“I think so. I certainly don’t know very many of the commands she has learned, so I’ve reached out to Badger to look for her previous trainer to see what she understands,” he said. “Generally there’s a set protocol for commands, but everybody has the little special things that they do with their dogs.”
“I still can’t believe that she ended up in this situation.”
“Well, unfortunately it’s what happened,” he said, “so let’s just try to make her next years the best they can be.”
“Are you keeping her?” At his nod, they walked around the backyard, and Laurie Ann noted that he’d let the shepherd have a good six foot lead. “Do you think it’s safe for her to be here?”
“Safe for her, or safe for you?” he asked with the note of humor.
She smiled. “For both, I guess,” she said. “She seems very well-behaved.”
“She’s very well trained. She’s just had a rough couple months,” he said. He studied the shepherd as they walked around the right side of the property in the opposite direction of where her intruder had been.
“She seems very alert.”
“She is but not too bothered. She’s trying to sort out the smells in the area and just what she’s looking at and looking for. She doesn’t know me. She doesn’t know you. She doesn’t know this area,” he said. “But she’s still working to sort it all out in her head.”
“Did you have any trouble getting a collar and leash on her?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “By the time I stood up where she was cuddling with me, she followed me to the truck on her own. As soon as I put a collar and the leash on her, she jumped up beside me in the truck.”
“So she really wanted to come with you.”
“I think she was damn grateful to have a decent human in her life,” he said with a quiet smile down at the dog. As they got around to the far left side, immediately the dog growled in the back of her throat, and her ears went back ever-so-slightly, and her lip curled.
“Okay, that’s not a good sign,” she said, taking a step back.
“Well, it’s a good sign,” he said, “if you think about it. This is where your intruder was, wasn’t he?”
She looked around and then nodded. “Yes. How does Sabine know that?”
“Her training. But whether it’s because she recognizes him as her recent enemy or as somebody who was here for no good, that’s hard to say.”
“And how would she know that?”
“Well, if it was her own enemy,” he said, “it would be one of the people who probably have been giving her a hard time and possibly tried to hurt her. However, if it was somebody trying to hide here on your property, Sabine’s been trained to sniff out the enemy hiding in various scenarios. So that’s just part of her training.”
“Wow,” she said, “they really use dogs for that?”
“Yes, they really do. The problem came when the enemy shot the dogs, which told our men where the enemy was, but often the dogs would hide to avoid getting shot.”
“But often the War Dogs were shot?”
“There are always casualties in war, whether canine or human. Of course canine deaths were preferred over human.”
She knew that logically, but it still bothered her.
“It bothers all of us,” he said quietly, reading her mind. “No animal lover wants to see them suffer.”
“Especially now. She’s been through enough.”
“She has, indeed. That’s why we’re doing what we’re doing—to keep her safe now.”
The dog sniffed out the area thoroughly. As she watched, Laurie Ann asked, “Can you track with her? Can she track the intruder?”
“Maybe.” He sat down beside Sabine on the grass and let her just sniff the whole area. Then she whined and ran around the house, heading toward the front gate.
“Does this go where I think it does?” Kurt asked.
“Back to the road that leads to the front of the property,” she said.
He nodded, opened it up, and let the dog through. Immediately she bounced through, pulling at the leash. He came along behind Sabine, with Laurie Ann following up in the rear. She closed the gate behind her and watched as Kurt and the dog raced to the edge of the road. There Sabine stopped. She milled around in the same place, whined, and then sat down and barked.
Laurie Ann walked over to him. “What does that mean?”
“It means that your stranger most likely got into a vehicle and left that way.”
“Well, the good news is,” she said, “he’s likely left. The bad news is, we don’t know why he was here in the first place.”
“And who brought him here, if he didn’t come alone?”
“None of that appeals in any way,” she said.
He nodded. “Let’s go back into the backyard,” he said.
She led the way because she was nearest. She opened the gate and held it for them to pass. As soon as they got into the backyard, he turned and headed toward the wall of the house, where the stranger had been staring up at.
“Interesting,” Kurt said.
“And again that doesn’t sound very positive,” she said, staring up at the same place he was focused on and seeing nothing. “What is it you’re seeing?”
“Well, if it was me,” he said, “I’d be analyzing how to get into your house, and that trellis offers a way.”
“And that’s what I was afraid you would say,” she said flatly.
“We don’t know for sure that that’s what he was up to, you know?” he said.
“No, but what else would it be?”
“Unfortunately I don’t see another answer that’s quite as good,” he said. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad thing. He knew he was seen, and he’s taken off.”
“But, if he was coming back anyway, he would now know what he needed to get inside,” she said.
And he nodded. “Exactly. Do you sleep up there?”
“I do. Right now Jeremy is over at his friend’s for the night,” she said, “which is a good thing. But now I don’t want him to come back and to be in danger at all.”
“That, of course, begs another question. Was it you they were after? The house they were after? Or Jeremy?” He stepped back several feet and looked up. “The lattice itself won’t hold him though,” he said, “but it’d be pretty easy to jump up onto that deck up there.”
She stared up at the distance and shook her head in disbelief. “Did you say, pretty easy?”
He nodded. “Absolutely.”
“That’s not what I want to hear. You know that, right?”
He nodded. “Most people don’t think about it. They think, since they’re on the second floor, they’re safe, and it’s not true. What happens is, you become pinned up there because you don’t know how to get out yourself, and jumping down will often cause a broken leg or other injury,” he murmured.
He grabbed the trellis and pulled hard. It stayed put. He frowned. “I really don’t like that. Do you know if he touched it?”