The Adventures of Tooten and Ter: A Nose for Trouble

By Chris McCloskey

Terrance O'Connell is still teaching Tooten, a small service dog, new tricks. When fate closed the door on Tooten getting into Service Dog Academy, it opened another door to Tooten becoming a Canine Ambassador in the Helping Paws Progam. It also allowed Tooten and Ter to continue helping people find missing items. Captain Leroy Gonzalez, Ter's foster dad, warns Ter about his occasional stunning lapses of solid judgment but Ter still manages to get involved in more mysteries with his seeing "breaks in the pattern." Tooten is a willing accomplice. Together they solve mysteries in Boulder, New York, Seattle and Chicago.

• Language: English
• Publisher: odianneh5680att.net
• Release date: May 28, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311803009

Chris McCloskey

Chris McCloskey lives in Broomfield Colorado, with her husband. She stays busy balancing her writing for children, teaching ESL at Front Range Community College, and raising service puppies for Guide Dogs for the Blind.

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A Nose for Trouble

By

Chris McCloskey

Published by OnStage Publishing

Copyright 2015

Smashwords edition

Smashwords edition, License Notes

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Chapter 1 - THE AMBASSADOR OF BOULDER

Just over a year ago, my life changed and I came to live with Captain Leroy Gonzalez. It seems like just yesterday, but sometimes it feels like a lifetime.

You see, when I came here as a foster kid, I had nothing--no expectations, no ambitions, and on one else had any for me either. I thought I was a free man.

You see, I grew up in northeast Denver, a half hour and a million miles away from Boulder, Colorado. Me and my mom lived in a neighborhood of little old houses. I knew everybody on the block. I never had a dad, and Mom didn’t want to talk about him. But she was close to her little brother, Raoul, so it’s like I had a Dad--an immature, self-centered one. Our family had always been involved in petty crime. My grandparents ran the numbers on the horses and other sports. They took bets, figured out the point spreads and odds, collected a small fee, and distributed the winnings. That’s why I’m so good at math. I can figure any percentages in my head.

Uncle Raoul took it a step farther pedaling stolen electronics, but he was never near the deal when the sting went down. However, my mom got caught delivering the components and went to jail for six months. Raoul went underground for a brief time, and at the tender age of thirteen, I went to foster care, to the home of Captain Leroy Gonzalez, to be exact. He was a baggy man with more gray hair than brown hair. I thought this was the worst thing that could happen to me. He came off as some clueless know-it-all. He knew all the rules, but he didn’t know anything about life on the streets.

I did. I loved the streets. Most people look at a crowd and see a lot of bodies moving in the same direction like cattle. Not me. I see the lady checking for her purse, the kid looking for his mom, and the punk who just bent down to tie his shoelaces--he doesn’t even have shoelaces, and if he does, he couldn’t care less if they’re tied or not. I see the five-dollar extra charge, and the five-dollar short change. These things show up for me like they’re dipped in glow-paint. I love the streets.

I used to daydream about the perfect crime--the perfect scam, but I don’t any more. After Mom got stuck holding the bag, everything changed. The aspects of my life that had always seemed great, didn’t look great any more like the big TV in front of the window with bars--curly, decorative bars, but bars. I had the best bike in the neighborhood, but when I asked if I could get cleats for the baseball try-outs, Mom didn’t have any money. Sometimes we had steak to grill, but more often dinner was Taco chips and squeeze cheese.

So, when I came to live with Cap at the end of 7th grade, I tried really hard to reject everything he did and everything he stood for. However, when he started talking about lifting glove prints and identifying the soil stuck in the cracks of old pots, I couldn’t help it--my interest tuned toward it like radar. I still have to keep Cap on a short know-it-all leash, but he’d be surprised to know how much I like being seen with him. He treats me like a smart kid with good ideas, except for the occasional stunning lapse of solid judgment.

My mom got out of jail a few months ago. While she was in, she finally got her diabetes under control. Although she feels better, she’s still sick and she’s finally decided that Cap might be good for me. Anyway, Cap said he’d be glad to keep me longer, and I cut the attitude temporarily, and gave him a solid, Yeah, okay.

