Dog Crazy

by Meg Donohue

  “Before you go,” I say, “do you have a picture of Billy? I could send it to the animal rescue organizations that I’m connected with and check if anyone has seen him.” I say this casually, like it’s just an idea.

  Anya hesitates. Then she shifts her bag and begins rifling through it. “Here.” She thrusts a photocopied flyer toward me. I’m hoping she’ll sit again, but she just stands there watching me as I study the piece of paper.

  The words BILLY RAVENHURST IS MISSING blare from the top of the flyer in big block letters. And then: $100 REWARD FOR ANY INFORMATION. Below this line is a photograph of a dog leaping through the air, his face turned so that he looks head-on at the camera. The wind is caught in one of his cheeks, endowing him with an elastic, cockeyed grin. I’d been envisioning Billy as a stoic shepherd or a rough-and-tumble pit-bull mix—something to match Anya’s hard-as-nails exterior—but it turns out he is small and scrappy with bristly white hair, mischievous black eyes, and—even when flying through the air—more than a passing resemblance to Albert Einstein.

  I look up from the flyer and smile at Anya. “Are you a photographer?”

  “No. I used to take some photos, but not anymore.” She crosses her arms. “Whatever. They’re just pictures.”

  I set the flyer with Billy’s photograph on the table and tap it with my finger. Anya’s eyes move over it.

  “This doesn’t seem like ‘just a picture’ to me,” I say. “I feel like I know Billy, just from looking at it. It’s wonderful. I’d do anything to have a photo like that of my dog, Toby.”

  Anya looks at me.

  “He died,” I say. “Ninety-nine days ago.” I feel something unspool within me, bouncing out of reach. I haven’t told any of my patients about Toby, and I don’t know why I’m telling Anya. The words just come out.

  When I force myself to look up, Anya’s expression wavers and straightens itself so quickly that I wonder if I imagined the change. But then she’s walking back toward the couch. When she sits down, I’m relieved.

  “My brother Clive thinks I’m dog crazy,” she says.

  “In this office,” I respond, deadpan, “we call it ‘dog normal.’ ”

  Anya’s lip twitches. Is that the beginning of a smile? I sense something shifting between us. The line was a joke, but I was also serious. It’s important that my patients know they aren’t alone in caring deeply for an animal companion. Our dogs see us at our best and at our worst, and love us with unparalleled devotion through it all. We share our lives with them. They know our deepest, darkest secrets, things that sometimes our closest human confidants don’t even know. No one should feel ashamed for caring for another being, for feeling heartbroken when a friend is gone. What is more “normal” than love?

  I add Clive’s name to my notebook and ask Anya if people have responded to the flyer.

  “Yeah,” she says, “but nothing pans out. Henry thinks the reward is too high—it’s pulling liars out of the woodwork.”

  “Why do you think your brother suggested you see me?”

  Anya rolls her eyes. “Suggested? Forced. He said if I didn’t come talk to you he’d tell my grandmother that he’s worried about me—about my mental health. My grandmother is old and sick and the last thing she needs is to get worked up over me. Anyway, I think Henry just feels guilty. He’s moving to Los Angeles next month and he’s trying to tie up all the loose ends before he leaves. If he makes me come see you he can tell himself that he tried to help me.”

  I jot down a note about her grandmother, and another about her brother moving away. “Are you close with Henry?” I ask.

  She shrugs. “I guess.”

  “Why do you think he’s concerned about you?”

  Anya begins biting the nail of her pointer finger, which is when I notice that all of her nails are bitten down to the quick. Some are bloody, others just ragged.

  I ask her if she’s having trouble sleeping and her eyes shoot to mine.

  “Would you be sleeping if your dog went missing?” she asks. “If you just came home from work one day and he wasn’t there?”

  That explains the dark circles. I don’t blame her; sleep hasn’t come easily to me lately either. When I finally drift off in the early hours of the morning, I always hope I’ll see Toby in my dreams. I never do, waking only with an empty feeling, his absence highlighted.

