The Possibility Dogs

by Susannah Charleson

Nothing about any of this seems to disturb Ollie. Perhaps he is fortunate to be blind and deaf in this moment, but I know there’s plenty of uproar—movement, scent—for him too, jostling along in the carrier I try to handle gently but that probably rides rough. There is nowhere to sit. A number of people cruise the seating area like Christmas shoppers on the prowl for a parking space, and for a time I lean against a wall with Ollie’s carrier tucked behind my legs to prevent him from getting trampled. When a young man a few sections away gets a gate change, he calls me over and offers me his seat. He likes dogs, he says. He’s been watching me protect this little one, and he says both of us look like we need some protecting today.

  A gate agent makes an announcement that only a few understand, but news ripples across the area. Our flight is delayed. Adults groan; the teenagers swear fashionably; and in his carrier, Ollie rests his chin on a forepaw. Nothing to do now but wait, and the unknowing little dog seems more come-what-may than any of us.

  The howl of an angry child approaches from a distance. I can hear him long before I can see him—a series of escalating, wordless shrieks that are powerful enough I can track the course of his progress beside his mother by a shifty parting of the crowd, the ripple of heads shaking as the two make their way toward a cluster of gates.

  “Oh no,” says one young businessman.

  An older lady murmurs, “That way . . . go that way . . . ,” willing the pair to the gate opposite.

  The whole body of waiting passengers is watching, and I see faces grow apprehensive and then relieved as the pair pass one gate and head for another. Embarrassed laughter follows. No one wants this sticky, screaming, flailing starfish of a kid on his plane, and when mother and son arrive at our area looking for a seat and finding no friendly faces, we recognize the inevitable. This deeply unhappy child and exhausted mother are booked on this flight to Dallas. The young woman appears to be in her late twenties. Her hair is slipping out of its ponytail. Her face is tearstained. The little boy is a preschooler, maybe four or five. She moves toward the wall where I had been standing, and something in her weary resignation makes me pop up out of my gifted seat with a speed that rocks Ollie in his carrier.

  Rrrrr, I hear him mutter as I call them over to take the seat.

  Rrrrr, he mutters again as they sit, son on mother’s lap, and I settle Ollie and myself on the floor, wedging his carrier between me and the luggage.

  The child is still screaming about everything. He is overtired, overstimulated, “having a meltdown,” his mother says to me. Her father just died, and on such short notice, she had no one to turn to, nowhere safe to leave her son. “He has special needs. He doesn’t travel well,” she says, but she had no choice. The writhing boy is angrier on her lap, and he’s about to trade screams for kicking when he briefly takes in a breath and in that moment hears Ollie mutter Rrrrr inside the carrier. The boy’s eyes widen, and his mother takes advantage of the moment: “She has a dog. The lady has a dog!”

  The child leans forward on his mother’s lap, and I unzip the case to give him a look. Feeling the new air above him, Ollie springs up sudden as a popped jack-in-the-box, all mouse nose and upstanding ears. The child tilts back into his mother’s arms, then wiggles a little. Down! He wants down!

  “Can he meet him?” his mother asks.

  “Yes. He can meet him gently,” I answer. I hope she hears the vocal italics. I hope he hears it too. I’ve got my eyes on her son. I’ve seen the effect that calm, elderly dogs can have on children, but I’m watching this child; his strength and tantrums could be bad news.

  The little boy approaches, crouches, reaches forward. Like many children, his movements are big and broad. Ollie can’t see that outstretched hand waving toward him, the small palm likely to smack his head.

  “Gently,” I repeat to the boy. “He can’t see. He can’t hear. He is much, much older than you. How tiny can you make your touch?” I show him, stroking Ollie’s chest with a fingertip.

  I can see all kinds of conflict in the boy’s expression: impatience, curiosity, want, and the smallest light that could be tenderness. He extends a forefinger to Ollie’s face.

  Ollie’s ears come up higher. He scents the child and leans in for the connection, bumping his small, cold nose against his hand. His tail thump-thumps the side of the carrier. Many small dogs are frightened of children, but Ollie seems to recognize and like them.

