The Possibility Dogs

by Susannah Charleson

  Jake’s on a dropped leash at the moment, holding his Sit on the sidewalk and looking wistfully from me to a young family seated on a bench a few yards away. He would very much like to get up. He would like to break this Sit and leave this Stay. They are all kinds of tempting, this family—a pretty young mother and her husband sharing an ice cream cone, the mother carefully cradling her sleeping baby. They both watch Jake train with a liking so obvious that even if he can’t see them in periphery, he can probably feel or smell their approval. Dog people. Dog people with a blanketed, invisible baby, a dog pupa. Jake would very much like to woo them.

  We’ve been meeting a lot of strangers lately, but as far as I know, Jake has never met a baby this small, and there is something about the bundle of infant that intrigues him.

  “You can see the wheels turning,” says a passerby with a laugh, because there’s nothing relaxed about this Sit. Jake’s bottom is down, but his thigh muscles are tight, and the tail swoosh-swooshes with any kind of acknowledgment. He likes human voices. He likes human glances. The upside of Jake’s great eye contact is that he recognizes my warning human eye during a training session. The downside of Jake’s great eye contact is that he immediately picks up on dog-loving gazes from strangers, and even silent supporters of his training can wind him up with mere friendly looks.

  That passerby is right. If Jake were a muscle car, you’d be able to hear his engine revving.

  “Jakey, come,” I say to him, and he springs to his paws a little wildly, one ear up, one ear sideways, all goofy, pinwheeling paws and tail. But I see his footsteps waver; he is charged with conflicting impulses, going to me or veering straight for this splendid family full of goodwill and streaked with the ice cream that has run down their hands in the humidity.

  He comes to me, but only just, and when he gets here, I can feel the regret. He sits again, shoots a yearning glance over his shoulder at the family, then looks back at me.

  “I give you an 8.5 on the dismount,” I tell him, slipping him a training treat. “But good boy. Good boy!”

  The family wants to meet him. They call out across the sidewalk to us, but the current tension on the lead tells me Jake Piper is on a hair trigger. He’s a friendly boy, but he’s still learning. He’s strong and standing up, and they are seated, wrangling ice cream and an infant. I tell them we will head down the sidewalk to work on Heel, then make a circle and return. If they’ve got time to wait, we’ll give them time to finish the cone. (And reconsider. And double-check their purchase on the baby. I don’t say this, but I think it hard enough.) We’ll give Jake time to work off some of the excitement too. Jake Piper’s got to earn the opportunity to meet them.

  Jake takes the command away from them and accepts the Heel with better grace than Puzzle ever did at his age. I expected so much fight on a leash from this boy, and while he can lose his head and pull now and again, he seems to see walking on-lead as a joint adventure. Puzzle as a youngster took to the lead grudgingly, accepting our attachment more because she had to than because she wanted to. For Jake, everything is better because it’s shared.

  We return to the family, approaching them from behind. Even though Jake has done a fine walk away from them, I’m a little nervous about this meeting, knowing Jake’s size and his strength and his bull-in-a-china-shop love for all humans. There’s a fine line when you’re learning to trust a young dog. You want to be aware, very much aware, but you don’t want to transmit your own tension down the lead. The dog feels it and can feed off your energy. When we circle the bench, we can see both mother and father bent over the baby on the young woman’s lap. They are talking low, smiling into the blanket at a face we cannot see. But a tiny wiggle shivers the fold of flannel, and at the sight of that movement, Jake’s ears perk and his tail whip-whip-whips.

  “Here we are,” I say to the parents quietly, not wanting to rev up Jake any more.

  They look over and smile. Jake’s tail speeds up.

  Jake approaches, pulling the lead tight, and just at the moment I’m about to tell him, “Easy, easy,” he sits. He puts his head on the knee of the young woman.

  Chuff, he huffs from his nose, scenting deeply.

  “Well, hello,” she says and smiles. Her arms are full of baby, but her husband reaches over to stroke Jake’s head.

  “Crazy ears,” he says.

  “They are.”

  “Good dog, though.”

  “Thank you. His name is Jake Piper.”

