The Possibility Dogs

by Susannah Charleson

  Merlin’s escape was so miraculous that, for a little while, he was bottle-raised in secret, passed from neighbor to neighbor, always one jump ahead of the more self-righteous members of the homeowners’ association. He should have been named Hush, they said it to him so much; he would probably have answered to that. He got bigger and louder and became a much harder secret to keep. Everyone asked everywhere, trying to find a home for him, and things were looking grim indeed until a breeder who raised puppies for service offered to add him to her litter of golden retriever pups that were about the same age. With any luck, the golden mama, a kindly soul, would take him as one of her own.

  When the time came for the golden litter to go off to puppy raisers, Merlin’s future again was uncertain. Nothing was known of his background. He’d had the benefit of early rescue, good nutrition, socialization, and vet care, but there was a whole host of unanswered questions. As just one more black dog needing a home, Merlin didn’t have a whole lot of options. With eyebrows raised and fingers crossed, the breeder sent Merlin off to a service puppy raiser to see just what kind of dog he would be.

  Calm and friendly, an evaluator wrote about him at four months. No resource guarding. Soft-mouthed, but generous. Curious. Open to commands. A little passive. Slow: not as quick to learn as his peers. Every word mattered. The lovability of the dog is not the issue, and a service evaluator’s job is straightforward. Does the dog show promise or not? Her notes shaped Merlin’s future, and those last two items, passive and slow, weren’t winners. Unlike the program puppies who came from breeders, Merlin had no safety net if he washed out. What was it that caused her to evaluate him a second time—some deep likability or the faint spark of something bright in a dog otherwise considered a little dim?

  It was Merlin’s mouth, his obvious pleasure at picking up objects and his willingness to surrender what he picked up, that carried the day. For a time he lived and worked with an occupational therapist, spending his hours learning new commands and interacting with her clients, helping them regain their own dexterity. The dog was something of a goof, a class clown. His once-broken tail creaked when he wagged it, to the amusement of all. Merlin could have lived out his days in this good life and service, but then the therapist met Ben, and Ben’s father, Gene, and worked Merlin with them both. For whatever reason, the dog lit up in their presence. He was quicker, smarter, more funny. And working with Merlin, the kid grew a little more confident. The sad-sack father laughed. After a consultation with Ben’s doctors and much soul-searching on the part of the therapist, Merlin went to a new home.

  The first thing they had to do was imagine life without thumbs. Merlin didn’t have any, which forced Ben and Gene to reframe the household. Doorknobs were replaced with handles; the refrigerator was fitted with a tug rope. Slick things like the phone got temporary bands of masking tape as Merlin learned how to carry them. It was interesting, says Gene, to think like a dog, to imagine having only blunt paws and a mouth. Merlin followed Gene from room to room, companionably inspecting changes, adapting to his expanded duties. If the dog was dim, Gene says, it was probably a good thing. They were all feeling their way at this. The daily lessons gave them all something useful to do.

  As for Merlin, he was much like his boy in temperament. He capered for approval. He really seemed to enjoy the service tasks Ben required of him. The dog padded slowly beside Ben’s wheelchair. He slept by the chair or by Ben’s bed, ready to pick up or retrieve anything Ben seemed to need. He was calm in the presence of Ben’s pain, which could be severe, and Ben’s depression, which often settled over him in the night after his pain had been most terrible.

  Gene remembers the brilliant day Ben moved from wheelchair to walker. It was a physical therapy day like any other. None of them had expected it. Though Ben’s arm strength had not yet been proven, all of a sudden he looked up at his father (not the therapist, his father) and said, “I’d like to try. Will you help me try?” And Gene and the therapist scrambled for a walker, and his boy was sitting in the wheelchair, biting his lip, and then he was forward, and then he was up.

  When he stood up, Merlin, who’d been standing beside the chair, sat down.

  “Good boy!” Gene shouted. Ben flushed. Merlin panted a grin.

  You think you know what a miracle is the moment you see your son born, Gene says, you think you know the fullest measure of love, but then you see your down boy get up and make a shuffle that is almost a step, and born—as good as born is—is just a rehearsal.

