The Possibility Dogs

by Susannah Charleson

  “Go ahead,” encouraged the foster lady.

  The dog first politely acknowledged Merion’s therapist, who sat closest, and then Merion, who was visibly shaking when she stretched out her hand. The woman of the house called her a Belgian Tervuren, maybe mixed with something else.

  “Hello, Belgian Tervuren,” Merion said, or tried to say, the words like a mouthful of fuzzy marbles. She could hear her voice wobble. She was ashamed of her trembling hands but didn’t withdraw them, forcing honesty out of herself in front of a stranger and the dog, who sniffed her outstretched palms carefully, then touch-touch-touch-nosed down to her raw fingertips. Merion wonders if the dog could have initially smelled her fear, her sense of inadequacy.

  When Merion reached out to stroke the dog, she sat immediately. Startled by the movement, Merion withdrew her hand.

  “She’s supposed to sit for petting,” said the foster.

  “Wonderful,” said Merion, trying again. The dog held her Sit and submitted patiently to the caress, gazing up at Merion with intelligent, kindly eyes. She was magnificent, and Merion was humbled and scared. A dog, for God’s sake, but she was in awe.

  The dog was from a military family that had had to leave her when they went overseas. A quiet dog. A good dog with kids and other animals because the family had everything—dogs, cats, fish, turtles even. Merion wondered what went on in a dog’s heart with that kind of goodbye. The foster lady looked Merion in the eye and said she understood this would be Merion’s first dog. Merion might be relieved to know the dog was housebroken. Merion was.

  The dog seemed gently fascinated by the leather band of her wristwatch.

  The foster lady said: “Housebroken or not, she needs activity and routine exercise, and we liked that she might learn a job to be with you every day. Do you like to walk?”

  “I do like to walk. I walk a lot.”

  Merion’s therapist smiled at that.

  “Her name is Annalise,” said the foster lady, “but the family called her Annie.”

  The dog’s ears perked; she flashed a glance over her shoulder at the foster lady. Was that a call to come? She looked curious and torn.

  “Annie,” said Merion, leaning toward the dog from where she sat. “Annie!”

  Annie looked back, eyebrows raised and ears cupping to the sound of Merion’s voice. She opened her mouth to flash out what seemed like a smile. Huh! she panted. Merion bowed forward where she sat, and Annie lifted her nose to Merion’s shaved scalp, huffed a kiss across it. Merion says she laughed at the sensation, somewhere between a benediction and a prank. It was her first laugh in a long time. She was in over her head, and she liked it.

  Foster lady wasn’t kidding. This dog loved to walk. Annie had been home only hours, but already her bowels had sent them both outside with pointed urgency, multiple times. Ever the big planner and thinking to spare the yard, Merion had bought dog waste bags in bulk. She’d also mapped out a walk route that terminated in a park trash bin. In these best-laid plans, her fantasy dog would conveniently evacuate just steps away from the bin (perhaps behind it, for modesty’s sake), and the majority of the walk would be an idyllic ramble through Merion’s aging neighborhood, the overgrown wildflower gardens tilting their blooms obligingly to them both.

  But damn. Not this dog, that day.

  Merion desperately wanted to have things in control, but she swallowed her pride to call the foster lady six hours later. Annie didn’t seem sick, just restless and urgent and mysterious. Was she unhappy? Pining? Was a third home in the course of a year too much?

  The foster lady believed Annie could be both excited over the new surroundings and pining for the old.

  It was a new thought to Merion, that the dog might be excited about all of this too. Happily, Merion hoped. Could a dog already like her that much?

  The foster lady suggested Merion take her on walks, feed her simply, give her time. If she wasn’t better in twenty-four hours, contact a vet.

  Merion hung up, uneasily reassured. It was time for bed, and she was beyond tired enough to go there, but she thought maybe Annie needed to be close to the door that first night, and she thought maybe she needed to be close to Annie. Merion sat in the big chair that was once her husband’s, a saggy, outdated plaid thing that had never been hers. It had been empty since he left her, not sacred, not a shrine, no matter what her daughters thought of her keeping the chair he had died in. Now Merion sat in the hollow her husband had left, propping her feet on the ottoman, just beyond the indents his own feet had made. He had been shorter. Legs, he had called her, with such affection. God, she missed that.

