Ember Page 3

  “I suppose we should start with a bath since we’re halfway there, anyway,” Roxanne said. “Forrest, would you do the honors?”

  Forrest shook his own head and scrambled up from the floor. “Sure,” he agreed. Bathing the dogs wasn’t something he usually did, but he was more than happy to lend a hand. Especially for this new bundle of wriggling enthusiasm.

  Ember followed Forrest to the area they used for grooming with her tongue hanging out, panting happily. It wasn’t dignified, but the hose game was the most fun she’d had in a long time, and it hadn’t ended in yelling.

  She tried to stay still while the gentle boy shampooed her and rinsed her in warm water. She only shook when the soap tickled too much or the dripping was too itchy. Then she had to let go, which sent suds flying and Forrest ducking for cover.

  When she was thoroughly toweled, Forrest took Ember back to the place where they played hose and showed her to a kennel. “This will be your spot for a while,” he explained. “While Roxanne gets you trained up.”

  “Here, give her this.” Roxanne appeared behind them with Ember’s glove, which she had just retrieved from her truck. “It might help her settle in. Nice job on the bath, by the way,” she commended Forrest. “This one’s not easy to contain.” They both laughed at that and watched Ember take her chew glove over to the foam pad inside the enclosure.

  Ember turned three times on the new bed and lay down. Roxanne and Forrest closed the gate. They stood a few steps away, watching Ember situate the glove between her front paws.

  “You’re pretty good with her,” Roxanne told Forrest.

  Forrest shot her a shy half smile.

  “What’s all this I hear about a new perro?” Pedro Sundal strode into the pavilion, surprising Roxanne and Forrest and widening their smiles. It was always good to see Pedro. He lived and worked on the ranch, too, and was in charge of training the handlers who the dogs would eventually live and work with. Together, he and Roxanne made up the lead training team at Sterling. The center was currently working on bringing in new trainers, as two had just departed.

  Pedro and Roxanne liked to consult each other about everything. Roxanne clapped a hand on Pedro’s shoulder. “Word travels fast!” she chuckled. “This is Ember. She just got here. She’s a bit of a handful, but I think she’s gonna make a crackerjack SAR dog.”

  Pedro ran his hand over his close-cut goatee and squatted down. He made a kissing sound with his lips. Ember came to the gate and licked his sun-weathered hand through the fencing.

  Roxanne filled Pedro in on her morning’s adventures, and he laughed at the story of the glove and the impromptu shower.

  “Sounds like she’ll be perfect for wilderness searches.” Pedro nodded. “It’s too bad we didn’t get her a month or two ago. I’ve got a firefighter coming down from the mountains at the end of summer. They might have been a great match.”

  It wasn’t hard to picture Ember combing the pine-covered hills of the Sierras.

  “Maybe she’ll be a fast learner,” Forrest offered. “You never know.”

  Roxanne and Pedro smiled at the kid’s optimism, but it could take anywhere from several months to two years to train a wilderness tracker. Pedro stood and Ember went back to her bed with her glove. She’d have to be super fast to be ready for a handler by the end of summer, and there was no rushing a dog through training.

  “You never know,” Roxanne said, not wanting to dampen Forrest’s mood any more than his clothes. She put her hand on his wet shoulder so he would follow her out. She had something else she wanted to ask him.

  Ember watched the trio disappear through the pavilion door—the boy with the curly hair, the woman with the speckled face, and the man with the hairy chin. She liked them. She wished they would stay. But hardly anyone ever did.

  She chewed lightly on her glove, which released the smells held deep inside—smoke and leather and the scent of the man with the rumbling voice. The smells were familiar, and she loved that they were still there, after so much time. The glove and those smells were the only things that stayed the same in Ember’s ever-changing world. Or at least so far. She hoped these new people would stick around a little longer.

