The Rescue

15

On a bright spring day, Teddy, his father, Wade, and year-old Joe got ready for a mock Class I detection exam at the Excalibur K-9 Training Center. It’s a present from father to son in reward for good grades in fifth grade. Teddy has been talking a lot about being a dog handler when he’s old enough: for rescues, maybe, or tracking lost people, or maybe catching criminals or terrorists. His dad wants him to get a taste of what it might be like.

Joe knew none of this. He was happy to be here at a place he loves, doing things he loves for people he loves.

This test was an edited version of the detection test that Wade would give any Excalibur candidate headed to the ranks of federal, state, county, and municipal officers, or private citizens willing to pay top dollar for a top dog — minus the drugs and dangerous opioids because of Teddy’s age. If a dog passed all four parts of the real Class I exam — detection, security, patrol, and protection — the next step was to place this “green” dog with his handler-to-be for a week of compatibility-training to assure a good canine — human fit. And if that happened, Wade would sign away yet another of his beloved dogs for five years of hard and sometimes dangerous work.

If the dog didn’t pass, Wade always tried to find a good owner, hopefully a family, and passed his failed friend into a safer world. It was a little tough sometimes, since many of the dogs were patrol, security, and protection trained, so prospective civilian owners could be liability-shy, if not downright afraid to bring a trained attack dog into their home.

The three of them — and occasionally Dad — had been here Tuesdays, Thursdays, and weekends for six months now, and Wade wanted to see how Joe could do on a timed, intense examination with steep scoring penalties for false and missed alerts.

They started with on-leash obedience — hand and voice directed — at which Joe had always excelled. They did it right out in the grassy park with the dozens of other dogs and handlers. Half the battle for a dog was distraction.

Joe was distraction-prone, to say the least, but that day he sensed the gravity of what they were doing in Teddy, whose voice was stern and hand signals more forceful than usual. Joe saw that Wade’s wrinkled old face was serious, and that he carried a flat black slab with a screen that tilted up, and, as many people do, was poking it with his fingers. So Joe tried extra hard — sitting extra fast, keeping still as a rock as Teddy circled him, going down hard with a humph, rolling over completely, and raising his paw the second he heard Shake or Teddy offered his hand.

Wade marked down Joe for anticipating commands rather than waiting for them, something else that Joe had also always excelled at. Joe lost his self-control and broke for a spotted towhee flitting in a hedge of pink oleander, but when Teddy called him off, Joe came sprinting in, flipping onto his back at Teddy’s feet, butt swiveling on the grass and tail wagging desperately.

Looking up, Joe saw the anger on his Boy’s face, and heard it in Wade’s big voice: “That’s going to cost him, Ted!”

Joe knew that they were unhappy and that it was his fault — I did it, I did it, I did it! — but the bird was right there in the bush and Joe badly needed it.

He calmed himself down, and the off-leash field work went nearly perfectly. Their expressions inspired him. Wade’s big gnarled hands worked the black Slab.

They did the detection test in a modest 1950s stucco house relocated to the Excalibur for just this purpose. It was smaller than the warehouse and Joe had never been inside.

“Unfamiliar territory,” said Wade. “To make it as hard on them as we can.”

Joe had no idea what that meant, and hoped that Teddy did.

“He’ll do good, Mr. Johnson. He knows when things are important.”

Joe followed them up the steps to the front porch, his nose keen to this new world.

Over the months, Joe had learned his basic discard odors well: human and dog food, dogs and other animals, tennis balls and plush toys, chews and tugs, small amounts of currency. And many other things that Joe enjoyed smelling but brought him no reward at all. Only sharp words and mean faces. Joe thought Bacon should get him a reward, but he’d learned that it wouldn’t.

Joe’s detection command was one holy word: find.

Which would be issued by Teddy, as he let Joe whiff a sample of a target item that Wade had hidden somewhere in the house.

They stood in the entryway of the house, Joe’s nose in the air, drawing in the river of scent. He whimpered softly.

Teddy smelled the strong Lysol and the bleach used to disguise the scents.

Wade gave Teddy a salted-in-shell peanut.

“Go to, Teddy,” he said looking at his watch.

Joe watched Teddy’s face, shivering. This was the most important thing in the world. He was so excited he believed he could jump up and bite the ceiling if he wanted to. Then Teddy held out the thing, his voice an urgent whisper.

