The Possibility Dogs

by Susannah Charleson

  Sam: Allows the hold of his paw, lies panting slightly nervously, his eyes far away. Sam has withdrawn from us without being able to leave. He submits, but there’s old, old uncertainty in his expression. We quickly release him. Sam is Reluctant.

  Smokey: Alarmed by the capture of his paw, Smokey struggles, withdraws the paw, and runs away, barking from under a bed. Smokey is Unwilling.

  Misty: Wiggles, licks the hand, withdraws the paw, snitzes, and puts her paw on the hand for another round. Like Jack, Misty loves grab-toes. She is all joy at the attention, and she is Enthusiastic. When a firmer grip is held on her paw, she allows it, bending to give the evaluator a single lick.

  Testing the Retrieve

  How interested is the dog in working with a human? Though there are other ways to assess this with grown dogs, a quick and common test is to toss a crumpled wad of paper or a ball and see what the dog does. Does the dog chase, pick up the thing, and run away? Chase, stand over it, and guard? Chase, bring it back? Chase, let it go without bringing it back? Lose interest quickly—or not show any interest at all?

  I’m interested in the results of this with my crew. Poms are not typically considered retrievers, but they are a trainable, playful breed. There is herding and performance in their history. How well does a ball toss test dogs that prefer other games? We may need to develop measures of canine collaboration that don’t involve retrieving. I toss a ball, and if that gets no response, I toss a wad of paper.

  Mr. Sprits’l: Barks at the ball, warily approaches the wad of paper, sniffs it with a suspicious eye in my direction, and trots off. Sprits’l is also Unwilling.

  Fo’c’sle Jack: Ignores the ball, goes after the wad of paper, sniffs to see if it’s food, looks balefully at me when it is not, and stomps away. On the common standard for this test, Jack is ultimately Unwilling. He is not interested in retrieving.

  Sam: Scurries after the ball on his aged, arthritic legs, captures it with his paws but does not attempt to retrieve it. Sam looks back at me, panting, then flops down beside the ball in a bemused rather than guarding posture. I think his energy has failed him. There’s nothing possessive about his posture. After a moment, he gets up and returns to me, a little crestfallen, as if somehow the game failed or he failed the game. Sam is Responsive, nonetheless.

  Smokey: Springs barking after the ball, picks it up, and returns it, but more than that—he glows. Smokey drops it easily at my feet and retrieves as many times as I throw the ball, tail up and happier each time than the one before. He spins and circles after each retrieve, thrilled. Smokey is joyfully Enthusiastic.

  Misty: Yaps happily at the ball but does not attempt to chase it on those wobbly back legs. The ball simply moves too fast. She scampers for the tossed wad of paper and returns it, dropping it at my feet, grinning up for a second toss, which she also returns. Who knew Misty would also fetch? High gamesmanship from a senior, disabled Pomeranian. Misty is also Enthusiastic.

  Testing Stability

  How do the dogs react to an unexpected stimulus, such as a dropped object or a sharp noise? From working dogs—even from pet dogs trying to pass the Canine Good Citizen test—we look for awareness and intelligent interest without overreaction; wariness, perhaps, but without marked fear. Here the scale is also about the degree of response, from a dog that rushes and barks at the stimulus to a dog that runs away and hides. A nonreactive dog usually listens and locates the object, perhaps also moving toward it to investigate. For our needs, we like a dog that obviously notes the stimulus and responds, recovering quickly, if startled, or inspecting curiously.

  When the dog isn’t looking, we drop a large book nearby. This scale ranges from Afraid to Provoked to Wary to Curious to Responsive to Uninterested.

  Mr. Sprits’l: Jumps, turns and barks happily at the book, then comes forward to sniff it. Mr. Sprits’l, though opinionated and reactive in many ways, gets a solid stability mark for his caution combined with curiosity. He is Wary and then Curious.