  Forrest slid into his chair at the large, square Sterling dining table, his blue eyes darting around excitedly. He had news he could not wait to share! He lifted his fork and tapped it absently on the table, impatiently waiting for the rest of the family to arrive. His older sister, Shelby, sauntered into the room, flung her pink-streaked hair behind one shoulder, and slid into her seat. She pursed her lips, shooting Forrest her usual look of disapproval. Forrest ignored her, set his fork on his napkin, and gnawed his thumbnail. Shelby was fourteen and thought she had authority over the rest of her siblings. She was always telling him to sit still or stop fidgeting … or anything else she could think of.

  “Don’t bite your nails.” She swatted at Forrest’s hand. Forrest dodged.

  “Don’t tell me what to do,” he shot back breezily. Aside from her lack of dimples and lighter, pink-streaked hair, which Forrest secretly thought was cool, Shelby looked just like their mom. She had the same light brown skin, same dark almond-shaped eyes, same straight nose—but that didn’t mean she could act like her!

  Shelby tried to fix her brother with a stare.

  Forrest only shrugged. Usually his big sister’s nagging bugged him. Tonight it had no effect. He was too excited.

  Shelby didn’t snap back but kept her eyes fixed on her brother—something was up.

  Juniper arrived next and took her spot next to Shelby, her hazel eyes locking on the basket of corn bread. She was hungry and ready to pounce, but knew better than to help herself before everyone was seated.

  Morgan, who was ten and closest to Forrest in age and disposition, brought the butter dish in from the kitchen. She took a seat beside her brother and bent to look underneath the table for her grandmother’s dog. Their grandmother Frances was just taking her seat, too. She lived in her own small cottage but frequently joined them for meals and always brought Cocoa, the only “pet” dog living on the ranch. Morgan puckered her lips and threw Cocoa a kiss when she spotted her, not under the table but lying on the cool wood floor with her back against the sideboard.

  Finally the children’s parents, Georgia and Martin, emerged from the kitchen, carrying a large pot of chili and a big green salad. They placed their offerings in the center of the table before settling themselves and giving the signal to dig in.

  All around the table, Sterlings began serving up. Juniper dove on the corn bread, placing two pieces in a small tower on her plate … she was the youngest and smallest, but ate more than anyone. She got a withering look from Shelby, but before Shelby could scold her, an obviously excited Forrest blurted the news he’d been dying to share. “We’ve got a new dog and Roxanne wants me to be the training assistant!”

  Everyone at the table stopped what they were doing and looked at Forrest. Everyone understood that what Forrest had just announced was news and a big deal.

  “Hold on now.” Georgia’s arm, which had been shaking hot sauce on her chili, froze in midair. “I think this is a conversation we need to have, not an announcement,” she said. Her words were stern but her dark eyes were gentle.

  Forrest looked at his mom and clamped his mouth shut. Georgia was in charge of pretty much everything and was as fierce as she was loving. She handled the daily operations at the Sterling Center, officially since Frances had stepped down, and mostly before that, too. She took care of the business side of things for the nonprofit center, managing money and people. She also handled any press or publicity, always with a calm and steady hand, always looking for solutions that would be best for everyone involved. Georgia was also the chief dreamer and had big plans for what the center could and should become. What Martin’s mother had started had become an incredible rescue resource and could be so much more! But before any of her Sterling Center responsibilities, Georgia was Juniper, Morgan, Shelby, and Forrest’s
mom—a job she did not take lightly.

  “We need to talk about what this means with school and the chores you already have,” Georgia said. She handed the hot sauce to Morgan, who shared her love of spicy food, and smoothed her long curly hair away from her face—a habit that never accomplished anything since it always sprang back. Georgia looked meaningfully at her husband, her brown eyes locking with his blue.

  Martin knew exactly what Georgia’s look meant. It said “we need to handle this carefully.”

  “You’ve got a lot on your plate, Forrest,” Martin said, backing up his wife. Most of the time, the two of them were on the same page when it came to parenting, but he had a lighter touch than she did and was not as prone to worrying about the ways things might go wrong.

  Besides dad duties, Martin was in charge of maintenance at Sterling—and there was a lot of it with so many buildings and new things happening all the time. He was the construction manager for all additions and the on-call fix-it guy—which applied to people as well as buildings and vehicles.