  It was the kind of triumph made for Hollywood. If only life moved at the speed of a movie montage, an ellipses of months of steady progress. Cue the music: Show Ben standing, walking, pushing open a door. Making a sandwich! Taking a shower on his own! More music, and the boy goes back to school, gets a job, kisses a girl. He no longer stares up from the bed with his teeth clenched, wondering if what is will ever change to something better. Gene wished that kind of upbeat passage for his boy. In truth, Ben’s healing was a harder journey. For every day or two of gained ability, he had a day of almost equal losses. Patient Merlin continued to serve beside him, the “dim” dog constantly at the periphery, head up and creaky tail waving gently, always on call, some days needed and some days not.

  When was it that Merlin’s job description changed? Gene doesn’t really remember. Ben noticed it first. As Ben improved and became more self-sufficient, as he regained balance and the ability to carry things on his own, Merlin moved from his sleep spot beside Ben’s bed to a new position in the doorway. At first, Ben thought the dog was choosing to watch over Ben’s new mobility. From the door, Merlin could follow his progress from bedroom to bathroom and back again. He could also look down the hallway with an eye to Gene.

  Now Ben wonders if Merlin sensed a shift in need. Ben had grown stronger. Apart from his diligent caregiving, Gene was much the same. He still had panic attacks. He hadn’t driven a car since the accident. As Ben’s steps grew more sure, Gene’s continued as though he were treading on glass. He shook sometimes like an old, old man.

  Then there was the day they had an argument, Ben and Gene, about Ben following his doctors’ orders and Gene pretty much avoiding the ones his own doctors gave, and how could Gene expect his heart to get stronger without trying, without exercise? “What will you do when I’m gone?” Ben shouted, and Gene felt the ground shift. He was thrilled his boy had hope enough to talk of leaving. He was scared shitless about what would happen if Ben left.

  Gene pushed through the front door to prove to his son that, by God, he did exercise, and he stood there at the edge of the known world without knowing where to go or how to get there. He felt his heart clench and unclench like a fist. He glanced down at the bottom of the stoop and Merlin was beside him, looking up.

  Generalized anxiety disorder. When doctors gave a name to the weight of worry he had carried as long as he could remember, Gene was somehow relieved. A thing with a name was concrete. It could be dissected and understood. (Generalized was a little problematic, though. Didn’t that mean that anything could become a source of anxiety? Anything? How do you control anything? How do you control everything? When Gene realized he was worrying about the name of his condition, he remembers laughing. He says that may have saved him.) He had no clue how to walk out of the maze he’d been lost in most of his life. There was always this sense of doom, this condition of eclipse. He could not be sure if the anxiety caused the heart attack or was a harbinger of it. Meds he had and meds he took, and they probably made a difference. But in solid, undemanding, un-fanciful Merlin, Gene began to make his way free.

  On-duty, Merlin was used to moving at the speed of Ben’s wheelchair. Neighborhood walks with Gene were at much the same pace. One block and back again. Two. Ben’s physical therapist helped Gene teach Merlin to lean into Gene’s knees when he went shaky, a Brace command, precise as a dance step between them. Step, step, wobble, “Merlin, Brace” (“Good boy,” ear scratch). Mix it up when you practice, a dog trainer told Gene. Make sure
you aren’t teaching him that after every two steps you wobble. And so man and dog practiced at home, with Ben in the recliner playing video games, peering up from the controller and offering advice between rounds of Gears of War.

  Gene and Merlin began to walk twice a day. Aware that his own rigid thinking could slow down his progress, Gene tried to vary the route and the length of the walk each time. Merlin knew what Brace meant, and he came to recognize unsteadiness. Gene didn’t always have to speak the command. The dog learned to anticipate it by feeling Gene’s first wobbling step after half a dozen sure ones. He sensed the change of gait, the new tension on the lead, and Gene’s hesitation. Merlin would lean against Gene’s trembling leg, holding there until Gene’s “Okay” released them both. Not such a dim dog, Gene says about Merlin. After every successful Brace, Gene would cup his hand over the dog’s forehead, rub his thumb affectionately along his muzzle.