  Jake has not moved from his position at the woman’s knee. I can see his eyes working, looking from person to person across the conversation. He is listening to the adults and watching them, too, but his nose is extended toward the baby. The nostrils quiver and flare. He is curious. He would like to sniff more closely, would like to touch, but something in Jake Piper holds back, as though he needs permission. Who is this dog? I was ready to correct a youngster that might be too overjoyed by new people, but I was unprepared for Jake’s response here. It’s as though he has absorbed this family’s moment, and, with some need to be drawn into their circle, he has quieted himself to meet them where they are.

  The young mother says to Jake, “This is Emma,” and to me, “Today is a big day for us. Our first day out. Emma was born with pneumonia two months ago. We almost lost her. The doctors finally said we could leave the house with her last week, but we waited . . . and so . . . this is our first day out.” Her voice is tired, joyful, relieved—all those things in four words: our first day out.

  We are proud to share it with them, and I say so. I wish I’d taught Jake to offer a high-five.

  Jake lifts his head from the woman’s knee and leans it into the young father’s hand, groaning slightly at the ear rub. He is as calm now as he was wired earlier. The visit with strangers, the obvious approval, the ear rub, is enough.

  Baby Emma’s foot wriggles free of the blanket, and from where he sits, Jake lifts his head and raises his eyebrows. Whoa! The baby is strange and wondrous. His tail wags small, tentative, as though amazed such tiny human things could ever be.

  Cheese or goodness. Cheese. Or goodness. Jake Piper and Puzzle are in Down/Stay commands on the back deck, and I have dropped a chunk of cheese and told them both, “Leave It.” The cheese is a chunk of smoked Gouda, appealing by scent even to me, and it’s in easy snatch range for both of them. They wouldn’t even have to break their Down/Stays to do it. Puzzle doesn’t budge, grinning up at me with happy affability. She’s been Leaving It for years, and she’s brilliant at it now, though I’m aware that this has always been easy for her—unlike Jake Piper, she’s never had to scavenge for food. She likes cheese, but hey, she seems to say with a shrug, whatever.

  Jake Piper finds this much more difficult. He is as food motivated as they come. Unlike Mr. Sprits’l or the golden, who tend to sniff offered food thoughtfully before taking it, a critical assessment of its appeal, Jake eats first and asks questions later. And now, even though he’s been fed today and never goes without a meal, this cheese torments him from its position fifteen inches away. Cheese. Or goodness. He extends his forefeet and sinks into his Down, looking up at me with a darkly pained expression, gripping the deck with his paws as though he’s having to hold himself back. Together, the dogs obey the Leave It for ninety seconds, and then I call them away for a toss of the ball. After they scramble off for it, I pick up the cheese and throw it away. Bystanders have asked why I don’t give it to them after the training moment, but it’s a mixed message to reward the dogs with the very thing they’ve been so good to leave. Fortunately, Jake loves a ball toss almost as much as he loves cheese, and Puzzle loves motion much more than she loves food of any kind, so this reward is enough.

  Leave It compliance is a must for a search dog, a service dog, a therapy dog, and, in my opinion, for a pet dog too. Not always about food, and not just about good manners, Leave It on a walk can save a dog from dangerous contact with tempting hazards—choke items, infected scat from other animals, rodent bait, dropped medic
ation. Leave It is an important command. For Jake Piper, it’s a tough one. In the earliest days, he would snatch the food and run away to eat it. Then, fond of people and fonder of their affection, he would snatch the food and Sit or Down immediately afterward, with a deep pant of a smile—a total masking maneuver, as though the subsequent obedience made up for the earlier indiscretion or, even better, persuaded me that the food snatch had never happened at all. Jake makes me laugh with the workings of his dog mind, but I’m not fooled, and we continue to train on the sweet torture that is Leave It, sometimes with Puzzle and sometimes not.

  I find myself sniffing food from the refrigerator and trying to assess its appeal the way a dog does. If dropped food items were ranked, what would be the least tempting to a dog? The most? Should we work our way up from toast to prime rib?

