The Possibility Dogs

by Susannah Charleson

  What does Lexie recognize? Nancy says there’s probably some change of posture or movement, a shift of expression that she cannot identify herself; she’s pretty sure that there’s a scent that she generates that’s specific to all that anxiety. It’s eerie, she says, to have a dog sitting calmly beside you who, within moments of the downward spiral of your own thoughts, decides to get involved.

  Lexie’s intervention is specific and persistent. She presses her head to Nancy’s leg firmly, gazing at her, with a petition for petting that will not be satisfied by idle touch. Forcing Nancy to move, to engage, to pay attention to Lexie, the dog insists on a response. Nancy says that most of the time it works. She swims up from her dark place, buries her hands in Lexie’s fur, and forces herself to concentrate on the calm, steady presence of the dog. The touch and engagement is often enough to break the obsessive cycle. Nancy says not always, of course. Sometimes she’s just in far too deep, but she knows Lexie’s determined interaction has saved her from real despair more than once.

  How is this different from the presence of any loved dog? Nancy has had small dogs all her life. She says that in Lexie, there is a level of commitment that she’s never experienced before. It can’t be easy for a loving dog to be in the presence of severe depression and the desperate churn of anxiety, but instead of removing herself from Nancy, waiting for a better mood, or panicking in any way, Lexie calmly chooses to be close to her through the worst of it.

  I mention another handler’s comment: “With a psychiatric service dog, it’s not a case of having to chase some pet dog down with the desperate plea: I’m bad off. Let me pet you, damn it! The dogs who really do the job know when to come to you, and they come to you, and they stay.”

  Nancy says, “That’s it. They stay.”

  Assistance dog partners, service dog professionals, the Department of Justice, and the public freely debate what does and does not constitute a service dog, and the argument is not always a clear one. As the ADA defines them, service dogs are trained to perform specific tasks designed to assist or mitigate conditions of physical, mental, or psychological disability. Much rests on the word tasks, and some of the most heated discussion centers on what defines a task and what does not.

  A service dog that retrieves dropped items for her wheelchair-bound partner is performing a task.

  A service dog that guides his blind partner across a street is performing a task.

  A service dog that indicates to his deaf partner that someone is talking is performing a task.

  A service dog that reminds his partner to take medication is performing a task, according to Joan Froling of Sterling Service Dogs and Dr. Joan Esnayra, of the Psychiatric Service Dog Society. Service Dog Central, “a community of service dog partners and their trainers,” disagrees. From their website: “A dog trained to remind a handler to take medication, though helpful, would not truly be needed if the person was able to remind themselves to take their medication in ordinary ways, such as using an alarm.” This might seem a small point to many, but there is any amount of debate over the person who is able to pay attention to an alarm and the person who is not and how, for one who is not, a service dog makes a substantial difference.

  Such debate extends to the finer points of psychiatric service dogs versus emotional support animals. As defined by the Department of Justice, a service dog serves someone who has a defined (read: “authenticated”) disability. The dog’s tasks must: (1) be trained and not natural behavior, (2) mitigate the disability, and (3) be specific to the handler’s needs. By this definition, a dog that provides comfort or a sense of safety and eases despair simply by being present is not performing a task. While the Department of Justice and others note the benefits of dogs in such situations, these dogs would be categorized as emotional support animals rather than service dogs because they are not performing a trained task.

  One trainer tells me, “You can get a little lost in all that language, because honestly, one of the things we try to do is shape a stable dog’s natural behaviors to the task we need them to perform. So in the case of someone caught in an obsessive loop, a dog that comes to his handler and insists on interrupting that loop is performing a task in a way that a dog that simply comes when called is not. (Even though, as any dog owner knows, a dog reliably coming when called is often something you really have to teach them to do.) In the case of the psychiatric service dog, that dog may recognize symptoms without command, that dog initiates the re-direction, and the dog stays in order to fulfill the task. But think about it—to an outsider, the dog performing her task may look a LOT like some dog just asking to be petted.”