  Annie settled alongside the chair. The dog’s posture was alert, her ears poised. Merion says Annie must have looked like a bat when she was a puppy. She could catch anything with those ears. She could catch everything.

  “So here we all are,” Merion said to the dog. She picked up the TV remote. It was a foreign object, rarely used.

  TV on.

  TV off.

  Cable on.

  TV off.

  TV on.

  Bip, bip, bip—she pressed random buttons. Bert hadn’t watched much television until that last year. Merion remembers the lonely sound of his worst hours in this chair, the flash fragments of his channel-surfing that merged CNN with HBO with Discovery and Nick at Nite, a mosaic of half-told stories to distract from the terrible end of his own. Now she was at it. Late-night television—not so much a wasteland as a yard sale. Bip. Bip. Bip. Annie’s head tilted with every change onscreen. Choose something, Merion. She rested her hands in her lap and looked at the dog. Her dog. They would stay together all night in the intersection of lamplight and shadow, fall asleep watching reruns of Everybody Loves Raymond. Annie would finally rest. Merion would forget to set the clock.

  That weekend brought interviews with three dog trainers. Merion and Annie traveled to meet the first one. Annie loaded easily into the back seat of the car. She was patient with Merion’s awkward fumbling with her seat-belt harness. With her great collie-like ruff of fur and regal demeanor, the dog reminded Merion a bit of some elegant Hollywood star at a fitting for the Oscars. Annie lifted a foreleg graciously to accommodate a strap, giving Merion’s knuckle a little kiss in passing. Merion stepped back and studied the dog in the back seat of her car. Annie looked secure enough and safe. She was calm—even, Merion thought, a little subdued. Was this the dog’s genuine nature, or was this the dog expecting another displacement?

  The first dog trainer was a retired police officer. He had a kennel and a training facility just outside the city limits—a wide ranch house with red shutters beneath a gracious sweep of old trees. Tidy bushes trimmed square. As she pulled into the driveway, Merion could see something like a paddock near cinder-block-and-chainlink kennels deep in the back. The man was prompt, out the front door already wearing sunglasses and walking down the sidewalk as she rolled to a stop. When she got out of the car, he nodded politely but stood where he was with his hands on his hips, watching in a posture that felt, to her, vaguely confrontational.

  Or maybe, she says now, she was just touchy.

  Merion paused uncertainly.

  “Get out the dog,” he shouted from fifteen yards away. “I want to see how you handle her.”

  Merion moved to the back seat of the Sebring, where Annie waited without struggle, lifting her nose to the new environment as Merion released her harness. Merion took up the lead, and Annie lightly jumped from the car. The dog stepped forward toward the trainer and then paused, turning to look at Merion in question.

  “Okay!” said the trainer—overloud, in Merion’s opinion—and clapped his hands for attention. “First thing. Dog doesn’t get out of the car until you tell her to. Tell her. She shouldn’t just assume. Second thing. Dog doesn’t move from her place outside the car until you tell her to. Dog already has way too much control here.”

  Merion nodded. Annie seemed to feel the tension on the lead and sat.

  The trainer called: “So
what’re you going to do?”

  “You mean in the future?”

  “I mean now.”

  Was that sarcasm she was hearing? Merion wondered.

  “Dogs are smart. You’ve got to be the boss. Right here. Right now. Are you cut out to be the boss?”

  “You want me to give the dog a series of commands and see her do them.”

  “Exactly.”

  He was smirking, the $130-an-hour son of a bitch.

  Merion took a deep breath. “Annie,” she said quietly, “load up.” And with that she gestured the dog into the car. Annie leaped up gracefully. A tug of the seat-belt harness over her head and a snap of two clasps and Annie was secure again. Merion shut the back door.

  “Fine,” said the trainer with another double clap. “Let’s start over.”

  “Let’s not,” said Merion. And she was in the car with her head turned toward Annie, backing down the gravel curve of driveway. Merion says now that maybe it was just semantics, and maybe they just got off on the wrong foot with the guy, but the thought of opening herself up to him, the thought of a life riding roughshod over this gentle, wistful creature, made Merion feel sick.

  Twelve minutes wasted, plus drive time there and back again.

