The black GSD leaned into her, his tongue lolling out in response to the attention and the use of his name. Haydn knew when someone was talking to him and, apparently, he liked Sophie’s voice.
Every bond between working dog and handler was unique. Haydn was dealing with the loss of his handler in his own way, mostly by being generally friendly with the trainers and those to whom he was introduced. But there was friendly and there was truly affectionate. A deeper level of affection was something Haydn seemed to be holding in reserve. This physical training period would give the dog the time he needed to be ready to bond with someone again, too.
If he decided to. It was always the dog’s choice.
“Where’s your car?” Forte was not going to stand around long enough to be jealous of a dog. Not at all. “We’ll walk you.”
“Right across the street.” Sophie jerked her head in the direction of a small parking lot.
They headed over, Sophie falling into step next to Forte. She didn’t try to take his hand or tuck her own around his arm. They weren’t like that. Besides, she knew he didn’t like to be all wound up with a person when walking out in the open. It was another way her understanding of him manifested. It was a regular reassurance. A comfort.
Better than free cupcakes.
“Has Haydn met Atlas?” Sophie asked casually.
The first rehabilitation case at Hope’s Crossing Kennels had been Atlas, a dog suffering from PTSD after his handler had died. One of Forte’s trainers and close friends, David Cruz, had worked with Atlas and still did now that the dog had become a permanent part of the kennels. But Atlas’s challenges had been psychological. With the help of Lyn Jones’s approach to working with dogs, Cruz had successfully brought Atlas back up to speed.
“Briefly.” He glanced at Sophie and caught her making a face. “The dogs don’t need group therapy sessions.”
The psychology aspect of the rehabilitation was something Forte was willing to entertain only so far. Lyn got results with her work, yes, but he was not going to go all the way into the deep end with the dog whisperer approach.
He made a stupid face right back at Sophie. “You do not need to come over and sit Atlas and Haydn down to compare notes on what they’ve been through. Souze doesn’t need counseling, either.”
Souze was Rojas’s partner, a former guard dog turned service dog helping Rojas face the challenges of reintegrating into civilian life.
Sophie was silent a moment, a sure sign his guess at her thought process was on target. “Well, they do need to play with each other sometimes, right?”
“Dogs are social creatures, and, yeah, some playtime is good if they can socialize with other dogs that way.” He’d give her that. Forte made sure the dogs trained at Hope’s Crossing Kennels could socialize well with both human handlers and other working dogs. “Haydn’s the second military working dog to come to us for help after active duty, but his challenges are mostly physical. We have to watch him carefully with the prosthetic on until we all know what he can do with it, including him. But, yeah, he’s gone out with Atlas and Souze on a couple of group walks without the prosthetic.”
Honestly, Haydn was pretty spry even without the prosthetic. The dog just had better mobility with it.
“Okay.” Sophie let it go. “I just think you and your working dogs could use a little more playtime in your lives. Like a doggie field day or something.”
He snorted.
Sophie’s car was a sensible sedan, the sort to blend into a lot of other normal, everyday cars. What made it easy to spot was the pile of cute stuffed animals across the back. Not just any stuffed animals—a gathering of cute Japanese and Korean plush characters from her favorite Asian cartoons.
As they approached, Sophie juggled her shopping bag to pull her keys out of her purse and triggered the trunk.
“Need help?” Forte came up alongside the car, scanning the area around the parking lot out of habit.
“No worries.” Sophie lifted the trunk door and carefully placed her shopping bag inside the deep space, leaning in to move things around to where she wanted. “I need to make sure this is arranged so stuff doesn’t shift. It’s delicate!”
He was not going to admit to anyone, ever, how much he was willing to stretch his neck to catch sight of her backside while she was leaning over.
Haydn sniffed the side of the car. The big dog was very engaged, his relaxed attitude changing over to a sharper set of movements. Forte tore his attention from Sophie. Actually, the black dog was very interested in the car.
Forte tuned into the dog’s body language, changing his own to match. He leaned forward a fraction, his balance over the balls of his feet. He kept his limbs loose, ready to respond to the unexpected. It didn’t matter that they were in a sleepy town on the edge of a river in the middle of a peaceful country. It didn’t matter that there shouldn’t be any real danger there.