  Or at least, he likes this one. From the side of his almost-toothless mouth, he gives the boy a touch of his pink tongue.

  “Ohhh,” the boy says on an inhale, a small, wondering sound that makes the rest of us quiet too. He continues to scratch gently—Ollie’s chest, cheek, shoulders, back. I show the child how much Ollie likes having his bunny ears rubbed.

  We sit together for over an hour in the gate area. Mother, child, dog, and I, in the center of a shuffle of passengers in the surrounding seats. The boy has grown quiet. He is staring at the dog. The child has let go all his fury, and I can see how tired he is, the dark half-moon circles beneath his eyes. With a glance at me, a half request for permission, he scoots closer and puts his hand in Ollie’s carrier. Sleepy Ollie rests his chin in the boy’s open palm.

  We are all surprised when boarding is called. How did that happen? Our plane has somehow come in and offloaded unremarked.

  “Here we go,” I say to the young woman and her boy.

  “Here we go,” she repeats. A bystander steadies the duffel on the mother’s shoulder as she lifts up her son.

  Senior dogs are often victims of a special kind of neglect. Rescuers grimly recognize two periods each year—the Dump-Your-Old-Dog Days of the winter holiday season and of summertime—when owners grow suddenly weary of a dog whose age or health or general inconvenience has simply gone on, for them, too long. The owners want freedom to travel without the cost of boarding an aged family pet. They surrender the dogs to shelters or rescues. Sometimes the dogs aren’t even that lucky and are “set free” to fend for themselves.

  Thus, seniors get dumped in the country. Seniors are let out front doors and never acknowledged again. When seniors are crippled, blind, or deaf—or any combination of the above—their chances are even worse. These special-needs seniors are the hardship cases volunteers often beg to get help for. They just need, the pleas say, a place to comfortably and happily live out the rest of their lives.

  A number of these special dogs have been in my home or passed through my hands as a transporter in the years I’ve been rescuing dogs. I’ve never regretted choosing a single one of them. All have had health issues. Most have lost sight or hearing or both. Yet old age has given many of them a particular grace. Seniors have the ability to be still and savor the moment. They are full of life in a lower key.

  I still miss Scuppy, an elderly blind and deaf Pomeranian that was let out on the streets to wander after his owner died, mercifully picked up by animal control. Scuppy was so old that the shelter that held him believed he’d make it only another few months. But he was still eating, still responsive and happy, and they made every effort to find him a home for those last days. He had just turned twenty-one when I took him in. He would live another two years.

  Scuppy was a miracle boy. Good-natured, outgoing, and extremely social, Scuppy frequently participated with the search team when we did safety presentations for children. He calmed even sugared-up, fractious classrooms full of kids on the brink of vacation. His sightless serenity had an effect on them. They enjoyed all the search dogs, young and old alike, but the children would wait in long lines to pet Scuppy, who was five times older than they were and who could know them best by the scent on their palms and the gentlest hello they could make by touch. They found that idea magical.

  Ollie possesses many of Scuppy’s qualities. Even though he is small, fragile, blind, and deaf, there is a confidence and easy sociability about him that might make him a marvelous visiting dog in animal-assisted therapies. Everyone smiles when meeting Ollie. With his button eyes, mouse nose, and
rabbit ears, he’s got appeal in spades. His behavior suggests that somewhere in his history, he was a very social lap dog, exposed to adults, children, cats, and other dogs—all good.

  After he rests and settles in, after we build up his strength, Ollie will get the chance to train as a therapy dog. He’s had a recent hard go, and it’s an iffy proposition, but if that dinner-party socialization and the gentle interim at the airport were hints to Ollie’s nature, I think he might enjoy the opportunity to be adored by strangers.

  There’s a lot of maybe in this. We’ll need an all-clear from the vet. I need to see Ollie’s anxious trembling stop. Ignoring dropped food in schools and nursing homes is a must for visiting dogs, so Ollie needs to train away from people food. The obedience commands that are part of therapy etiquette will be the most challenging. How do you teach a blind and deaf dog Sit, Down, Stay, and Leave It? Ollie is so social and polite, he might well have learned traditional obedience commands when he was younger—but how do I communicate with him now?