  The second trainer stood them up. No e-mail. No phone call. No nothing. Merion felt a little frustrated and a little relieved. What to do with a lost hour meant to teach them what to do? She remembered an ice cream shop that had a special K9 Cone that supposedly tasted like hamburger. Disgusting, but maybe Annie would like it. She and Annie drove there, and Annie puzzled over the chilly steak-colored concoction, nosing and lapping idly at it, while Merion had a mango milk shake and tried to muster up a few Oms from her yoga days. Then Annie looked up. She had a dollop of ice cream across her muzzle, round and red, very like a clown nose. Her tail swished idly, and she leaned in a little when Merion reached forward to wipe it clean.

  “Hello, missy,” Merion said, rubbing her ears, and the swish accelerated. So small a thing to people who’ve known dogs all their lives—the kiss and the wag—but to Merion, it was a funny, friendly little revelation. Still is, she says. Still is.

  The next day, the third prospective trainer kept them waiting. Merion and Annie got out of the car outside the facility, a former hair studio, all pink stucco and terra-cotta tile. Theirs was the only car in the lot. Meticulous Merion checked—the address was correct. BLOWOUTS and HI-LITES and FADES, Merion read on the exterior wall, and UNISEX, the words still visible beneath a hasty coat of paint. She peeked in the window, cupping her hands around her eyes, and could see the faint shadow of a counter, linoleum tile beneath. If she hadn’t known better, she would have sworn this place was vacant. There was nothing dog school about it. There was nothing even vaguely professional. She could see antacid-pink walls, the orange traffic cones spaced evenly over the linoleum. Four orange cones on one side. Three on the other. An obstacle course? Merion wondered. What was this place?

  The dog-training facility was part of a duplex shared with a little vet clinic. Merion recalls heading back to the car to get her cell phone when an elderly man with a long silver ponytail wobbled out of the clinic, his arms full of a droopy, Toto-looking dog whose dazed head wobbled too. Once upon a time, Merion wouldn’t have given the pair a second glance, but now she was a dog owner, and she felt proud and somehow connected to a fellow dog owner. The man struggled to open the door of his car, where the dog’s carrier sat, and Merion moved with Annie to help him.

  “Sweet little thing,” she said to the gentleman, opening the car door.

  The old man grinned. “For now. He’s still pretty juiced up.”

  “Has he been sick?”

  “No. Nut job.”

  What does that mean? Merion wondered.

  “Little bastard’s been humping everything.”

  “Ah.”

  “I warned him: snip, snip, and you’re done for. But did he listen? No.”

  “Well.”

  The sun was warm through the cool air. The old man put the dog in his carrier and turned his face to the sun, leaning against the side of his car. “Crazy dog’s so damn determined. Tries to give it, if you’ll pardon my French, to other dogs. To cats. Even house shoes.” He sighed, in no hurry to leave. “Humped the sister-in-law’s foot the other day,” he added dreamily. “Never saw a woman get out of a chair so fast.”

  In the back seat, the terrier strained absently toward his nether parts.

  “Shame the surgery was scheduled so soon.” The old man grinned. He leaned over conspiratorially. “If he’d kept his balls longer, we might have got her completely out of the house.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Merion and Annie were still waiting. Annie sniffed snail trails across the sidewalk. Merion was pacing a little from the afternoon’s shattered schedule. She got a text:SO SORRY ON MY WAY SOONEST KELLY, or something like that. Merion considered responding DON’T BOTHER, because, castrated-dog theater aside, this was getting ridiculous. But she thought, What if Kelly is driving now? She didn’t want any part of the accident texting might cause. Merion had already fired one trainer and been stood up by another, and she didn’t have anyone else lined up. Before she knew it, she’d paced three circuits of the parking lot, Annie loping easily beside her.

  A battered car wheeled into the parking lot. “What a beautiful dog,” the girl exclaimed through the open window. She was a rail-thin college-age kid with dark, bobbed hair and a flowered headband, and she burst out of the car in a tumble of dog toys and fast-food cups. She rushed to Merion and Annie with her hand extended. “I’m Kelly. I’m so sorry I’m late. But here we are. Here we are.” She made a proud gesture to the battered little building. “Welcome! Welcome! Welcome!”