  Nancy doesn’t worry about such distinctions too much at the moment. She’s taking this therapeutic approach slowly, small steps outbound. She is severely agoraphobic and dislikes leaving the house at all. At this point, Lexie’s service to her is most crucial at home. Nancy sees a change in herself since Lexie’s arrival. She cannot deny the good work of this dog who can disrupt her obsessed periods, wake her from nightmares, and stir in Nancy a willingness to go outdoors and engage with her neighborhood. She goes out voluntarily and she’s learning to enjoy it, but she primarily goes out simply because Nancy feels she owes it to her dog. It’s a progress to be celebrated. For the first time in years, Nancy advances rather than retreats.

  It’s a change that eventually brings its problems too. Though most of her neighbors are encouraging, one objects strenuously to Lexie’s presence. Their gated community is designed for residents over fifty-five, and policy changes now include a size limit for incoming dogs. That policy never worried Nancy before. Her pet dogs were always small. But Lexie is a new dog, and under the new rules, she exceeds the size limitation. Nancy has brought Lexie in with all the credentials required of an ESA or a service dog in training and has shown them to the administrators of the homeowners’ association, but the objecting neighbor doesn’t believe a word of it. Nancy has no disability that the neighbor can see. The dog is “a mutt masquerading as a service dog” and Rules are Rules. She directly, repeatedly confronts Nancy in front of other neighbors.

  The attack could not have come at a worse time. Nancy has been struggling with deep depression for weeks, a depression exacerbated by the shooting attack on Gabrielle Giffords that claimed six lives and injured fourteen others. The violent event is inescapable here in Arizona. Local and national media are saturated with the story, which streams heavily across social media as well, and Nancy, sensitive to violence, whose compassion and empathy are on overdrive and who is already inclined to withdraw, has retreated even farther into herself. Lexie seems to recognize the distress. She steadily watches, refuses to leave Nancy’s side, and travels from room to room with her through the house, even when Nancy sometimes sits in one place for hours, spiraling downward.

  Leaving the house for any reason is a struggle, but it is important to Nancy that her dog has a healthy life too. Lexie’s needs draw her up from her own condition. She takes Lexie to the community dog park—a simple, public act for most dog owners, but in this moment terribly difficult. “You have no idea how hard depression with social disorders can be,” Nancy tells me. “When it’s bad, you’d sooner walk on glass than face strangers, even acquaintances.” Nancy forces herself anyway. Lexie’s playtime at the dog park is important to them both. Lexie gets to roll in the grass and chase a ball like any other dog, play like a puppy with the others, and, most important to Nancy, Lexie doesn’t have to focus on her for that short time. “We all need downtime,” Nancy says, “and I think [psych service dogs] often don’t get much of it because of the nature of their work. Mental illness doesn’t take time off.” Nancy is exhausted with her own despair and wants Lexie to have some relief from it.

  But the vocal neighbor’s reach extends even here, where her verbal bullying and derision have worsened Nancy’s already fragile condition. The dog park has been the scene of some of the worst of it, and Lexie now refuses to play or leave her partner’s side. Nancy is mo
ved by her dog’s dedication, and at the same time, she’s also furious the situation has escalated to this. She hates confrontation, but anger and concern for Lexie’s well-being prompts her to respond to the verbal attacks in kind. She reports the neighbor to management even as the neighbor complains. When management responds to the neighbor and tells her that Lexie is in service to Nancy and has full permission to live there, the neighbor presses for information about Nancy’s condition, which the managers refuse to give. The neighbor is told to stop the harassment, that it could have legal consequences—a definitive ending to a situation that has gone on too long. Nancy is proud of herself for refusing to hide and grateful to be beside a dog like Lexie whose service presence has changed her and whose own needs are worth protecting.

