“Hello,” Marvin held up his hands after everyone stopped applauding. “This is Tank,” he laid his hand on the top of the dog’s head. “Like Rita said, I’ve been in this business my entire life. It was my grandfather that started Chambers Search and Rescue. It was passed down to his son, my father, then to me, and now I’ve passed the reins down to Rita. Since I retired at the beginning of the year, this is the first training session I’ve beento. I stay away because I didn’t want to step on Rita’s toes.” He chuckled as he looked back at his daughter. He leaned in like he was whispering.
“Retirement is boring.” That comment received several chuckles, and he nodded as he continued, “I’m only here today to observe. Ignore me and Tank, but…” he paused and looked at everyone. “If I see something being done wrong, I will correct you. This is a big class, the biggest I’ve ever seen here at CSAR. In the past, the most we’ve ever taken before was seven or eight.” Marvin walked back and forth before the people in the front, and after giving a command to Tank, the dog stayed where he was.
“Why didn’t you give him a treat for staying?” Lisa blurted out a question.
“Because you don’t always need to reward your dog with a treat.” Marvin looked directly at Lisa as he spoke and saw her guilty expression. “As I said, I’m not here to step on Rita’s toes, but I do want to reiterate something with all of you. Whether Rita has told you this or not, I will say it. Part of this program is that not only are your training your dog to become a member of the search and rescue team, but we are training you also. At the end of this course, both you and your dog will go through the test to see if you pass. If a dog fails, then there will be discussions as to what will happen to him after the course.”
“And the human?” Kent asked from his place propped against the back wall.
Marvin looked directly at the man who asked the question and liked what he saw in his expression.
“If the human fails, then they won’t be asked to join the search and rescue team.”
“How does the judging go?” Lisa asked with worry all over her face. When Charlie butted his nose into her leg, she reached down to pet him, but slipped him a treat as she did.
“Why did you do that?” Marvin demanded.
“What?”
“Why did you just slip your pup a treat? What did he do to earn one?”
Lisa looked between Marvin and Charlie in shock, then just shrugged it off. “I don’t know.”
“You’ll want to watch how you dole out the treats. A treat is a reward. A treat is food, which means if they receive too much of it, they could get fat and lazy, then fail the certification examination at the end of the course. Let me tell all you this, the test is intense for both the animal and handler. Neither Rita, Julie, Scott, nor myself will be testing you. We will be at the testing facility, but not performing the exam. Why? Because search and rescue is a serious business. The testing instructors are state level.” Marvin looked at everyone, and the only person that didn’t seem to show concern was Kent Palmer as he stood in the back of the room. When no one said anything, he looked back at Rita.
“I’ll turn it back over to you.”
“Okay, you’ve had four days off, let’s share one-by-one what you trained your dog to do over the time you were away from here. Were there any mishaps? Any triumphs? How did you handle them?”
Rita started at the beginning and randomly pointed to people and they discussed their time away from the formal training for five minutes each. Kent didn’t know if it was deliberate that he was called on last.
“Kent, what did you and Blu… sorry, what did you and Tate do this weekend?” She sucked in her breath at the grin that came over his face.
“I tested his height restrictions.”
“Excuse me?”
Kent pushed himself off the wall and stood tall. He saw everyone looking at him with varying degrees of shock andconfusion. He walked several feet away from the wall and looked at everyone before he spoke.
“I know people here think I’ve trained dogs before, however, that is not the case. I haveworkedwith K-9s and their handlers in my previous job, but I have nevertrainedthem. The dogs were already trained by the time I worked with them, and their handler was right there beside us if we needed to use them on a mission.”
“Are you former military?” someone in the crowd asked.
“Yes. Twenty years in the Air Force. My primary job was pararescue, and under that umbrella, I specialized in search and rescue, and I was a combat medic. When we knew we would need a dog on a mission, we were joined by the dog and his handler. Based on what I learned from them, that is how I am training Tate on my days off.” Kent looked around and saw interest in the others’ faces. In Rita’s he saw interest and in Marvin’s he saw respect.
“These past few days we had off from here, I took Tate out to The Centre on the outskirts of town.”
“Is that where the Yoga classes are?” Julie asked.
“Yes. The men that run it are buddies of mine. I knew them from our service days. I also know the Falco brothers over at the fire station. To be honest, I know Seth more than the others, but that’s neither here nor there. Anyway, the men I served with retired the same time I did, about a year ago. The Brotherhood Protection hired us to work for them when they have a special case. I won’t get into it all, because frankly, it’s none of your all’s business. Let me just say that my buddies and I are like the Secret Service for the Brotherhood. That’s all I’m going to say on that subject.” He nodded once and waited a few moments before he continued.
“Anyway, my buddies were out at the Centre, and they have a climbing wall. I have the special harness one of the handlersfrom my time in the military told me to purchase.” Kent looked down at Tate and looked back at everyone with a grin. “Once he becomes full grown, I’ll definitely have to purchase a bigger harness.” He waited until everyone laughed, before he continued, “I strapped Tate to me in his harness and we climbed the wall. With my buddies, while on the wall, I passed him over to them.”
“Why would you do that?” Rita asked in confused fascination.
“Because of my military experience, I’ve been on several harrowing missions. There were times when both dog and handler couldn’t get to certain places, by passing the dog to another teammate, that allowed the handler to get to where they needed to go to reach down for the dog. The person who has the dog, can then pass him to his handler.”
Before Kent could continue, Marvin asked a question, “Can you train other dogs to do what you did with Tate this weekend?”