  From the look of Anya’s scarecrow limbs and the hollows below her cheekbones, I’m guessing she isn’t eating much either.

  Instead of answering, I ask, “Is that what happened? You came home and Billy was gone?”

  “Yeah, but he didn’t run away. He would never do that. I walk him without a leash all the time and he never goes more than a few steps away from me.” She starts playing with her coat zipper again.

  “If he didn’t run away, what do you think happened to him?”

  “Someone stole him.” She juts out her chin, challenging me to argue.

  “That’s terrible! Did someone break in? Was there . . . was anything else taken?”

  “No, no.” She looks away, her shoulders slumping. She takes a deep breath, and when she speaks again she sounds exhausted. “I know what you’re thinking. Who would steal an old mutt? Believe me, my brothers have all been sure to tell me how nuts I sound. But nothing else makes sense. Billy wouldn’t run away, so someone must have stolen him. He’s somewhere in the city and I’m going to find him.” She tells me that she’s been walking through the city, looking for her dog, every morning of the last twenty-four days.

  I can’t help but agree with her brothers; who would bother breaking into a house and stealing a dog and nothing else? It doesn’t make any sense. I decide to put this part of her story aside for the moment.

  “Does anyone go with you on these walks?” I ask. It seems like a lonely endeavor. I wonder if she really thinks there’s a chance she’ll find her dog, or if searching for him is a way to stay busy, to keep her mind off the reality that she’ll likely never see him again. People do all sorts of things when they’re grieving—just when I think I’ve heard every coping mechanism in the book, a new one comes to light.

  “Henry came a few times at the beginning, but lately he’s been refusing. My brother Terrence says he’s too busy. And Clive thinks it’s a waste of time. He doesn’t even like dogs.”

  “There’s no accounting for taste.”

  Anya’s lip twitches into that tight, surprised smile again. “Everyone thinks I need to stop looking and accept Billy is gone,” she says. “Like I can just decide to forget about him.” She shrugs. “I don’t care. If I need to do it alone, I’ll do it alone. I’m going to find him.”

  I realize now that Henry Ravenhurst set up this appointment with the hope that I would convince his sister that her dog is dead. He wants me to help Anya move on. But who am I to say Anya won’t find Billy? Years ago, at a veterinarian’s recommendation, I had a microchip placed under Toby’s skin so that he could be identified if I ever lost him. The microchip company still sends me e-mails full of stories of families who have been reunited with their microchipped dogs years after the dogs had run away. In fact, I received one of those e-mails just this morning. These things—these improbable, Disney-esque reunions—actually happen.

  “You’re not alone,” I tell Anya. “I’d like to help you.”

  She looks at me through her curtain of dark, oily hair, and for the first time since she walked through my door I think she might be on the verge of tears. “Yeah?” she asks. Her voice emerges thin and tough, sinewy, threaded with the smallest shimmer of hope.

  My heart aches for her. “Of course. Send me that photo of him and I’ll e-mail it around to all of the rescue organizations I work with.”

  Anya looks so fragile then, twisting one thin leg around the other, one boot knocking against the other, picking at her nails. I realize that she hasn’t mentioned her parents, and I wonder where they are.

  “But I mean, out there, too,” she mumbles, waving one pale hand toward the
door without looking up. “Will you help me look for Billy out there?”

  “Oh.” My throat tightens, the beat of panic quickening in my chest. “I . . . I don’t think I can do that. But let’s set up another time for you to come see me. How about next week? Will you come back so we can talk again?”

  Anya’s face darkens, the smudges below her eyes somehow lengthening. She yanks her bag onto her lap and begins digging through it.

  An anxious feeling curdles inside of me when I realize she’s leaving. In all my years of counseling, I’ve never had a patient walk out before the end of a session. My mind races. Despite Anya’s dirty, bloody, surely bacteria-ridden nails, I have to fight the urge to lean forward and take her hand in mine. If I can’t help someone like Anya—someone clearly devastated by the loss of her dog—what right do I have to pretend any of those diplomas or certificates that hang on my wall mean anything?