  It was the not-dim dog who began to intercede at the onset of Gene’s panic episodes. They began after the heart attack, after the car accident, and to Gene, they seem to come with the surprise of an assault—and they come even on good days, when things are going well. A tightness in his chest, his heart clenches and skips, he can’t breathe. Gene says he reaches out and even solid walls feel fuzzy and insubstantial. Though Gene tried, unsuccessfully, to hide them from his son, the attacks seemed like they were never going away. They were still frequent and unpredictable enough that they prevented him from keeping a job, profound enough that they could drop him to the floor. Merlin found him there once, Gene crouching on his knees and hands in a desperate attempt to keep the bathroom linoleum from rocking. Curious but unafraid, the dog washed Gene’s face with his tongue, then settled beside him for the duration. Gene rode the attack out with his nose to the linoleum and his arm around the dog. Merlin did not move.

  Gene isn’t sure what Merlin noticed—the hyperventilation; the shaky balance; a change of scent, perhaps, from his rush of adrenaline and cold sweat—but it didn’t take long before Merlin was there at the first sign of an attack, standing by expectantly as they progressed, washing Gene’s face if he fell to his knees. The dog began to arrive earlier and earlier in the attack, sometimes just at the moment Gene felt the first sink of spirits that meant it was all starting again.

  Once, Ben, coming around the corner on crutches, caught them. Gene was gasping on the couch, hands digging into the upholstery, bent almost double toward the dog, whose tail gently waved, whose nose snuffled inquiringly across his face.

  “Dad?” Ben said. Ben knew about his father’s attacks. Gene thinks he knew about most of the episodes Gene tried to hide. “Dad, do I call 911?”

  Gene shook his head, which made the room spin more—suede cloth and black-and-gold wallpaper wheeling—and just about the time he thought he’d fall off the couch, he wrapped his arms around the dog.

  “Merlin,” he whispered, and the dog held very still as he had done before, even though this was outside his formal training and apart from any command he had ever learned. Gene rested his cheek against Merlin’s spine and closed his eyes, feeling the steady thrum of the dog’s pulse and his slow, even respiration. Curious as all this probably was to the dog, Merlin wasn’t alarmed. Gene held on, inhaling when Merlin inhaled, exhaling as the dog did. He remembers that first effort to stay upright by absorbing the dog’s calm certainty.

  Gene did not fall to the floor. He doesn’t know exactly how long he held there, how long his son, standing on his good leg and his bad one and his crutches, watched his father pitch that private battle in the company of the dog. But the episode marked a turning point. Merlin could brace Gene’s unsteadiness and loosen the hold of Gene’s panic attacks, and as Ben needed him less, Gene owned up to needing him more. That day marked a wordless agreement, and Merlin became Gene’s dog.

  Not that simple, Gene’s therapist said to him. He would not get off that easily. She agreed that Merlin was as useful for Gene as he once was for Ben. She was also in the business of urging Gene to be proactive in his own healing. The therapist had a dog herself, but she was new to the idea of psych service dogs. Nonetheless, she’d read up, and she was firm with Gene. At its best, this partnership is a process. The guy you are now is not the guy you’ll be tomorrow. The dog you have now will change too.

  She was ahead of all Gene’s arguments. No matter that Merlin was already an old hand at this. He was highly obedient and a fine assistant in public. No matter that he already knew how to brace Gene standing and stabilize him during panic attacks. Gene owed it to the dog and to himself to train for the ongoing alliance. She wanted them to take some kind of class. The therapist wasn’t particular. Merlin could learn to jump through hoops or walk on his back legs or bark “Jingle Bells” for all she cared, but she believed that better things would come if they had a common goal and learned more about each other to achieve it. She gave him that push, and she didn’t let it drop the next week when Gene tried to sidestep the issue.

  Gene wasn’t fooled. She was urging him out in public with his dog, and he was going to have to walk, or ride a bus, or drive to get there.

  Gene looked up classes on the Internet and was amazed—amazed!—at how many things he could do with his dog. Obedience classes he expected (and he was briefly tempted to go into the beginner classes with Merlin vestless, a ringer dog who aced all the commands and made them both look brilliant). There were trick classes using clickers like castanets, and at the little tick-tock sound, dogs could learn old tricks like roll over or new ones like high-five. There were nose-work classes, tracking classes, and agility classes. There were urban-dog classes where Gene could teach Merlin to skateboard.

