Years ago, along with her husband, Nana had taught them to do pretty much everything. Together, they'd bred and trained hunting dogs, service dogs for the blind, drug-sniffing dogs for the police, security dogs for home protection. Now that he was gone, she did those things only occasionally. Not because she didn't know what to do; she'd always handled most of the training anyway. But to train a dog for home protection took fourteen months, and given the fact that Nana could fall in love with a squirrel in less than three seconds, it always broke her heart to have to give up the dog when the training was completed. Without Grandpa around to say, "We've already sold him, so we don't have a choice," Nana had found it easier to simply fold that part of the business.
Instead, these days Nana ran a thriving obedience school. People would drop off their dogs for a couple of weeks-doggie boot camp, she called it-and Nana would teach them how to sit, lie down, stay, come, and heel. They were simple, uncomplicated commands that nearly every dog could master quickly. Usually, somewhere between fifteen and twenty-five dogs cycled through every two weeks, and each one needed roughly twenty minutes of training per day. Any more than that, and the dogs would lose interest. It wasn't so bad when there were fifteen, but boarding twenty-five made for long days, considering each dog also needed to be walked. And that didn't factor in all the feeding, kennel maintenance, phone calls, dealing with clients, and paperwork. For most of the summer, Beth had been working twelve or thirteen hours a day.