by Robert Rodi
Maybe, maybe not. Andi has an idea of how to find out for sure. She is, it turns out, a big proponent of pet psychics, or “animal communicators,” as she calls them. What’s more, she believes anyone can “read” an animal—it’s a matter of focus, clearing the mental space for your mind to receive what the animal has to “say.”
“The last time I ‘talked’ to Whisper,” she tells me now, as I greedily eye her last few candied walnuts, “I was going to get her a new collar, and I asked her what color she wanted. And she said, clear as a bell: ‘Fuchsia.’ My jaw just dropped. What dog knows fuchsia? I wasn’t even sure what color that was myself. Anyway, I asked a professional animal communicator about it and she said dogs pick up on all sorts of things—Whisper might have heard it on TV. I guess I do have the TV on a lot, and Whisper does seem to watch.”
This is all sounding a tad dubious to me, and my initial urge is to scoff; part of me is still the jaded, urban cynic I was at the beginning of this adventure—the kind of man who sneered at the idea of giving up his weekends in pursuit of some kind of freakish organized dog jogging. But that knee-jerk reaction is quickly overwhelmed by my genuine curiosity, my respect for this woman’s opinion, and, ultimately, by my vow to explore any technology that might work.
I’ve finished the last of my ravioli now and I’m still hungry. Behold the curse of being brought up Italian. Light eating is, for us, a sign of moral laxity. I’d order something else, but the lunch hour is drawing to a close. I quell my hunger and return to the subject of pet psychics—excuse me, animal communicators. “You say anyone can do this?” I ask, fighting back another flurry of skepticism. “So, me, for instance? I could do it?”
She nods matter-of-factly, as though I’ve asked her whether she thinks me capable of operating a doorknob. “I went to a workshop with a communicator a few years ago,” she says, tossing aside a flap of corn-silk hair that’s fallen over one eye. “She got me talking to a goat, who gave me a very clear picture of a Thanksgiving dinner table. I talked to his owner later, who said that as a matter of fact he did allow the goat in the house on Thanksgiving. Not that the owner’s wife was real happy about it. The goat remembered that too.”
I’m talking to an otherwise eminently sane woman about the domestic travails of a barnyard goat. Suddenly, I’m feeling quite strikingly postmillennial.
I ask about the communicator who ran this workshop. Possibly it’s someone I can contact about Dusty. Andi enthusiastically endorses this. “The only problem,” she says after finishing off the last walnut (damn her), “is that she’s not local. I wish she’d come to Chicago and do a class. I looked into it once, but you have to get a certain number of people to sign up and pay in advance and . . .” She shrugs. “The logistics were too much for me.”
“So . . . what does that mean? I’d have to get on a plane and go to her?” I try to imagine Dusty cooped up in the cargo hold of a jet. By the time it touched down, he’d need a hell of a lot more than an animal communicator.
Andi shakes her head. “You don’t need to go anywhere. You can have a consultation over the phone.”
Now my credulity really is stretched thin. “What, she ‘reads’ an animal over a phone line? How the hell does that work? Do I have to put Dusty on the horn? He’s not much of a conversationalist, you know. Sometimes he goes for days without saying a word. You know how kids are.”
She gives me a sideways “you know that’s not what I mean” look and says, “No, you don’t have to put Dusty ‘on the horn.’ You have him in the room with you, and you have a series of questions you’ve prepared, and the communicator reads Dusty’s answers through you.” A waiter comes to clear the table and his burly arms momentarily bisect our view, which interrupts the almost trancelike state I’ve fallen into. When he retreats, I feel like I’ve been led into la-la land, but by baby steps, so only now that I’ve arrived can I see how far I’ve come. I look over my shoulder and there’s the distant shore of the realm of reason. I’ve abandoned the sunlit legacy of the Enlightenment for the vapors of mystic hoo-ha. “Whatever works,” I repeat to myself. “Whatever the hell works.” Plus, really, going back to my Italian childhood, how much difference is there between splashing my forehead with holy water to ward off the devil and Dusty having a telepathic chin wag over my land line? And finally, there’s Andi sitting across from me, looking radiantly confident from beneath her untroubled brow, and who am I to mount my mewling little misgivings in opposition?
All right, then, I’ll do it. Anything short of dancing naked in a pentagram. And possibly even that, if I’m asked nicely. Whatever. Works.
CHAPTER 24
Psyched
Swayed by Andi’s impassioned testimonial, I move ahead with the idea of consulting an animal communicator. But try as I might, I can’t bring myself to do it over the phone. It’s taken a tremendous effort to overcome my innate skepticism to the point of entertaining the idea of “dog whispering” at all. When I try to factor in the belief that it can be done across three time zones, the whole rickety apparatus falls down around my ankles and I have to reconstruct it from scratch. I decide, for my own benefit if not Dusty’s, that I need someone right here in my house, looking him square in the eye.
I go online and find a local practitioner named Rachel Tisza. Her Web site is so adorable that one look sends me into a kind of diabetic seizure, but her credentials seem solid enough, and there are lots of testimonials. “That means nothing,” my inner cynic snarls from the locked cell to which I’ve temporarily banished him. “People are crazy.” Well, yes. There is that. But some crazy people win agility titles, and I’m not nearly as picky as I used to be.
When Rachel arrives at the house, I’m surprised to find she’s smaller than I anticipated—a slip of a girl, really—wearing a big fur coat and fur boots, which, she wastes no time making clear to me, are all fake. She’s pretty and vivacious, and the moment she steps through the door the house seems smaller. Petite she may be, but she has presence.
Carmen takes to her immediately, as she usually does with visitors. Dusty is much more wary, circling her suspiciously, occasionally ducking in for a sniff, then backing away with menacing snarls.