  Gene learned that in some cities, it got a little more fantastic. There were etiquette classes for dog tea paw-ties and sewing classes for dog costumes and ceremony classes for dog weddings. Dog weddings? Owners and dogs could do “doga”—or yoga—together. There were classes with animal communicators where they could learn to communicate psychically. (One night, for fun, he and Ben sat in the living room and thought hard of bacon, wondering if Merlin would give either one of them a glance. “Okaaaay. Major fail,” said Ben. Merlin’s tail thumped at the sound of his voice.) There was a whole dog culture out there Gene had never imagined existed. He could not find their place in it.

  “Look to the dog,” a friend in his counseling group advised. What would give Merlin the greatest pleasure?

  It was a good question. Gene and Ben had long been determined that Merlin should have a dog life of his own. This hadn’t always been easy. Merlin came to them already dutiful, easygoing, and amiable. Born to partner, he was a whither-thou-goest dog from the start, maybe a little less hey-hey-heya than one would expect from a Lab. He liked a ball well enough, but after a few retrieves he was done with it. Gene and Ben tried other toys Gene’s mother found at garage sales, pre-chewed stuffed ducks and squirrels that Merlin shook a little and discarded. The first time Gene threw the dog a Frisbee, Merlin raised his eyebrows, and the disc hit him in the head.

  “Dude,” said Ben, doubtfully.

  “Not his game,” Gene replied.

  But what was?

  It took an elderly neighbor with a tan poodle in a tutu for them to discover it. The little vacant English lady with her littler dog was a visitor to the house next door, and the first time she let Pookie out, Merlin was also having an outing in his own backyard. New to the neighborhood she might have been, but Pookie took umbrage and rushed the fence straightaway in great oingy-poingy bounds, savaging the big dog from yards away. My turf!(boing)My turf! (boing) Mine! (boing) Mine! (boing) Mine! She was a tiny thing but outraged, a dedicated fence fighter, rushing up and down the chain link in her pink tulle and spangles like stars, yapping furiously at the black Lab twenty times her weight.

  From the back porch, the old lady scolded Pookie in a wavering voice. From his back deck, Gene watched. Merlin could eat that little dog whole, without chewing. Gene had seen other dogs escalate hostilities du
ring a fence fight. But Merlin seemed unprovoked. At first puzzled, then in some way amused, Merlin seemed to enjoy Pookie, tilting his head back and forth as if he weren’t quite sure what to make of her, then wagging cheerfully and ambling along the fence line in sync with the poodle, huffing into the fence and revving her up again if she slowed, his easy lope to her full gallop. He didn’t growl, and he didn’t bark; his hackles didn’t raise. Creak, creak, snap, wagged his broken tail. Pookie was some kinda something. She was relentless. He was charmed.

  How long could they keep this up? Gene and Ben watched one afternoon as Merlin paced the fence line with the poodle until they were both tired. He flopped down before the fence, nonchalantly chewing a paw, while Pookie grumbled, nose through the links, pawing at the ground with silver toenails. She’d lost some of her venom; she had barked so much she was hoarse. In time, she extended her dime-sized nose to exchange a gentle sniff with him.

  When the young woman of the house called the poodle inside, Pookie prissed away, curly poodle backside blooming out from under the tutu. Merlin watched her go with a besotted expression. The little dog disappeared, the door banged shut, and the big dog’s face fell. He put his head on his paws and sighed. On later outings, he would gravitate to the same spot again. He was loyal to their meeting place, waiting for the poodle to come out and smack-talk him some more.

  Merlin liked playing with little dogs.

  A cautious trip to the dog park confirmed it. The first time they took him, Merlin ignored the big-dog arena with its fellow retrievers and shepherds and spotty mixes. He keened instead toward the fenced-off playground for the littlest dogs. Though there was a size limit for the small-dog compound, Merlin’s service vest made a good enough impression that he won entrance to the world of the Lilliputians. Gene pulled off the vest, and Merlin was in heaven. The little-dog compound was full of puppies and grown dogs that came no higher than his elbows. He wagged and play-bowed, petitioning to be chased.