  Fo’c’sle Jack: Turns and briefly looks at the object. While Jack often scurries around big dogs or people who might step on him, a dropped book is an object of only mild concern. Jack isn’t sound sensitive to this kind of stimulus. He is Responsive.

  Sam: Turns and looks at the object without moving. Looks at me mildly, like, Well, that was different. Sam is Responsive.

  Smokey: Skitters, turns, and barks in alarm. He certainly backs off, but he doesn’t mind telling off the book a little. Reactive Smokey is Provoked.

  Misty: Twitches a bit at the sound, approaches and looks at the object, then looks at me, panting and grinning. Misty is Curious.

  Thinking about seizures, panic attacks, hyperventilation, and the like, I am interested to see how the dogs respond to an unusual human stimulus. Some dogs are easily frightened by human behaviors they don’t understand. A friend the dogs know fairly well agrees to be a volunteer victim. In our backyard, without warning, she falls to the ground in the presence of each dog, one at a time.

  Mr. Sprits’l: Barks, runs over to the victim, inspects, barks again. Sprits’l is Provoked by the fall, but he’s also Curious. I’m interested in the fact that he remains beside her, spinning and barking, rather than retreating and barking from farther away.

  Fo’c’sle Jack: Jack gives me the response I had expected from Mr. Sprits’l. He stays where he stands, barks a few times from that position, then turns away. Human on the ground? Humans are strange. So be it. Jack’s distant bark is Provoked, but he is a verbal Pomeranian, inclined to comment at least once about many things. Jack is mostly Responsive and then Uninterested. Would a treat in my friend’s hand have made a difference? Oh, you bet.

  Sam: Toddles carefully over to the fallen friend, sniffs her thoughtfully, then sits beside her. He is Curious. He is also the first dog to choose to sit close to the human on the ground.

  Smokey: Barks in alarm, approaches halfway, barks more, approaches cautiously to about three feet. Comes no closer. Smokey is Provoked and Afraid.

  Misty: Head perks, tilts. She scampers over to sniff, then flops down beside the person. She is not alarmed, but, like Sam, she seems to feel it a duty to stay nearby. Misty is also Curious.

  The trial evaluations have been interesting. Using this casual hybrid of tests, I find Misty alone shines in the areas suitable for service. Some of the other Poms excel in this category or that one, but it is Misty who possesses the interest, engagement, and stability we look for in a service candidate. Any dog can surprise you, Paula wrote. I’ve always thought Misty was a sweetheart, overshadowed in her former home by her adopted sibling Smokey, but even I would not have predicted how well she would do. Misty is a good example of a dog with right-on aptitudes and a troubled body. She is a motivated little lap dog, age ten, with severely impaired back legs and breathing issues. Though I am looking for a demonstration-dog candidate, Misty’s age, disabilities, and current health make even demonstration service work unrealistic. But her connection to humans is strong. Even senior animals can work as therapy dogs in hospitals and schools, and with her outgoing nature, Misty would love this. I see Misty’s joy in human contact with new eyes, reminded that too often we let a frail dog’s disability define her, overlooking all that is offered by an eager, affectionate heart.

  9

  SYMPATICO—AFFINITY—A BOND, the handler tells me. In his opinion, Gene says, great aptitude tests won’t add up to a good psych dog partnership if there isn’t a strong connection between the human and the dog. Gene is a handler whose canine partner is about to retire, a handler whose condition was so markedly improved beside his service dog that when we speak, he does not think he will need to find another.

  A lot of people talk about “the bond.” Not everyone agrees about its meaning. “Is the bond about love?” I ask, needing his definition. “In your opinion, do you have to love the dog first?”

  Gene says no. Affinity happens when you like who the dog is in his bones and something about you in your bones the dog
likes too. Affinity happens when you’d choose to be together voluntarily. It can happen quickly or take a little longer. He’s not sure what makes up this attraction, but he is sure it’s one of the reasons why you see so many different kinds of dogs in psychiatric service. Big, small, energetic, sedate, earnest, soulful, or slightly clownish. Look at the pictures on the web forums, he tells me. There’s a whole dog world of service out there. Not everyone connects to the same dog.