  “Summer is almost here,” Forrest said, and then zipped his lips. In this case, saying less was better.

  “Forrest has been doing well keeping up with the dog care and schoolwork,” Martin said. “Once school is out …” He raised an eyebrow and ran a hand over his thinning blond hair.

  Forrest twitched in his seat. He gulped and looked at his hands in his lap. When he glanced up, his grandma was looking right at him with her slightly sly smile, watching it all play out. She winked. Forrest tried to wink back.

  Frances understood how much it meant to the boy to become a training assistant … the two of them had more in common than their twinkly blue eyes.

  And Frances wasn’t the only one who knew what a big deal it would be if Forrest got to work with Roxanne and the new dog. Morgan dreamed of that day! She’d been around the search and rescue dogs, trainers, and handlers since she was born. She had read every book she could get her hands on, from the Sterling Center and local libraries. If there was such a thing as a child expert in SAR dogs, Morgan was sure she was it. Which is why she knew that if Forrest worked with the new dog, she wouldn’t. It was important that every dog have one dedicated trainer and one dedicated, regular assistant. It was important so the dogs wouldn’t get confused and so that they could successfully bond with the handler they’d be matched with later on for work in the field.

  “So can I do it?” Forrest asked, interrupting the silent conversation his parents were having with their eyebrows. “Roxanne is going to start with obedience. Ember’s kind of hyper and easily distracted.”

  “Kind of!” Shelby’s voice dripped sarcasm. She’d seen Roxanne walking the dog to the pavilion and had steered clear. They got all kinds of dogs at Sterling, but Ember was one of the least focused she’d ever seen, constantly pulling in different directions after this squirrel or that smell, or this moving leaf, or …

  Forrest shot Shelby a look. Shelby pretended not to notice and served herself a heap of salad.

  “By the time Rox is done with obedience, school will be out!” Forrest finished. “So …”

  Georgia and Martin both nodded yes at the same time, while Frances smiled into her napkin.

  “Yesss!” Forrest celebrated by snatching the basket of corn bread from Juniper, who was taking her third. “Save some for the rest of us,” he chided.

  Nobody noticed that Morgan was slumping—she’d gone suddenly boneless with the news—nobody but Cocoa, who appeared by her leg and rested her wide head in her lap to soothe her disappointment. Morgan pet the old pooch under the table, not caring that doing so was forbidden.

  “This is going to be great,” Forrest said loudly, oblivious that he had just snagged Morgan’s dream job.

  Morgan scratched Cocoa’s ear and searched for a bright side. If Forrest was busy working as a training assistant, maybe she would be able to help with his canine care chores and cleaning. That would at least get her some more time with the dogs, which was the most important thing to her, anyway.

  Always.

  “I hate that we’re stuck in here while Forrest is out there,” Morgan grumbled from the observation trailer on the edge of the training grounds. She tugged on one of her short twists in frustration. Given her brother’s promotion three weeks ago, the fact that she was in here with her two sisters doing two things she didn’t like—watching and waiting—was making her extra grumpy.

  Shelby rolled her eyes and threw a hand on her skinny-jeaned hip—her know-it-all, older-sister stance. Not that Shelby did know it all … especially about the dogs.

  “Come on, Morgan. You know only one of us gets to be out there with Roxanne.” Shelby wasn’t in the best mood, either. Watching a training session at nine thirty on a Saturday morning was not her first choice, but her plans to hang out with her best friend, Alice, fell through at the last minute, and since she was already up … Plus she kind of wanted to see Ember’s first real crack at finding a victim—Forrest. So far Ember had watched Forrest run away and then followed, “finding” him. But today he was going to disappear without Ember watching. Today the new dog would have to use her nose to find him. It was a big step.

