathy, no matter where she moved. Two Dalmatians, the oldest of the pups, worked side by side, following, sitting, then lying down. One lay down slowly, his eyes on Cathy’s eyes. The other threw himself to the ground as if he were pouncing on a coveted toy. And both stayed as she backed away, then went tearing into her arms when she called them.
    When I saw Sam come into the auditorium with Freud, I slipped out the back door. If Sam was here, it meant the police had left. I headed for the front desk to begin my work.
    The slow old man was behind the counter this time, his maroon blazer with the hotel emblem at least two sizes too big for him. He sat on a tall stool, his bony forearms lost in their sleeves, resting on the counter. Despite all the recent excitement, he looked dead bored. I thought I might be able to change that.
    “Hello, again.”
    “Good morning, miss,” he said, no sign of