Keula watches the exchange between the two humans and flicks his ears back at the refusal of a harness. Never in his memory has one of the boss’s handcrafted dog harnesses ever been turned down. In fact he remembers more then one set of humans acting as if about to fight each other before one human would give the master those strange pieces of paper while the other human walked off smelling angry. As in fact few sled teams in the area do not have either harnesses or sleds that have not seen the masters hand in crafting. Of course its all the same to him Kaula thinks if a human is foolish enough to turn down things that will make his pack stronger. But having heard what Bryan said Keula has to struggle to keep himself from growling a challenge to the other malamute. How dare he cause the master trouble!
“My mate? What’s wrong?” Amber asks nosing Keula then trying to nibble on one of his ears while still watching the other team. Are they a rival team that she should growl at?
Its then that Keula discovers just how far Amber has come in her transformation. As it becomes all too clear that human talking is meaningless to her, while canine is a birth language to her ears.
“Yes Keula what’s going on? Will we get to race those other dogs?” The rest of the team asks him. He smiles at seeing even Becky and Iiumai acting as part of the pack and looking towards him as leader. Will they act as one and help rip Bryan to pieces if he starts a fight with that other team he wonders finding his tail wag at the very thought.
“Hush you dogs!” The musher yells as if knowing very well what Keula is thinking and not about to risk his prized stud. The dogs quickly go silent and as one lay down in the snow appearing very well trained to human eyes.
“Wow! Wish I was as good with dogs as you are.” Harry tells the other musher. In truth he knows this man is all but famous in the area for the very intelligent puppies that have came out of his kennel over the years. He looks over at the stray dog Bryan once more starting to question the wisdom of listening to a talking dog. Could having harness help him beat his sister he wonders.
“Well if you’re not interested.... guess I could interest your sister in this harness. Been needing to buy a few supplies in town. What with one of my bitches going to whelp her litter soon.” He tells Harry knowing most humans would kill to have a puppy from his kennel. The sound of another team of dogs coming down the trail gets Harry’s dogs to barking. But Keula and his team only look toward their musher as if expecting him to call out the command to start another run.
Harry looks to the other muster’s team of seemly very well trained dogs then his own starting to have doubts in his own skill as a musher. Maybe having one of the famous harnesses will help he thinks to himself.