Hair of the Dog by Gordon Carroll (reading strategies book TXT) 📗

We went to the grassy area and I gave him the track command. With most dogs, I would have put them through a little ritual of putting them in a down and running a leash under their arm, but Max isn’t big on ritual or leashes so I just gave him the command and let him go.

Tracking is the art of searching out a path taken by a person from footstep to footstep. The dog is searching a combination of human scent and ground disturbance. People drop skin cells with their smell on them every second of the day. Some of these cells get caught up in clothing, others blow away on the wind and some drop straight down to the ground. Ground disturbance is what happens when a person moves across a surface. The more disturbed the surface, the easier and longer-lasting the track. For instance, when a heavy man, say like Jerome, walks across a thick lawn, he will break blades of grass, releasing chlorophyll (hence the alkali trail), disturb dirt and dust, knock over small rocks and crush bugs and microbes, all leaving a miniature path of destruction that a dog’s sensitive nose can sniff out. Dirt’s a close second, not as good as grass, but decent. Cement or asphalt not so much. That’s called Hard Surface Tracking in the industry and it takes more training and a dedicated pooch to really master it. Max is that kind of pooch. If someone walked over it, Max can and will follow them. Humidity, wind and temperature all play a part in making it easier or harder, but with Max, it really doesn’t matter. If he’s hunting you, he will find you.

Max cast around for about fifteen seconds before locating the track and taking off like a rocket, leaving me to run along behind him. I still hadn’t recovered from my last case, not to mention the beating I took from Jerome, but he had to quarter a bit and keep his nose close to the ground, so I was able to keep up. He went across the grassy expanse, through a screen of bushes, across a street, along a sidewalk, up to the corner of a house, around to the backyard, over a fence, through an adjacent backyard, through a gate to another corner of a house, across the front yard, down to a sidewalk, back up to the corner of the house, over to another yard, down another sidewalk, back up to some bushes, through yards for about two blocks, past a long fenced area to another group of houses and finally up to a church parking lot where I saw a large figure crammed under a dashboard, legs and butt hanging out the door and little Keisha’s face looking at me through the back window, just like she had been the first time he drove away from me.

That wasn’t about to happen again.

When the Alpha first let him out of the car and put him on the grass, Max caught the thousands of swirling scents that had been disturbed by the passing feet. It took him only a short time to locate the starting point and lock in on the track. Once on, he never lost it. The prey was heavy, the man and the little girl he had smelled at the house where he’d fought and defeated his prey. But now the man and the girl were his prey and he would find them. Max would not hurt the girl, she was no threat or challenge… but the man… the man he would hurt.

Max worked fast, the disturbance along the path heavy and easy to follow. Even along the hard surfaces there was dust and left over scent from the grass’s chlorophyll and bug juice and a hundred different odors that were transferred from the man’s shoes to the cement and asphalt. All so new and so easy to follow.

And then he caught their scent… not the ground disturbance… but them… their spore… their individual smells blowing to him on the slight breeze and he left the track to follow the currents of the air like a shark scenting blood in the ocean, honing in with amazing speed and accuracy until he had them in sight… there just ahead. He saw the man, half-in and half-out of the car, and he launched like the torpedo that genetics and training had made him to be.

“Daddy!” cried Clair from the backseat. “It’s that man and his doggie!

Jerome pushed himself out from under the dash, groping for the gun in his waistband as he turned toward the back of the car. Something fast and strong hit him in the forearm and stomach, latching on with crushing force. He slammed into the door, his mind screaming pain as massive teeth crushed down on the meat and bone of his wrist. He tried to pull the gun free, but found it impossible to get past the pain and terror that suddenly enveloped him at the understanding that he was being eaten alive.

My gun was in my hand and just coming in line with Jerome’s center mass line when Max hit him full force. Jerome’s body struck the door so hard I thought it would break it free and then he was on his back. Max was ripping his wrist away from his body and the gun Jerome held went flying through the air before clattering to the asphalt.

Max made a sort of bubbling growl way low in his throat, sounding like a cross between a werewolf and a demon… only scarier. And he wrenched his head back and forth so fast I was afraid he would come away with the man’s hand in his mouth.

I kept my gun on Jerome.

Jerome’s battle instincts kicked in and he grabbed Max’s right hind leg with his free hand and tried to snap it in two. But the dog was fast and released his hold on