  It’s over, but it’s not. Sometimes the harassment still resonates. Nancy says that sometimes looking “normal” is the hardest part. There is nothing unusual about her appearance. She knows it’s difficult for others to understand Lexie’s presence or to recognize how vital a role she plays in Nancy’s ability to even leave the house. She understood there would be stares and questions about Lexie, and on good days she thinks of calm, prepared answers. Some days, riddled with the relentless nature of her condition, she cannot face going out. Sometimes a single question is just too much. Lexie’s assistance, her presence beside Nancy, is undeniably worth it, but the weight of public scrutiny is sometimes more than she can bear.

  What is it that gives some dogs such a depth of compassion for humans that other dogs—sweet, amiable, friendly as they might be—don’t have? Months later, after the trouble with the neighbor has faded, the community dog park provides Nancy another opportunity to understand Lexie. Normally divided into two areas, one fenced side of the park has been closed for maintenance, and now the tiny dogs and the larger or more aggressive ones must share a single space for the duration. It’s an uneasy peace. Many of the residents with smaller dogs are fearful for their pets’ safety, which Nancy understands, and Lexie’s size worries a few who don’t know her. Nancy understands that too. So the dog-park mingling isn’t as easy as it might be. Conversations are awkward, a little wall-eyed, with the supervision of unfamiliar dogs as playmates.

  Lexie is enjoying herself among the others when Nancy sees her dog suddenly stop playing and cross the park to approach a seated woman. Pressing herself near, Lexie licks the woman’s hand and places her head in her lap, and even from a distance, Nancy can tell that the woman is upset. Unsure if she is frightened by Lexie’s size or something else, Nancy calls to Lexie (who either doesn’t hear her or, Nancy admits, ignores her). When the woman begins to weep uncontrollably, Nancy, moving quickly, calls her dog again. What is going on? Nancy isn’t sure, but she’s worried that somehow her dog has upset someone. By now other bystanders have approached, and several women put their arms around the distraught figure, Lexie still pressed to her side. To Nancy’s surprise, the woman bends down and buries her face in the dog’s fur. Nancy stops where she stands, paused by that need. She learns from a neighbor that the woman’s husband had died the day before. The woman and the golden retriever remain in that position for a long interval. Nancy doesn’t interfere. That her dog responded to the woman’s heartbreak doesn’t surprise Nancy, but how did Lexie know? “Is this scent or sight or something else?” Nancy asks me. “How does a dog recognize grief in a stranger half a dog park away?”

  22

  EVEN AMONG MY PACK of rogues and scoundrels, Mizzen is an oddity. The dogs aren’t quite sure what to make of her skittering gait, her constant chortle, and her strange maneuvers that lack any kind of dog logic. She stares at walls, sometimes for a half an hour or more. She likes to rest with her backside propped up on a plant stand and her forepaws on the floor. I once found her asleep in the water dish. (Water was still in it.) And of course, she likes to feed her head to Jake.

  Jake Piper is patient with Mizzen, whose devotion sometimes makes it difficult for him to simply walk through the house. He steps over or around her; he tolerates her constant weaving back and forth under his belly as he bends over the water bowl. He is as patient as she is extraordinary, washing her face now and then, occasionally opening his mouth to let her stick in her head and grumble.

  The other dogs are less tolerant. Puzzle watches Mizzen from a bemused distance. She isn’t hostile, but the chocolate Pom, with her pointless Hoor! Hoor! explosions (even Sprits’l doesn’t seem quite sure what she’s barking at), her bouts of spinning, and pig-at-a-trough behavior at the water bowl doesn’t appeal to Puzzle at all. The Poms don’t know what to make of Mizzen’s oddness. She’s their size, their shape—she may even share a common Pomeranian scent with them—but as weeks and months pass, they never warm to her. They stand away and watch the event of her rather than engage. Mizzen doesn’t seem to care. She is very fond of humans; she gives and receives affection well enough, but Jake is the center of her universe.

  When work in the backyard brings contractors to the house, for a time I have to walk all the dogs in the front yard. Jake Piper and Puzzle come out with me off-lead for a game, but the little Poms have to be walked singly or in pairs and on leads. The gaps between the pickets on our wide fence are enough for a Pom to squeeze through, and we live on a fairly busy street. So out we go, the small dogs on the end of longish leads, enjoying their constitutional.

