“Sorry, boys. I’ll be back for you in a minute.” His pace didn’t slow, and he let his momentum carry him right into the main building. He passed the common kitchen area and snagged an apple out of the basket on the counter, thankful for Sophie’s thoughtfulness. Sophie might be a childhood friend of Forte’s, but she’d adopted Rojas and David Cruz as big brothers without hesitation. It’d been awkward when they’d first arrived a few years ago, but Sophie hadn’t been deterred by the kind of walls he and Cruz had built around themselves. She walked right through them, over them, whatever.
When Brandon Forte had established Hope’s Crossing Kennels, he’d built it as a new proving ground. It was a place for men like Rojas to start over. The support people like Forte and Sophie provided just by being themselves…it was a good feeling to be surrounded by it.
“Rojas? I’m up at the front.” Forte’s voice echoed down the hallway, and Rojas headed for the main entryway. Forte, Cruz, and Rojas usually had breakfast together before dawn, but Rojas had missed the meal after staying up most of the night watching over Boom. His daughter was currently still tucked in and he was here, catching up with the day.
The waiting area was empty, but it’d be crawling with people and dogs within the next few minutes. Rojas surveyed the reception area and grabbed a broom from its hiding place behind the front desk. The place was clean, but this was a dog training and kennels facility. There was always random fur to be swept up. “Remind me again why you decided to offer obedience classes for troublesome twos and threes.”
They already had a steady class schedule for the general public, teaching basic and advanced obedience classes. Adding these troubleshooting classes for dogs, and their owners, who’d been through obedience and still hadn’t quite worked things out, took more energy out of every trainer at the kennels.
Forte pushed away from the reception desk. “Because we want the community to feel safer with us here, not afraid of our dogs or us. The more people who have classes with us, the better. It’s beneficial all around.”
Good point. A fair amount of PR could only be helpful. Rojas had endured his share of crap experiences when he’d been fresh back from deployment, before he and Boom had moved here. Times when he’d still been in culture shock from coming home and people made things worse by reacting out of fear. He still hated going off the property into busy places like grocery stores or malls; too much going on and too many triggers for his overreactive reflexes. But now, when he did go out, people recognized him. Some even had smiles for him, though mostly they welcomed Boom. And that was more important.
If the community was afraid of them and the dogs they trained, Boom wouldn’t have those positive experiences.
“Besides,” Forte continued, “anyone can go to a local pet store for basic obedience and puppy training classes. We’ve got the skill sets to handle the older two-year-olds, give or take a few months, and make behavioral corrections. Maybe prevent a few dogs with potential from landing in shelters.”
Rojas grunted. To be honest, usually it was more about training the owner than it was about training the dog. “Retraining isn’t my favorite pastime.”
“Sometimes it’s worth it.” Forte set a pile of clipboards on the front of the reception desk. “When you’re done with sweeping, can you find some pens?”
Rojas finished up, got rid of the gathered dust and fur, and stowed the broom. Then he started going through drawers on a search mission for the damned pens. “The occasional older rescue with bad habits or a tricky history is worth the effort.”
Actually, he enjoyed working with those. It was time well spent, helping the owner willing to give such dogs another chance.
He liked to think they all deserved another chance from time to time.
“Yeah, you’ve got a soft spot for those.” The clipboards fell with a clatter. Forte cursed. “There’s got to be a better way to do this.”
“We need an admin.” It wasn’t the first time Rojas had made the suggestion.
“Yeah, yeah. Cruz mentioned it.”
Rojas snorted. “And Sophie and Lyn, too. Lyn’s reputation is enough to bring more people in on top of what we’ve already got, so it’s only going to get harder to manage.”
Lyn Jones was a civilian dog trainer with a solid consulting business. She’d come in four or five months earlier on consult to work with Cruz and Atlas, a high-profile military working dog. Both Cruz and Atlas had had it bad for Miss Jones, and she’d developed a strong partnership with Cruz. With her less structured, more psychological approach to working with dogs, they were seeing more civilians come to them for dog training.