  Gene firmly believes that the psych dog handler should have a voice in the choosing of the partner. He puzzles a little over the right way to say it, but the gist of it is that mental conditions evolve and symptoms change, and you and your dog have to adapt to that. The dog ages and changes too. Gene wonders—how can the two of you adapt to changes if you don’t really like your dog or if your dog doesn’t really like you?

  I bring up the “arranged marriage” that began my working partnership with search dog Puzzle and the strong connection that developed after a very rocky start. She was chosen for me by her breeder and my search team’s head trainer, the choice based on two sets of test scores and the breeder’s observations of Puzzle from her birth. Affinity, love, trust—all those good things are there now, but they certainly weren’t at the beginning. Would I have chosen her if I’d met the whole litter? Probably, based on her test results, even though she didn’t seem to much like me. Her aptitude scores were high. If she’d been given a choice, I have no doubt that in a lineup of handlers, I would have been last on Puzzle’s list. But it did work out, somehow. There are plenty of service dog organizations that place trained dogs with partners the animals have never met, and the famous bond builds (or, in occasional cases, doesn’t) as each pair begins to train for their lives together. Affinity grows over time.

  With psychiatric assistance dogs, does a dog have to like you (in dog terms) to help you? I wonder. Do you have to like a dog to be helped? What kind of bond must exist in that particular service relationship? There are strong voices on both sides of these debates.

  Gene and I talk about the news stories where some random dog made a heroic move for a stranger—alerting to danger, protecting from harm, warming the fallen in the middle of a snowstorm—a one-time rescue of brilliance and compassion. We agree that dogs have the ability to surprise us, but Gene goes on to insist that the daily saving works only when a psych dog and his partner have a relationship built on something more than tasks and treats.

  I ask him how long it took to choose his dog. Gene smiles, shakes his head, and says he was all kinds of lucky. His dog chose him.

  Gene had always been a worrier. That’s what his mother said. From the time he was little, he was sensitive, got knotted up by things that didn’t bother the other kids. When his brothers were fascinated by the death throes of a bird that flew into the glass of their patio door, four-year-old Gene cried, imagining the pain, however brief, of the bird’s broken neck. Gene was a quiet kid with an internal life his family didn’t quite understand. He read early and willfully, staying up long past bedtime to read in the glow of a streetlamp outside the window. He was spanked for that several times. He screwed up his eyesight.

  Gene remembers himself struggling through school mostly untouched by education, unconnected with his peers. He can recall a pretty young student teacher who took a special interest when he was a high-school freshman. She had read Cipher in the Snow, she mentioned one day. Had he read it? she wondered. He hadn’t, but he did, and afterward he got the sense that her encouragement wasn’t due to any real interest she had in who he was but rather to her determination not to be the teacher in the story, who had nothing to say at a boy outcast’s funeral. In a teenage culture where despising was very much the thing, Gene let her off the hook. He didn’t despise her for this. He didn’t despise anyone for anything. He mostly just read, standing with a book in the crossroads of his mother’s menopause and his father’s business troubles, his brothers’ unfettered holiday through girls, jobs, and alcohol.

  Gene remembers his weeping mother bowed over his oldest brother, whose stomach had had to be pumped after a night with friends at the lake. He’d been hauled into the hospital comatose. When he woke a day later, sunken-eyed and vague, the best his brother had in him to say was only “Shit-I’m-sorry-Mom.” Then he high-fived the next-eldest when his mother turned away. “Fuckin’ messed up,” the two had whispered to each other, grinning. Gene didn’t despise his brothers, or his mother for being blind to their faults, or his father for always being at the store. He just worried that those brothers would fucking mess up enough that they wouldn’t be able to take over the store the way they were expected to—they were the social guys, the front-of-store guys—and that the family business would then fold, which was possible, and that his parents would die in poverty because Gene—definitely not a front-of-store guy—wasn’t enough to hold it all together.