  That’s the plan. I started with white-bread toast crusts, then whole-wheat toast crusts, then pita and naan and tortilla chips and pappadam from restaurants. I dropped crackers and flung bread sticks. When Jake successfully turned away from whole-wheat toast, which seemed to be his favorite, I made things more difficult by adding butter. One very hard day I dropped half of an Olive Garden bread stick in the side yard we would later pass on our walk. Jake picked up the scent from the ten-yard line, and by the time we got close I could hear him snuffling and feel the lead quiver.

  I know humans who might look both ways and then go for a dropped Olive Garden bread stick.

  “Leave It,” I said, as he caught sight of it. Jake lunged and then thought better of it. Without a check from me, he let it lay. But he flopped down into a Sit and let out a wail of protest, a frustrated Wookiee cry unlike anything I’d ever heard from him. I let him howl it out, and then he stood up, shook, and glanced at me as though he was glad he’d had that good cry. He was ready to go. Off we went. Jake didn’t look back.

  On the return trip, though the bread stick was still there, he studiously looked away from it and the huddle of pigeons that rose up from the pecking of it.

  “That’s so mean,” says a friend, who admits she doesn’t really get the whole working-dog thing. She likes the idea, but she hates that a dog can’t score a dropped cookie. I explain that I never taunt the dogs by offering them food and then denying it to them, but I do accidentally drop things from plates, and I pre-drop things privately that we later pass on our walks. I try to explain the safety angle too, but I’m not sure my friend believes me. Would a dog really swallow a dropped pill simply out of reflex? Sadly, many dogs would.

  From plain bread to buttered bread to child’s food, like cupcakes and cookies, I try to drop what we might find left on a sidewalk or tossed from car windows. I don’t have to plant too much: on some of our walks, we pass the greasy remains of paper french fry pockets and slick, meaty, cheesy burrito wrappers. Jake Piper extends his nose toward all of them, then retracts it on the Leave It, once even ignoring a wad of hamburger and a splay of exploded milk shake at a bus stop. Good work. We’re getting there.

  Which is not to say Jake Piper doesn’t explore other food disobedience. Counter-surfing, the great—and dangerous—problem many dog owners have with tall dogs, is a temptation for Jake from the moment he reaches adult height. Puzzle has never counter-surfed, and the Poms, who might like to try it, can’t, since they’re not tall enough. The counter-surfing dogs of my friends have eaten whole loaves of wrapped bread, steaks left out to thaw, entire pans of brownies. One friend admits that the first stolen sandwich was cute, but when her dog managed to get the Thanksgiving turkey on the floor before it ever reached the family table, it wasn’t funny at all. Dangerously, my friends’ dogs have also bitten into and exploded plastic bottles of cough syrup and lapped up sugar substitutes, poisoning themselves. There are dogs that have counter-surfed gas stoves and turned on burners.

  There is certainly evidence of this behavior in my century-old house. Beneath the lovely refinishing, the wood kitchen counters are scored with hundreds of claw marks along several lengths of counter edge, marking where one family or another left food out and one dog or another went for it. I recall the day when I briefly walked away from the counter in the middle of preparing the dogs’ food bowls, and Jake Piper, to his delight, found he could raise up on his hind legs and put his paws on the counter and get to almost every single one of the bowls!

  “Don’t you! Don’t . . . you . . . even . . .”—think about it, I was going to say when I walked back in and found him, but Jake, startled by my vehemence, dropped his paws and his ears and slunk beneath the kitchen table, putting himself in an apologetic Down/Stay and watching me with a penitent expression. The guiltless but interested little dogs also scrambled. Jake Piper never counter-surfed again. And somehow, that self-discipline has translated even to the Poms. I can leave my own food on low tables, walk out of the room, and come back to find a ring of dogs at a little distance, staring as though they could will cheese fries off the plate.