“Find the peanuts, Joe! Find peanuts!”

A scent drew him forward into the living room, but he stopped and put his nose to the hardwood floor, then abruptly retreated back to the hat rack in the entryway.

Where he sat, looking up at the hats and umbrellas and raincoats. Went up on his hind legs, braced his paws on the entryway wall, nosed the pocket of a windbreaker that was streaming scent into his quivering muzzle.

Peanuts!

In his peripheral vision Joe saw Wade doing something on the black slab.

But he focused on Teddy, reaching into the jacket pocket and pulling out a clear bag of peanuts!

Teddy smiled as he held up the small plastic bag and Joe’s receptors nostrils bristled with an irritating scent.

Teddy brought the bag to his nose. “They used ammonia on the bag, Joe. But you found the peanuts anyway. You found them!”

His Boy gave Joe two small kibbles from his pocket. “How did Joe do? Did he get a fast time?”

“Yes, sir, Ted. It took Joe eight seconds to find his target, inside an ammonia-wiped plastic mini-bag.”

“You’re the best dog in the world,” said Teddy. He only said that sometimes, and Joe loved the sound of it. Joe knew the word Dog, of course, and he’s pretty sure that “best” is a very good word.

Joe watched Wade give his Boy another item and Teddy let him smell the small blue rectangle. It smelled like Teddy after getting wet in the rain box.

“Find the soap, Joe. Find soap!”

So Joe stepped forward into the living room again, feinting left and right, then came another sudden stop. His nose dropped to the floor like something weighted.

Again, he backtracked into the entryway. Sniffed the old rug, then dug a corner up and over itself, revealing the still-wrapped piece of chewing gum underneath.

Teddy brought it to his nose. Smelled the cinnamon, but Joe smelled the little shard of soap.

“Took eleven seconds to find a slice of soap hidden in a cinnamon gum wrapper,” said Wade.

Joe’s tail wagged hugely as his Boy gave him a treat from his pocket. “You’re the best dog,” said Teddy again and Joe knew exactly what he meant. There was something on his Boy’s face that made Joe feel love, though he had no word for his strong, good feeling.

Joe was really getting this game: Wade gave Teddy something for him to find, and he found it with his nose and Wade did something with his black slab and everyone was very happy.

Suddenly Joe was off again, after another peanut smell, but Teddy sternly called him back to the entryway. Joe bolted back and sat, scanning both faces with bright worry. Teddy’s voice had gotten lower lately and when Teddy was stern he was very stern. It surprised Joe. He thought he was playing.

“In a timed test, you have to start from the same place,” said Teddy, but Joe understood not one word.

Teddy looked at Wade for the next item.

Joe took in the grassy smell, not the yard grass where they played but like it.

“Find, Joe!” Teddy whispered intensely. “Find the spice!”

Joe quartered the living room in three short bursts, which brought him to the old fabric couch along the far wall. Like a lure enticing a fish, the scent drew him to the seam between the back cushions and the seat. He sprang up and buried his thick Labrador muzzle in it. It took him four quick, tingling snorts to confirm his find. He pulled his snout out, looked at his Boy.

Teddy ordered Joe off the couch and down. Joe watched him pull away a cushion like at Home.

Joe’s nostrils were bristling as he watched Teddy lift a small box that emitted this important smell that he had never smelled before. He watched his Boy open and look into it.

“Twelve seconds for half an ounce of dried oregano,” said Wade. “Packed in a freezer bag, stashed in a cigar box slathered in hot sauce.”

Teddy praised him and fed him more treats. Joe was happy. Teddy was happy. Team happy.

It was all so easy and fun. Joe got treat after treat, good face after good face. Praise from Teddy.

Joe found the cotton ball wiped with antiperspirant in a wastebasket in the bathroom; the breath mint inside a jar of peanut butter; the pinch of laundry soap sprinkled in the opened pack of smokes; an apple in the lidded toilet; a fragment of lemon peel wrapped in scented tissue wrapped tight in a sandwich bag.

“The drug traffickers will try anything to hide the scent of their product,” said Wade, working his tablet. “But the scent almost always ends up on the container, no matter how they try to wipe them down or stink them up.”

Joe listened intently to Wade, but didn’t recognize one word in all those sounds.

