Ultimate Courage (True Heroes #2)(10)

“Ever been around more than one or two dogs at a time?” They didn’t usually have many of their dogs out at the same time without a handler for each dog, but the civilian classes could get unruly. Dogs got loose occasionally. He needed to know if she might panic.

“Yes.” Her answer was soft. There might’ve been a hint of darkness there. Whatever it was, it wasn’t a good memory. “The place wasn’t like this. The people weren’t as nice.”

He tipped his head to one side. “You think we are?”

She nodded. “You are.”

The conviction in her tone caught him by surprise. She wasn’t leaving any room for doubt, not even for herself.

“You seem sure.” He kept his own tone deliberately light. “You could be wrong about us.”

“I could.” She pressed her lips together, watching the dogs. “I have been in the past, but I decided I wouldn’t let that stop me from meeting new people and giving myself the chance to be right again.”

And that was something he needed to store away to consider at another time because anger was definitely not something he wanted to broadcast to the dogs the first time he introduced her to any of them.

He took a deep breath. Time to get a better read on her and see if she could maybe have a place here.

Alex stopped at the first kennel and gestured down the line with one hand. “Why don’t you take a walk down the line and choose one of the dogs to meet? Don’t actually try to touch any of them yet. We’ll do introductions as the next step.”

“Okay. I can do that.” She said it out loud, but he got the impression she was talking to herself.

She walked slowly down the line of kennels, pausing to look at each dog. Every dog had a different personality, and it showed in the way each reacted to her. One or two came right up to the chain link of the kennel trying to get a good look at her or catch a better whiff of her scent. There were a couple of reserved tail wags for her, too. Others stayed lying or sitting where they were, the only sign of their interest in the way their ears came up to listen in her direction.

“These aren’t all the same breed, are they?” she asked as she continued to walk from kennel to kennel, almost at the end.

Good eye.

“Three of these are Belgian Malinois, and the rest are German Shepherd Dogs. Easiest way to tell the difference right now is by coat color.” He paused. “All of our current GSDs are black and tans with black saddles across their backs. The Belgian Malinois are…mostly tan,” he finished lamely.

He needed practice explaining the differences to a non-dog person, obviously.

“The German Shepherds are bigger, too, longer fur.” She made the statement slowly, and he wondered if it was because she wasn’t sure she was right or wasn’t sure how he’d react to her making a statement rather than asking a question.

“German Shepherd Dogs,” he corrected. She hunched her shoulders, and he cursed himself inwardly. It’d come out matter of fact to him, but she was pretty sensitive to correction. “We try to make sure to refer to the dogs by their correct breed name or a standard like ‘GSD.’ It avoids confusion when we’re working with some of our clients.”

Still standing about midway down the corridor, she looked back at him and nodded. “I’ll try to remember.”

Good recovery. None of the men of Hope’s Crossing Kennels, least of all him, was great at saying the right thing at the right time. He didn’t want to tiptoe around on eggshells every single moment with someone he’d be working with on a daily basis. But if she could take constructive feedback, that was a start.

“But, yeah, the GSDs tend to be bigger. It’s a good observation.” She straightened under the kudos, so he figured he was coming out about even with her. Maybe with the right environment, she’d develop a thicker skin and more solid confidence. “They can outweigh a Belgian Malinois by ten or more pounds, and they’ve got some other physical differences you start to notice once you’re around them more.”

She nodded. “But you work with both breeds?”

“They tend to have the traits we’re looking for when we’re training working dogs.” He leaned against the door frame and waited. She didn’t seem to be trying to delay, but she wasn’t rushing to pick a dog to meet, either. “But we would work with other breeds if the dogs themselves had what it takes for the job they need to do. We do assessments when we acquire the dogs.”

She looked at each of the dogs, her face a strange play of expressions. “They’re all pretty intimidating.”

True. He considered how to address that, though, because he wouldn’t soften what any of the dogs were and it didn’t have to be a bad thing. “The dogs we train go on to perform very specific duties, some in active combat situations. Aggression, prey drive, intelligence, and other traits are absolutely necessary to the survival of their human team and to them. That said, we’re also careful to socialize them. We teach them the difference between friend and foe, when they’re on duty and when they’re not. Our dogs aren’t vicious, indiscriminate killers the way some can mistake them for.”

She shook her head. “None of them look…crazy or anything. They’re just intimidating.” She let out a shaky laugh. “Honestly, getting to know dogs like these would go a long way toward making me feel safe, if they liked me.”