  “I can’t do that exactly,” I tell her quickly. “But I really would like to keep talking with you about Billy. I hope you’ll come back to see me again. Or today . . .” I glance at the small clock on the table. “We still have more time. You don’t have to leave.”

  Anya ignores me. She stands and drops a crumpled check onto the table. “Just make sure to tell my brother that I came so he gets off my case.”

  She has already opened the door and is headed up the path by the time I catch up with her. Before I can stop myself, I reach for her arm. The filthy material of her jacket folds between my fingers, Anya’s actual elbow lost somewhere within the large sleeve. She turns. My stomach lurches and I release the cloth, knowing that the warm, slick feel of it will leave a specter of dirt on my fingers long after I’ve scrubbed them clean. I flick out my fingers, frantically rubbing them against my pants and then immediately regretting the instinct—I’ll have to wash them, too, now.

  Anya stares at me with a look of such intense curiosity that I feel my cheeks burn.

  “Please stay—” I begin, but her expression rearranges itself instantly.

  “If you really wanted to help,” she says, swiping angrily at the tears that have risen at last to her eyes, “you’d help me find Billy. I’m not wasting any more time here.”

  And then she’s striding up the stone path toward the gate.

  Oh, for Chrissakes. Maybe I should let her go, but I can’t. I follow her. Those spindly legs of hers have a motor on them, and by the time I reach the gate, it’s swinging shut again. I yank it open and step through.

  Panic sinks into my chest like a hook. The black ribbon of road in front of me wavers; the sidewalk tilts. You’re fine, I tell myself. You’re fine. You’re fine. But I’m not. I lurch back and feel my spine smack against the gatepost. I start to count my breath; it’s one of my mother’s old tricks, a calming technique, and now it’s mine, too.

  In, out: one.

  In, out: two.

  In, out: three.

  “Wait!” I call to Anya. My voice is husky and raw and the gust of wind that rushes up the hill toward me swallows it easily. My heart is pounding—not just from fear, but from frustration, anger, and shame, too.

  Anya is far down the slant of sidewalk now, her edges softening as she recedes into the dingy swirl of fog. If she hears me, she makes no sign of it, and there is nothing I can do but watch her go.

  Chapter 4

  “The positive effect of dogs on people afflicted with agoraphobia never ceases to impress me,” says Dr. Kirin Himura. He goes on to explain that a dog eases the transition between inside and outside for people prone to panic in public or crowded places; the dog remains familiar in every environment, a reassuring presence, a constant companion, a buoy in a sea of unknown. Some dogs, Dr. Himura notes, are even attuned to the earliest swells of panic in their human charge, sensing the nonverbal distress cues such as increased heart rate or trembling hands that often precede an episode. When these dogs sense an attack building there are little tricks they might do—either through training or simply nature—to defuse the situation. Sometimes the dog will swiftly guide his human companion away from whatever is triggering the symptoms of panic. Other times, a dog need only press his nose into the hand of the person who has suddenly found herself on the edge of panic’s chasm, and it’s enough to calm her.

  I find the article in an online journal called Alternative Therapy. After Anya Ravenhurst left, I’d scrubbed my hands under hot water and swallowed a fistful of vitamins and probiotics, all the while a single refrain running on loop through my thoughts:

  If I can’t help my patients, who am I?

  I knew I was being too hard on myself—what therapist can be expected to chase after an unwilling patient, or help her search for her missing dog?—but I couldn’t shake the feeling of having failed Anya. I kept thinking of the sad, exhausted air of desperation that she tried so hard to mask with a stony expression and flat voice. It must have been nearly impossible for her to ask me to help her, but she’d done it, and I’d said no. Perhaps more than any other patient I’d ever seen, Anya needed me, and I’d turned her away. My anxiety wasn’t just affecting my own life now, it was affecting my patients’ lives, too. I couldn’t bear the person I was becoming. What I needed was a plan, a course of attack. I’d crawled into bed with my laptop and a pile of books and manuals from my graduate school days, and now, hours later, I’m still researching treatment options.