The bigger stuff was farther back in the bedrooms and bathrooms: a shoe high on a closet shelf, part of a jacket, a nautilus seashell still smelling faintly of the ocean.

The grand finale was a handful of wild bird feed in a small plastic food container with a toilet puck and six naphthalene moth balls inside.

“Eighteen seconds,” said Wade.

Joe followed Teddy and Wade into the small dining room and sat next to Teddy’s chair. No more Play. He heard Wade tapping the Slab.

“Pretty much what I thought,” said Wade in his rocky old voice. “Joe just did a slightly modified Class I detection course almost twice as fast as it’s ever been done. No false positives, not one miss. I’ve been doing these tests for thirty years and Joe’s the best I’ve ever seen.”

Joe heard his name in a good way. Lowered his proud body to the cool floor and fell asleep.

Joe lay in the back of the Delgado Heating and Air van, with Dad at the wheel and Teddy talking loudly and excitedly. This was the best day of his life.

He listened hard to his people, as always:

“And then in twelve seconds, Joe found the oregano!”

The shelves of parts and tools rattled and clanked all around Joe, and he was extremely happy.

At Home he slept on the Team Bed for three straight hours, dreaming of what he’d found, hearing the praise and excitement, smelling in his dream the specific, discrete, wonderful scents.

That evening Joe’s dad and mom would be going out to dinner to celebrate their twelve-year anniversary. Teddy thought they looked happy. Tony and Alicia all dressed up. His dad said they’d be with Uncle Art and Aunt Nancy, at Mister A’s in San Diego. Shelly from down the street would be here with him.

“There’s leftovers in the fridge,” he said as they were walking out the door. “And a new tub of ice cream. Shelly, help yourself to dinner and that ice cream if you want.”

“Thank you, Mr. Delgado.”

“Good, Dad.”

“Teddy, you and Joe were fantastic today, just fantastic.”

“Joe was.”

“You, too, son. We won’t be late.”

Joe took all of this in but didn’t understand much. He linked “ice cream” to the sweet Food that Teddy gave him sometimes after dinner.

When Teddy gave him a spoonful of the sweet Food, Joe wolfed it down and took off after his tail in a frantic, cyclonic whir.

He fell asleep that night alongside Teddy, who was watching TV on the living room couch with the Girl.

A big day, and Joe out cold.

He dreamed of all the things he’d found that day.

The best day of his life, again.

Much later the doorbell blasted Joe into an ear-shattering bark, and he was at the door growling before his Boy could get off the couch.

“No, Joe! Come! Down! Stay!”

Joe stopped growling and came and hit the floor by the couch, as ordered. Shelly took him by his collar.

He watched Teddy look through the small hole in the door, then open it.

Joe saw people in the porchlight. A man who looked like Dad and a woman Joe remembered. Also, a man and a woman wearing dark shirts and pants, with tools and guns and things wrapped around them like some of the people where he played today.

But what Joe saw and heard most clearly was their sad faces and the very sad voice of the man that looked like Dad.

“May we come in, Teddy?” he asked.

“Come in,” said his Boy.

Teddy’s voice was afraid. Joe felt the fear and was ready to fight. You can’t hurt him, Joe thought. He’s mine.

They came in and the woman with the man who looked like Dad rushed in and threw her arms around Teddy and held him like wrestling in the grass.

Joe growled but Teddy wrestled himself away from the woman and looked at the Dad-like man.

“Teddy, please sit down. We need to talk.”

“No,” Teddy said to him.

“I think I should drive myself home now,” said the girl.

The man who looked like Dad gave her something from his pocket and the girl went outside.

The wrestling woman’s face was wet and the man like Dad’s voice trembled.

“It’s your father and mother,” he said.

“No,” Teddy said again. “No.”

The man and the woman with the matching shirts and guns stared at Teddy but said nothing.

Joe had never heard such sadness in Teddy. Growling almost silently, he leaned against his Boy’s legs, using all his weight to protect him.

Joe looked at all these sad, ugly faces and growled louder. He understood that they had hurt his Boy and were hurting him now.

Teddy ordered him to down and stay, then knelt beside Joe.

“Something terrible has happened to Mom and Dad,” he said. Joe only understood the words Mom and Dad, but he got the meaning of the rest of them, thunderously loud and frighteningly clear.

His growl became a whimper.