  By touch?

  I’m fascinated with the prospect. Touch is what he knows of us, and it’s through touch and scent that he makes sense of us all. I always greet him with three scratches on the shoulder and a kiss on the head. Ollie is quick. Not long after I bring him home, he wags immediately after that ritual. He stops trembling when picked up shortly after that. Within a month, he has associated that with the scent of me and, nose lifted, begins to find me in the yard. Rrrrr, he says, like the gunning of the smallest motorcycle ever, and he raises up on his back legs, wagging, wanting to be picked up. Somehow he’s figured out that I, the coffee-and-chocolate-and-human-scented person bearing three scratches and a kiss, bring him only good things: a meal, a treat, a bed, an outing. Ollie’s days adrift are over.

  In this new confidence, we begin to craft the dialogue. A scratch on the ribs for Sit. A scratch on the chest for Down. A long stroke of the back for Stay. A reward of peanut butter for all.

  Ollie is already touch acute. The sighted dogs watch him thoughtfully. He instructs us all. Far from being withdrawn because of his condition, he’s an old hand at navigation through darkness. In his careful progress through a new space, he never collides hard with anything—the slightest bump redirects his movement. Through scent, vibration, or an innate sense of time, in the first week after he joins us, he begins to arrive in the kitchen for meals with the others, and I notice that he rarely bumps into another dog in that space. He often stations himself beside Puzzle, who volunteers a Down in the kitchen at mealtimes, and it’s possible that Ollie has learned the scent and the size of her. There are other tangibles. He marks thresholds by a change of air current. A new scent is enough to make him pause in a doorway. It takes a while, but in his measured way, he learns the house and engages with every one of us.

  I’m moved by that cheerful spirit stretching out for adventure on his own terms, despite his frailties. Beautiful Ollie has something worth sharing. Gregarious Ollie seems up for the party of it too.

  25

  THE WOMAN I SEE often at a local café says she’s ready to get another dog, she’s pretty sure. She thinks she’d like a dog she can train for therapy. She lost her tiny ancient poodle two years ago, a good dog friend that saw her through divorce and job loss, and for the longest time, she couldn’t imagine having another. The thought of getting a new dog still feels disloyal and, more than that, frightening. She is anxious about ever growing that attached again. But her elderly father is struggling with dementia, she says, and her tiny poodle had often been a lifeline out of that haze for the two of them. Since the poodle has been gone, her father has seemed to retreat into a farther place. He no longer speaks, and it is for her father—and maybe a little, she admits, for herself—that she’s decided it’s time to look for another dog.

  She wants a small dog that’s easy to carry. She wants a mature dog that is housebroken. She’d like a dog that doesn’t come with a lot of baggage from trauma, because she wants to take the dog into her father’s care facility, which allows well-mannered visiting pets. Because we’ve gotten to know each other over coffee and egg sandwiches, she knows that I work in rescue with a focus on dogs in therapeutic uses. “Therapy Light,” she calls the job she’d like to do with her intended new friend, because they’ll visit only the nursing home where her father resides. But she’d like to share this new dog with anyone there who would like the visit. She has no idea what to look for in her new pet, and she wants some help.

  “Keep an eye out?” she asks me. “Mature, polite, friendly. Small.” She gestures the shape and size of a bread loaf. “About this big.” She wonders if she’s being too specific. She wonders if there’s much hope for finding such a dog.

  “Would a senior be okay?”

  “Senior’s okay.”

  “Are these your only requirements?

  “That’s it. I’m easy.” She shapes the bread loaf again. She pops on her cell phone to show me a picture of the poodle she still mourns, a bran muffin–colored little creature gazing thoughtfully through a window. “This gives you an idea of size,” she says, and she looks down at the picture a moment before clicking the cell phone off again.

  Senior, polite, friendly, small. There are many, many dogs in shelters and rescue that fit the profile, and I tell her so. Does she want to go with me to meet some of them? She does not. She says she loves the idea of rescue, but shelters confuse and depress her. Can I find some possibilities and let her know? She loves my story of tuneful Jasper, who has since found a home as comforter to a seriously ill child. She shakes her head sympathetically over the hardships of Jasper’s double rescue, laughs at the image of him whistling. Perfect! she says. Only, for her, Jasper might have been too big.