  “You’re too young to work with the dogs, anyway,” Shelby added, watching Morgan’s face screw up into a scowl. She didn’t really mean to take her annoyance out on her sister, especially because she knew how Morgan felt about being left out of dog training. Before she started high school, she’d felt the same way. Now that she was finished with her freshman year, though, she didn’t care as much about dogs and dog training as she used to. There were too many other things to do. The local high school was four times the size of her middle school, the homework was way harder, and she’d made a lot of new friends she didn’t want to lose track of over the summer … especially a certain cute boy named Ryan, who had arrived at the school in the spring of last year and only just started talking to her in biology class.

  “Don’t you have some friends to go hang out with or something?” Morgan shot back. It wasn’t like her to be mean, but sometimes Shelby brought out the worst in her. She bit her lower lip guiltily and pressed her nose to the glass.

  Outside, Roxanne was ready with Ember’s red-and-white search and rescue vest. Buckling on the vest was the very first part of a training session. Not only was it essential for the dog to be easily identified in the field, the dog needed to get used to the vest so that it felt comfortable and natural and did not distract them. During rescues the vest might be worn for hours on end—sometimes even days. Strapping on the vest also sent a clear message to the dog that it was time to get to work, or in this case time to start training. Unfortunately, that message wasn’t clear to Ember. At least not yet. She was wagging and jumping up on Roxanne, who couldn’t get her to stay still long enough to fasten the buckles.

  “Dogs are such dorks!” Juniper sniffed, gazing out the trailer window and squeezing the cat in her arms more tightly. “Not dignified like you, Twiggy.” Twig let out a sharp meow and wriggled weakly in resistance in spite of the compliment. He was used to being toted around by Juniper, but that didn’t mean he always liked it.

  “Meeeooowwwww,” the big orange tabby protested.

  “I agree, Twiggy,” Juniper replied, as if Twig had spoken perfect English. “You’re much smarter …” She leaned forward and cooed in his ear. “You could absolutely do a better job.”

  Shelby watched Juniper flip the hair their mom kept braided in two long black plaits onto her back and smirked at the littlest Sterling. Leave it to Juniper to think she could train a cat for rescue! Being the youngest, she was constantly on the lookout for something that would make her stand out from her dog-obsessed family.

  Outside, Roxanne was oblivious to the sisters in the trailer. She was all focus, and Ember was all play. “Ember, stay!” the trainer said firmly. She didn’t raise her voice—it never helped. Besides, Roxanne had already seen progress in the yellow Lab mix, and she knew from experience that training
was incremental and not always linear. Sometimes you made a little progress. Sometimes you slipped back. Sometimes you went sideways … the path was different for every dog. The most important thing was for the humans to be consistent. To help the dog anticipate. To help the dog trust both their handlers and their own instincts.

  Ember reminded Roxanne of Cascade, one of the many dogs her family had when she was a child. Like Ember, Cade had been feisty and energetic. And when it came to their pets, the Valentine family tended to be big on love and not so big on training … they never did get Cade to sit and stay. The messages were always mixed.

  Roxanne sighed at the memory of her energetic and sometimes crazy-making dog and gazed down at young Ember. She wanted to get the Lab focused on tracking Forrest’s scent, but at the moment, Ember was only focused on licking Roxanne’s freckled cheek.

  Roxanne tried not to laugh as she reminded Ember to sit. Dogs like Ember and Cade were the reason she became a trainer. She’d always adored dogs and their incredible, unbridled spirit. But when she was growing up, the unchecked chaos spirited dogs created in her house—which was already chaotic because there were five kids—was enough to drive anyone a little bonkers. Especially the dogs themselves. She’d discovered that, with very rare exceptions, dogs loved to be trained. It helped them to thrive, and to relax.

  “Stay,” Roxanne repeated calmly but firmly. Ember stilled—a result of the weeks they’d been working. “Good stay,” Roxanne praised her, bending down to strap and buckle the vest at last. With the vest secured, she double-checked that the long lead coiled around her arm wasn’t tangled. She was standing next to a marked-off “scent pad”—a spot on the grass where Forrest had wiped his feet several times in order to deposit his particular smell. After just a few foot swipes, even with shoes on, the spot on the grass was super-loaded smell-wise, even for an untrained dog like Ember.