She looked at Bridges Colson, at his golden, and smiled. The dog was named Rascal, and the dog’s name was an apt one. Rascal couldn’t sit still, couldn’t help causing mayhem, tug-of-war with his leash, roughhousing with other dogs and with Bridges, chewing on everything he could get his teeth around. He was a good dog, and funny, the class clown. He was pretty well the dog Mason had had in mind when he’d signed up for the program.

Linda Petrie resumed her patrol. “For others,” she said, looking Mason’s way, “it’s going to require a little more work.”

Bridges Colson looked over too. “Bait,” he said, smirking. “Might as well save the kibble and put that runt out of her misery now. Be the only humane option, my opinion.”

A few of the other prisoners laughed, and Mason joined in. Figured Bridges was probably right, couldn’t see this dog serving anyone, anywhere. He didn’t laugh as loud as he had on day one, though; the bait shit was starting to get old.

Mason was still working on coaxing Lucy out of her crate and into the great beyond. She was still shivering plenty when she saw him, still terrified, but Mason liked to think she wasn’t so much scared of him in particular; she just wanted him to know she was scared of just about everything else in the world.

She hadn’t pissed on him again, anyway; he’d learned his lesson. And she took treats from him now, haltingly, nibbled on them from his fingers, then retreated, then came back, cautious, to nibble again. She’d let him scratch behind her ears, even leaned in a little when he found the good spot. But then someone had slammed a door somewhere, and she’d spooked and bolted into her crate again.

“She’s got to learn to trust you,” Linda Petrie told him. “You’re going to have to be patient, and show her that you’re kind.” She looked at him, appraising. “Can you be kind?”

Mason didn’t quite know how to respond. Kindness wasn’t exactly a prized quality inside the Chippewa pen. Kindness meant soft, and soft meant you were a pussy, and pussies didn’t survive long inside. He’d spent fourteen years trying to erase anything in his person that might be construed as vulnerability. Kindness wasn’t really in his vocabulary anymore.

But the trainer was still watching him, studying him. Like she was looking, hard, for some hope for this dog’s future, and she wasn’t seeing it in the piece-of-shit convict in front of her.

Something about the way she looked at him made Mason angry. Like she’d written him off already, like everyone else in his damn life had, inside and out. Like Bridges Colson had written off the dog without even knowing her. Shit.