  I agree to do the preliminary search, but I warn her that small dogs in shelters can move quickly—especially the kind of dog she’s seeking. There may not be much time between spotting a strong candidate for her needs and that dog getting adopted by someone else. More horribly, sometimes crowded shelters just don’t have much time and space to give, and if she finds a dog she thinks she wants, he might be put down before she can decide. Be prepared to act quickly! I tell her. We exchange e-mail addresses and cell-phone numbers. I head out the door hopeful that maybe we’ll make a great connection here—a woman ready to heal, a dog ready for love, and a father who might respond to the touch of both.

  I’ve also got misgivings I can’t really identify. Nothing to do with the appropriateness of the woman as a pet owner, her home as a haven, or the safety of the coming dog. But what is it? There was something early in our discussion, when I brought out a picture of Mizzen and mentioned her good health and her cheerful personality. I described how good she is with the elderly. Yes, she has flights of silly, but they’re funny rather than annoying. Would this be the kind of dog she might be seeking? Would she at least like to see if her father responds well to Mizzen? The woman’s face changed from interest to wariness. She shook her head.

  Oh no, she said, she couldn’t take my dog.

  Mizzen is available for adoption, I tell her. She prefers humans to any other living creature; she is now therapy trained and is a perfect candidate for nursing-home visits.

  Oh no. She shook her head again. Not this one.

  Mizzen didn’t appeal to her. Fair enough. It’s important to me that Mizzen is keenly wanted. It’s important to me to find this woman a dog she’ll keenly want.

  I tell her I will look for other dogs, and I do. Mature, friendly, small.

  Over the next weeks, I find a housebroken, eight-year-old smoky-gray-and-white Lhasa apso mix that will fetch and roll over. This guy is all engagement. He is dog-friendly, even cat-friendly. He’s a lovely dog, a strong candidate in a small shelter with limited resources. Would my friend like to meet him?

  No, she says after looking at a picture. A dog like that should go to a family that has cats. It’s so hard to find cat-friendly dogs.

  It seems an odd objection to me.

&
nbsp; “I’m not sure many people visit this shelter,” I tell her.

  “No,” she says. “Not this one. I have light furniture.” She leaves it at that.

  She later declines meeting a calm, black-and-tan Chihuahua on the basis of breed (“I’ve never liked Chihuahuas”), a Yorkie mix on the basis of size (“There is such a thing as too small”), a dachshund cross with visible cataracts (“I have a step down onto the patio”), and a small white dog with a jellybean-shaped spot on his forehead (“This isn’t a good week”). She says she appreciates all I’ve been doing. She knows I’m giving this a lot of time. It’s not that she doesn’t want a dog. She is very sorry none of these have been right. But they just haven’t.

  Not long afterward, she perks briefly over a poodle I’ve found in a facility very local to her, until I tell her the poodle is male and particolored black and white.

  Not light brown? she asks.

  Not light brown. But mature and friendly. Small. Would certainly fit in a breadbox. This is delicate business, and while I want to give her an honest assessment of the little poodle, I’m trying not to push. Something tells me that no dog is ever going to be right. She is looking for the dog she lost, or maybe she’s not looking for any dog at all.

  Her hands are shaking. She hesitates, hedges, says she will call me about it later. She doesn’t. She dashes out in a hurry when I walk into the café a few days after. And then she seems to avoid the topic of dogs altogether. Our communication shifts to distant smiles, then waves. The common ground is lost, and we become relative strangers again.

  I think about her often. Perhaps the search for a new dog reflects another stage of her grieving, and that must be doubly hard in the fading light of her father. Perhaps no to the new dog was the best answer. I think of what it must be like for her, spending weeknights alone in the home she’d shared with her good dog friend and weekends on the road between here and the place where her father drifts, where she wishes her dog back for both of them. She said she sometimes sits and tries to see the world through his eyes, waiting with him for something that no longer has a name.