  It’s clearly a bigger moment for me than it is for Jake the first time I put on his official In Training vest. He aced the service evaluation; he’s learning good manners. When I slip the vest over his head and over his collar, he politely holds his Sit but looks a little thoughtful, wayward ears swinging forward and back independently, as though in dialogue. He turns his head to sniff over his shoulder at it. It’s a curiosity, this dark green vest; stiff and a little formal, it fits something like his seat-belt safety harness and probably still smells a lot like puppy Puzzle, who wore it until she certified for search. New vest patches reflect Jake’s different job description. WORKING—PLEASE DO NOT PET replaces the ASK TO PET ME, I’M FRIENDLY patch that Puzzle once wore. Jake accepts the vest easily, but it brings a new lesson that will be harder to understand. In the vest he should neither receive petting nor ask for it. Some dogs handle the transition easily. For others, it’s a testing point. Extremely friendly dogs that cannot override their impulses to meet everyone and greet everyone at all times aren’t appropriate for service. Jake could be one of those dogs. He is smart and eager to please, but I just don’t know.

  At the heart of any kind of therapeutic service animal is a dog prepared for public good manners. The strong Sit, the willing Down, the self-disciplined Stay, the walk on a leash that doesn’t put owners or others in jeopardy, the calm and friendly meeting of other dogs and other people, the leaving of food where it lies—it all makes as much sense for the pet dog as for the assistance or therapy dog, and even if Jake Piper ultimately cannot work service, he is becoming the kind of dog that is a joy to take places. He’ll take the Canine Good Citizen test soon.

  From the CGC, we’ll work toward the Service Dog Public Access Test, which evaluates dogs’ obedience and etiquette in interior spaces like stores, restaurants, and airports. Though Jake will never enter such spaces as a fully trained assistance dog unless he is actually serving a disabled human partner, as a service dog in training, he will work with me toward a future that could take many forms. Yes, he may remain with me, but there’s a chance that he might be so good a fit for someone who needs him that he will leave us. Jake has no abandonment issues, no separation anxieties. As he has matured and I’ve gotten to know him, I’ve come to recognize he is the kind of dog who could leave and make a transition to a new human partner happily.

  But could I make that transition as easily? Years ago, I would never have imagined being able to do this—saving a dog, loving a dog, training a dog, and letting him go. I never understood how service dog puppy raisers could do it. I always wondered if puppy raisers somehow kept the dogs at arm’s length emotionally, if it was somehow a matter of loving less. No. I realize now that, in a way, it’s a matter of loving more. Love built on generosity—that openheartedness is new ground. Jake has it. I’m learning it. Though I know what it is to love a search dog at the same time I follow her into the dark, this love with a view to parting is a stretch.

  17

  WHEN THE YOUNG WOMAN talks to me, her voice wobbles a little, sometimes uncertain, somet
imes edged with what sounds like derision, her tone wavering between screw this and whatever. Kristin is nineteen. Slim like a dancer, with beautiful posture, she has dyed her long hair very black and has pierced a lot of real estate: nose, ears, lip—tongue too, if what I’m hearing when she talks is the sound a stud makes. She is a pretty girl in armor.

  Kristin began having “episodes” three years ago. She makes air quotes with her fingers and looks away when she says the word. Episodes, like she’s a goddamn TV show where everything will come out right in the end. She leans forward and puts her hands on the table, fingers splayed, and I think, Discussion over, this girl’s outta here, about to push up and away after delivering a parting shot, but she just sits there, studying her black manicure, and says she was this person once, and now she’s someone else. It sounds like the opening of a story she has told before to great effect. What follows sounds ungrammatically defiant: This is her, and this is her owning her, and she doesn’t know whether to be proud or ashamed.

  Six blocks, she says, describing the first time in her “illness” (air quotes hers) she ever got lost. She just had to make it six blocks, from the convenience store to her house, a convenience store she knew well, the route back to her home a path she’d known all her life. It was late afternoon, almost evening, the kind of light where the pink sky begins to gray at the edges, and she was walking home, and all of a sudden she had no idea where she was. One step fine, the next uncertain, and she looked up and was totally lost. And worse than lost, lost and panicked, unable to take a deep breath and figure things out. Losing your way in your own neighborhood is like being a fish and forgetting how to swim. And that was how it felt to her—not just disorientation, but drowning, as though the entire world were liquid and insubstantial and she was going down.