  None of the little guys enjoys walking with Mizzen. She behaves well on a lead, but when they’re connected to her by virtue of me, their wariness increases. Though it’s not outright hostility, I can see their whale-eyed side glances. I try to imagine how they frame her: Is it the pale eyes; the random, spasmodic gait; the chatter over nothing they can see and hear? I don’t know. But Mizzen is the first dog that’s ever come into the house and remained such a subject of speculation.

  It’s difficult for me to watch. Full of sympathy for what I imagine is her feeling of rejection, I begin taking her out alone. This seems fine with her, just as walking with the other dogs is fine with her. Everything is fine with her (hor-hor-hor). She’s her own strange universe, is Mizzen, and while it would be easy to frame the odd behavior as diminished intelligence, I can’t. I’m too curious. I privately begin teaching her the Door command from outside, and we work on other small tricks she seems delighted to do. Apart from the other dogs, she blooms in small ways. She seems a little more sensible and a lot less strange.

  Sometimes we have a human audience. I live on a corner. When Mizzen is out in the yard with me, her size, gait, and color provoke second glances from passersby. Is that a squirrel? A rabbit? Or some other kind of wild animal? She doesn’t read dog to many people. There are plenty of joggers in the neighborhood, lots of pet owners walking their dogs. Some of the dogs strain to meet Mizzen with friendliness, and some look like they could have her for lunch. There are delivery persons and contractors rattling down the street in big vans or in trucks full of lawn mowers or ladders. The occasional kid wearing earphones swifts by on a skateboard, cap slewed sideways, bored expression in place, weaving down the middle of the street in a roar.

  From some people we get waves and comments, which Mizzen doesn’t seem to notice. If Mizzen is engaged with you, she pays attention to you. She doesn’t flinch at the clatter of trucks or skateboards; she doesn’t remark at all on the yip and skip of passing dogs; and, again, if I didn’t see her ears flick in acknowledgment, I might think she was deaf. We linger on the wide lawn, and I tell Mizzen that she’s got focus. She is special.

  Some days we are visited by a lady about my age pushing her mother in a wheelchair. They are both slight figures, variations on a theme, the elder woman papery with age; her white hair cut short is thin as the feathers of a baby bird, revealing the curve of her head. In the long shafts of afternoon sunlight, she glows like a dandelion. She always wears a bright housedress. A clutch of stuffed animals and a baby doll travel in the chair with her.

  Even though her mother is a small woman, the daughter struggles a bit with the wheelcha
ir. It is old. One of the handgrips is wrapped in duct tape. The daughter sometimes has to lift up the back of the chair and give it a little shake, as if a wheel is misaligned and sticking. Mizzen and I often hear the rasp of the chair before we see the two women, and lately we’ve begun to stay outside if we know they are coming, because mother and daughter both love Mizzen. The first time they saw her, they slowed as they progressed down the side of the yard, and then, after turning around at the end of the street, they came back and stopped to watch Mizzen learning her tricks. They didn’t seem to speak much English, and my Spanish isn’t strong either, but I caught the word osito and then perro, and I knew they were talking about Mizzen.

  “Would you like to pet her?” I pointed to the dog and pointed to them and made a little petting gesture, and they laughed—the daughter first, the mother a moment behind—the same laugh, a flash of twin expressions. The daughter shook her head politely while her mother stared over the fence at Mizzen. But they made no move to leave. They couldn’t take their eyes off the little Pom, and when I led her to the fence, the daughter came over and bent to touch her, then extended her mother’s hand and wiggled her fingers, as close as she could get her to Mizzen from where she sat.

  The mother deserved a chance to pet her, and Mizzen deserved the chance to be openly adored. I carried the little dog through the gate and around to the pair and knelt before the wheelchair, giving them access to her ears and her soft fur. Mizzen was oddly careful in their presence. She lifted her nose and squinched shut her eyes, the stub of new growth on her fluffy tail wagging the way a puppy’s does, a furious joy that tickle-brushed across my face and made all of us laugh.