Free Cadaver Dog by Doug Goodman

has been registered. I’ve been doing this a long time in this area, with a lot of people. This has never come up before.”
    “Maybe,” Director Summers said, “But we are government officials. If you can’t work your dog on lead, you must forfeit the test.”
    Angie considered walking out on them. If Dr. Saracen hadn’t been there, she would have. Instead, she kneeled down next to Murder and said, “This is a big one, Murder. You’ve never worked on lead or with a suit or in a place this big and with this many sights and sounds and people, but it’s the card we’ve been dealt. You ready to find a zombie? Are you, boy? Are you? Find buzz.”
    Murder dropped his chicken and ran forward. As she reached down to pick up the chicken, Murder got to the end of the thirty-meter leash and was jerked back. He looked to Angie, wondering why he was being corrected.
    “Sorry, Murder. Keep going.” He moved to one side of the hallway, then sprinted to the other.
    “He’s casting for a scent,” she told her evaluators, who followed her throughout the exam. “Looking for the wasp’s trail.”
    A young couple was walking out of the mall, hand-in-hand. Seeing the dog on lead and with the vest, they took a wide path to stay away from the working dog.
    “Is someone lost?” the young man asked Steve.
    “It’s just an exercise for the dog. That’s all.”
    Murder started heading for the food court. Angie noticed Mark giving Steve a furtive smile. She thought of the handler’s mantra ‘trust your dog,’ and didn’t call him back, though her stomach turned cold. It wasn’t that long ago that Murder was chasing cereal bars through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. He ran across the tiled floor and entered the food court. Immediately his nose went up and his tail wagged.
    “Get to work,” she told him. Murder didn’t even look to her. He jumped up on a table next to some people who had been watching him and reached for their calzone.
    “Ah!” she corrected and pulled so hard on the lead that Murder nearly fell off the table. His paws scurried for a footing, then he jumped down. He came back to her and wagged his tail.
    “Come on. Let’s get you out of here,” she said. Frustration took the express elevator to Angie’s head. Not only was her dog off-scent, but he was displaying the negative habits she had worked so hard to remove. Angie ignored the big ass smile sprawled over the director’s chin and escorted Murder away from the food court. She reminded herself that a frustrated handler produced frustrated dogs. Her nerves had probably set off Murder’s bad habits. She stopped, took a few deep breaths, then set him up in front of a clothing store and said, “Find buzz.”
    Murder put his nose to the ground, then headed back across the hall to a women’s clothing store. He crossed in front of a woman pushing a stroller. The woman was dressed in yoga pants and a hoodie.
    “Hey, dogs aren’t allowed in the mall,” the woman said to Angie.
    “It’s just an exercise,” Steve responded.
    “Exercise him somewhere else. I’m doing my walking here. Who gave you the authority to do an exercise here anyways? Some people are allergic to dogs. You can’t just go into a mall area without notifying everyone first.”
    Murder went to sniff the baby in the stroller.
    “Get away from my baby,” she said.
    “I’m sorry. Murder, here.” She jerked the lead, but Murder went around the far side of the woman, wrapping her up in his nylon cord.
    “Excuse me!” the woman said, much angrier.
    Angie dropped her end of the rope and walked Murder around the other side. He nosed the stroller. Angie came around, and the woman huffed as she continued her walk.
    Angie sat down for a moment. Everything was going wrong. This ‘test’ had jumped Murder from level one to one hundred in distractions.
    “This mall is nothing but distractions,” Angie complained.
    The testers and Dr. Saracen said nothing. When she looked up, the