  “Small but efficient,” Kelly said of her establishment. She had to throw a hip against the sticking door to open it. She gave Merion and Annie the five-minute grand tour. Just inside, the battered black counter represented reception; a central room had bright pink walls and gray linoleum, and a row of peeling red dinette chairs was the training area. Catching Merion’s curious glance at the orange traffic cones, Kelly said they had both a training and a safety function. Clients and their dogs could work on heeling skills around them. Also—she pointed out, lifting up a cone—they covered up the holes where the hairdressing chairs once were. “Hope to get those patched soon, so we can move the cones wherever we want.” In the back, storage room to the left, bathroom to the right, and below the door marked EXIT, a play and potty area for the dogs. Kelly was particularly proud of this last. Her ex-fiancé had put up the chain link before they broke up (“Goes to show you something good comes out of everything”). Her brother brought in the pea gravel (“My family’s behind me one hundred percent”). What they really needed next was a sign. Kelly looked forward to the sign. She made a round gesture with her hands. She had an idea what she wanted: a professional logo (“for when we franchise”) and backlit (“for all the potential customers driving past at night”).

  When they went back inside, it was late. The fading light was unkind, making the place look even more derelict. Merion sensed a falter in Kelly’s good cheer. Merion had been trying to resist, but she glanced at her watch. This was the point where they should be finding out more about each other, and a more experienced person in a well-appointed facility would have flashed a checklist and a schedule book while reeling off a confident, professional spiel. But Kelly’s bravado wavered. She leaned forward where she sat, her eyes on Annie, who was lying beside Merion’s chair.

  She said simply, “I like it that Annie chooses to be next to you.”

  What now? Merion wondered. The balance had shifted between them. Merion said, “Tell me how you came to be a dog trainer.” Though she’d read Kelly’s credentials on the makeshift website, she wanted to know something more.

  Kelly had worked with horses before she worked with dogs. Her family had had an equestrian facility when she was growing up. Riding and training, with stables for their o
wn horses and those that students boarded there. She learned to ride a horse bareback before she learned to ride a bike. It was a good life. Then the barn was struck by lightning and went up, along with the stables, taking everything, including thirteen horses they couldn’t get to in time. Kelly reflexively ducked her head and raised her hands like she was going to cup her ears but instead wrapped her palms around the back of her neck. It was more than awful. It was the worst she could imagine, Kelly said, because fire is mean. What it doesn’t take with flame, it takes with smoke and water.

  The insurance company settled up. Grieving the lost horses, the family moved away without looking back. Kelly would like to get past that. She hadn’t been on a horse since she was fourteen. But she loved animals—the fire couldn’t take that away—and she was good with them. She became a vet tech. She apprenticed with other trainers before taking on clients herself. This place was the product of insurance money given to her by her parents.

  Dusk gave way to night. The pink walls darkened to a tired red. Kelly flicked on a row of fluorescent lights, making the orange traffic cones suddenly glow. Dept. of Public Safety, Merion read along the bottom rim of one of them, and she couldn’t help wondering how exactly these cones had been acquired.

  Nothing about this looked good. She had been well advised. There were plenty of reasons she should walk away. But Merion looked at Kelly with compassion—a youngster with a new business, a lot of ambition, and a good heart. In a recession. Would she, Merion, have had that much courage?

  “How soon can we get started?” she asked.

  Kelly said: “Matter of fact, we’re open right now.”

  Merion tells me trust is as important as affinity. Trust in the dog. Trust in the trainer. And after her husband died, she was not a very trusting person. But now here she was in a sink-or-swim situation with the would-be assistance dog, and though the two humans had next to nothing in common, Merion could talk easily to this kid stranger. Kelly gave her the more comfortable of two red dinette chairs, the one without the peeling vinyl on the upholstered seat, and she leaned forward as she listened, her chin resting on both hands propped up by elbows on her knees, her eyes on Annie. Get it all out there, Merion thought, and she started with the bottom line: “I have PTSD, anxiety, and an obsessive-compulsive disorder that I need to stop before it takes over my life. I worry too much; I watch the clock too much. It’s interfering—it’s giving me—it’s getting me into trouble at work. When I get very anxious, I think something bad’s about to happen, and I can’t stop pacing. I need Annie to help me control it.”