  I know that exposure therapy, or desensitization, is the recommended course of treatment for panic disorders, but until I came across the Alternative Therapy article, I’d never studied the use of dogs for this type of therapy. I do a few more Internet searches, and what I find—article after article about dogs that help people with mental health issues—fascinates me. The twenty-three-year-old soldier returning from Iraq with post-traumatic stress disorder who stopped self-medicating with alcohol thanks to the companionship of a terrier mutt named Abe. The yellow Labrador who helped the teenage girl reestablish a sense of security and overcome the debilitating anxiety she experienced after her uncle sexually abused her. The trained and untrained dogs of all shapes and sizes that have helped agoraphobics leave their homes for the first time in months, years, sometimes decades. The articles are heartwarming and beautiful and inspiring, and every so often something gets caught in my eye and I have to stop reading.

  I wonder if my mother knows about the positive benefits of dogs for people dealing with agoraphobia. She has always encouraged my love of dogs, and I remember her often talking about how good dogs were for children, how they instilled a sense of responsibility and routine and provided love and companionship. I’m an only child and I always thought she considered a dog an easy substitute for a sibling, but now I wonder if there was more to it than that.

  Because, as far as I know, my mother has not left home without the aid of heavy-duty antianxiety medication in twenty-five years. Even with an artillery of pills, she rarely ventures outside. I don’t know when her panic attacks began, but I suspect some of her more compulsive behaviors—her extreme concern with cleanliness, for one, and her connected fear of germs—were around long before the panic swelled to the point where she couldn’t bring herself to leave home. She hardly talks about her childhood, but when she does her stories have an edge of darkness; the only thing she ever told me about my maternal grandmother, who died before I was born, is that she had cheap taste in liquor and men.

  If my mother’s biggest fear was stepping outside, her second biggest fear seemed to be that she would pass her fears on to me. I remember from a young age the feeling of my mother watching me, searching for signs that I’d inherited her anxiety. Even so, most days she was a lot of fun to be around. At home, where she was comfortable, she was full of life, smart and funny, a quick-witted observation about the FedEx man or the Chinese-food delivery guy or her therapist—“the Holy Trinity,” as she called these frequent visitors—always on the tip of her tongue. I loved listening to her, and I became quite good at it, unconsciously learning how to interpret conversatio
nal pauses, fleeting facial expressions, and even body language, and how to use this knowledge to encourage her to continue (in graduate school, I would learn that I’d been engaged in an intuitive version of “active listening” for most of my life).

  Somewhere along the way, my mom seemed to decide that creating a nonstop schedule for me was the best way to ward off any inclination I might have had to spend too much time at home, to ensure that I never sensed the shadows that she saw beyond our door, and, I realize now, to keep herself from putting an undue burden on me for companionship. A babysitter or a classmate’s parent or sometimes my father shuttled me around to all of the activities my mother lined up for me—dance classes and piano lessons and tutoring and even a volunteer gig walking dogs for a local organization that supported pet owners living with HIV. I think my mom thought that if she created a solid routine for me, if I always knew what to expect on any given day of the week, I would feel confident and safe. She wanted the act of walking out of our home to come to me as easily, as inconsequentially, as breathing.

  As a result, I grew to love and thrive on routine. Even when I went to college, I enjoyed living close to my parents, walking the city blocks I knew so well, shopping in the same stores I’d frequented for years. In my twenties, I think my mother saw her mistake and started telling me I should move away, see the world, or at least the country. I’ll never forget the look of relief on her face when I told her that I was moving to San Francisco. She would be devastated to learn how I’ve been living for the last three months, and I’m determined she’ll never know.