And then there was the dog, Tooten--a small, black, curly-haired dog that looked as foggy as the old man. He came with the name Maurice. I’m not kidding. His head seemed to get stuck, cocked to the left or cocked to the right, two-ten...Tooten. I renamed him. We never had a dog at Mom’s house. Some of my friends had dogs, and all they did was bark, lick, and poop. At first, I taunted Tooten. I’d leave him to wander around lost, and he’d beat me home. I’d accidentally spill his food all over the floor, and he’d patiently lick up each bit. I’d throw the ball over the fence and an hour later open the gate--he’d take off and come back covered with stickers with the ball in his mouth. That’s when Cap said I wasn’t responsible enough to take care of him. But when I went to summer day camp without him, I missed him. He always found a way to do what I asked him to do, and he never held a grudge. He won me over. Now, nobody messes with Tooten.

Cap had been training him to go to the Service Dog academy to help a handicapped person. We had taught him everything--stop, go, sit, down, come, go to bed, do your business. He was perfect, but the problem was I had taught him some extra skills like follow the scent, crawl on your belly, come the back way, and search the house. I thought these were important skills that every service dog could use, but then during the test, he noticed a red track-and-field flag flutter in the breeze, and he dashed the perimeter of the gym, leaped on a four-foot pile of mats, snapped the flag out of mid-air and returned to me the back way. Impressive? The judges called this evidence of distractibility and obsession.

He failed. We all failed.

We went home with our dreams smashed--until the story of how he failed the test made the front page of the local paper, and the calls started coming in.

First, the animal shelter called and offered Tooten a place as Canine Ambassador in their Helping Paws program. Unlike the Service Dog program, these dogs are trained for a variety of clients and they looked for different skills. The best part is Tooten could stay with us, and he could still wear a service-dog vest, allowing him to accompany us almost everywhere. However, we still had to attend training sessions and keep up with his lessons because folks were counting on him and he took his duties very seriously.

Next, regular people started calling. Can Tooten find some long-lost photographs? Find the owner of a valuable notebook left on the bus? Or find the culprit who’s marking on research materials in the library? Sounds like it’s right up our alley, huh? Well, it’s different fixing problems other people think are important rather than fixing problems for yourself.

When Tooten and I first began, we felt lost, but we didn’t know we had everything. Now, people expect us to have a plan, a strategy, and a goal. But it’s just like it was at the beginning--all we really have is a wet nose and a smart mouth. I liked being street-wise, but more and more, I was thinking about being a forensic detective, like on TV.

This summer should be interesting.

Chapter 2 - THE BRIDGE CLUB

Mrs. Bellis, an old acquaintance of Cap’s, was the first to take advantage of Tooten’s failure to go to the Service Dog Academy. The morning after the front-page picture of Tooten blowing his Service Dog test, she’d called bright and early to offer us a job. I felt comfortable accepting the challenge of finding some lost photos in her house. This was a clean cut, one-hour, no-problem job.

We went to her house on the corner of 20th and Pine. The whole scene reminded me of our first gig to find Mrs. Woods’ stolen puppy. In the living room, Mrs. B. handed me some letters her father had written to her mother around the same time the pictures were taken almost 70 years ago. I held them down for Tooten to sniff. As I listened to some boring stories from Mrs. B., Tooten snuck behind the couch and sniffed around the living room, dining room, kitchen, and the bathroom. When I felt him return and settle against my ankle, I stepped over to the china cabinet, crouched down and called Tooten over to get another sniff of the drawer where Mrs. B. had previously kept the pictures. She said she must have moved the pictures up to the attic with the other photo albums, rather than leaving them in the drawer with the old newspapers. I asked if we could look in the drawer. She pulled it open and I flipped through several yellowed editions of the paper from decades ago.

Would you have put the pictures in a different drawer? I asked as I tugged on the top drawer that was stuck. Could they be in here?

"Oh, heavens, no. That’s where I