  He kept quiet.

  Gene’s marriage, at twenty-two, had surprised all of them. How the...how...Jesus H. . . . , his brothers had seemed to say to each other. How could a guy like Gene get a girl like Shannon, a woman whose bookishness by no means got in the way of a body they would stop a train for, gladly. Gene himself was never sure how it happened, how a shared addiction to Lord of the Rings translated to an engagement, a marriage, and a baby (in that order, but it was a close call; this is what Arwen and Aragorn could do to you). Love, he was sure of. Shannon, he was not. Her remoteness in many ways matched his own.

  She was a magical thinker. He was her project, someone told him later.

  Was he shocked when Shannon left? Was he surprised she had stayed so long? What happened (or didn’t) between them? He would never know. Shannon left gently, with a kiss before work and a letter, weary and absolute, on the table afterward. He knew her well enough not to argue. No part of her note was romantic; nothing in the hard angles of her printing said Come after me. Fight for me. Prove me wrong. They had settled things with the detachment of the drugged or the drowned.

  Shannon left cleanly. Left not just him but their son too. At thirty-three, Gene found himself a single father to a son who was unlike either of his parents. He was open. Grounded. A rock-solid kid. He was Beren on the birth certificate, because they’d been pretty damn fanciful in those days, and Ben in practice, because later they thought they ought to give the little guy a break.

  Gene was thirty-eight when he had his heart attack. No obvious cause: the stress of his recent days no different than the stress of any other days of his life he could remember. No warning; no numbness, no chest pain, nothing really until that moment on the highway, taking Ben to his busboy job, when suddenly Gene’s heart seized and his veins caught fire. “Oh,” he said, like a sob, then he doubled over reflexively, head to the steering wheel. He vaguely remembers the hard smack of it against his cheek. What he doesn’t remember is veering into the next lane, the car that hit him, or the car he hit. He doesn’t remember the rending of metal or the shattering of glass, the smell of hot rubber as the tires of all three cars slid wildly across the asphalt. He doesn’t remember the screams of the injured, including his boy, his rock-solid boy shattered in a baker’s dozen places.

  Traumatic amnesia could have been a kind of grace, but in the absence of memory, Gene the worrier imagined all of it. Over and over. He held himself responsible. He refused to be absolved. “I could have killed someone,” he insisted to his boy more than a year after Ben’s last surgeries. “I could have killed you.”

  Gene realizes now that this too could have ended them. Not the accident, but the aftermath, when frail, disabled Ben was determined to push forward, and Gene was stuck in the hamster wheel of his own despair. Bedridden at first, then wheelchair-bound, Ben was determined to get on his feet sooner rather than later. Gene was at his best when caring for his son, but in all other ways, he withdrew. He could never quite get over the sensation that every heartbeat would be his last. He gave up driving. He couldn’t focus enough to work, gripping the phone, the desk, the elevator
doors, expecting his heart to fail. After a whole series of surgeons and doctors and psychiatrists treated him, Gene was declared disabled.

  Neither of them would have imagined this was a good time to bring in a pet, but two doctors and an occupational therapist recommended a service dog for Ben, and Merlin’s entry would turn both their lives around.

  Merlin had known his own hard knocks. One of eight puppies, he was the sole survivor when he and his littermates were put in a garbage bag and dumped over the side of a low-water bridge in Connecticut. A rat terrier, straining on the end of her leash during a morning walk, found the bag of puppies. The terrier’s owner had nearly pulled the dog away, suspecting old food or every kind of grossness, but when her little dog yipped and skipped, she gritted her teeth and opened the bag. And there in the middle was Merlin, an inkblot of puppy with a broken tail who’d been protected from the fall by his brothers and sisters, and there was the good woman with her insistent terrier who couldn’t keep the pup due to housing restrictions. She tucked him into her windbreaker and snuck him home via the alley and a back door.