I fetch Rachel a glass of water, and when I come back she’s seated primly on the ottoman with Carmen practically climbing into her lap. “Sorry about that,” I say as I order Carmen away. “It’s the way she is. She’s anybody’s bitch.”
It’s a quip I’ve made a thousand times, but Rachel gives it so big a laugh I feel like it’s the first time. Okay, that’s a point in her favor. I guess I’m anybody’s bitch, myself. “It’s all right,” she says a moment later. “We’re just getting acquainted. She’s been telling me how much she loves company.”
“Carmen said nothing—she’s a dog,” retorts my inner cynic
I hold my tongue, however. Rachel is growing on me, and I’m a bit taken aback by how energetic and funny she is. This isn’t the kind of earnest, gooey, New Age beginning I’d anticipated. I’m getting the feeling that, whether or not I end up believing a word this woman says, I’m in for a good show.
As I sit in the chair to Rachel’s left, Dusty rounds on her with a volley of ferocious barking, as though blaming her for being seated so close to me. “Dusty, quiet,” I snap. Then I point to the floor and say, “Down.” He lowers himself to his elbows with a visible sulk.
Dusty continues to utter a low growl, just shy of being worthy of reprimand. I shrug and give Rachel my standard apology for his behavior: “Sorry, he’s a rescue.”
“Oh, he didn’t like that!” she says. “He just shot you a look and said, ‘You’re a rescue.’ ”
“Um . . . sorry?”
“He doesn’t like you telling people he’s a rescue. It embarrasses him.”
Ooookay. “Anyway,” I continue, “as I explained on the phone, I want to get some insight into Dusty’s feelings, because I run him in agility competitions and I’m not really sure he likes it.”
Rachel loo
ks at Dusty and furrows her brow, then says, “He’s telling me he likes it fine.”
I look at Dusty too. He looks back but remains a closed book. I turn back to Rachel, “What in particular does he like about it?”
She pauses a moment, as if putting the question to him, then says, “He likes the validation. Well, that and spending time with you. He likes knowing he has value in your life. He’s very insecure about that.”
“Insecure?”
“Oh, yes. He’s still not sure he . . . Hold on a moment.” She looks at Carmen and then turns back to me. “Carmen says Dusty is always asking her, ‘Do you think they’re happy with us?’ ” She pauses. “Carmen says it irritates her. She’s always telling Dusty, ‘I have no intention of going anywhere.’ ”
I laugh, because that does sound like Carmen. “So, Dusty has abandonment issues?”
“Oh, yes. Neglect issues too.”
“Good God! He’s hardly neglected. I mean, I’m here every day. I work from home, and . . .” I make a gesture to take in the totality of the environment.
Rachel quickly shakes her head. “Oh, I’m not talking about you. This is in his past; he suffered a lot of neglect when he was very young. He’s telling me now, he—” She pauses, as if waiting for him to finish a sentence. “He says he was often ignored. They’d forget to feed him or even give him water.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
She grimaces and cocks her head. Dusty cocks his head right back at her. “I’m not getting a clear picture. Dusty says there were a lot of people around all the time, coming and going. But no one was central to him; no one paid much attention to him.” She shifts her weight, as though preparing to deliver bad news. “I get the impression he was bred in a puppy mill.”
Yikes. I’m glad Vicky Bruning’s not around to hear that. This certainly explains his wonky looks. I give him a swift reappraisal; he’s twisted up like a pretzel so he can scratch behind his ear—not his most flattering angle. “So . . . I don’t get it. If he’s been so starved for attention, why is he so standoffish? He’s the least affectionate dog I’ve ever had. I’ve met cuddlier iguanas.”
Another pause. “He says he shuns affection because he’s convinced it won’t last. He doesn’t want to get too dependent on it and then lose it.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” I say, looking at Dusty. “Butch it up.”
Rachel giggles, then says, “When you want to be physical with him, try petting his right side with your left hand. That’s the best way to make sure that loving energy flows unimpeded.”
I nod, jotting this down on a pad. “I can’t believe you’re actually taking notes,” my inner cynic chimes in again.
“So,” I continue, “is Dusty jealous of Carmen, then?”
“No, no,” Rachel says. “He likes having her around, though he wishes she’d interact with him more. She’s sort of like the classic older sister who looks down her nose at the kid brother. He—” She pauses again and looks at Carmen. “Carmen says he can be a pest. Like I said, classic sibling dynamic. But Dusty’s making it very clear he wouldn’t want to be an only child. In fact his exact words are, ‘That would be very impossible for me.’ ”
Something in my chest goes twinge. Possibly I’m a sucker, but “very impossible” is exactly the sort of phrase I’d expect Dusty to use. Along with “Hey! Hey! Move along there, pal!” and “Are you gonna finish that? Well, are you?”
I clear my throat and say, “For someone who craves companionship so much, he really has no use for the other dogs in the neighborhood. He not only has no canine friends, he’s actively hostile to them. I’m talking open aggression. And yet when I take him to agility class, he’s as meek as a lamb.” (As if on cue, the meek little lamb erupts in fury at a DHL truck passing the house.)
Rachel sighs. “Yes. Yes, I’m seeing all that now. What it amounts to is that when you’re walking with him and other dogs approach you, he can sense their social energy, and it makes him nervous and unsure of himself. He doesn’t know what it is or how to respond, so he gets aggressive. But in agility class, the dogs are otherwise occupied, so he can ignore them and relax.”
“He’s not so much relaxed as comatose.”
“Oh, by ‘relax’ I just mean he doesn’t have to be ‘on.’ And he’s not comatose, he’s observing. He feels more comfortable watching others than engaging with them.”
“Exactly like you,” notes my inner cynic, who’s suddenly not so cynical.
“He’s that way with other people too,” I say. “He shies away from them, won’t have anything to do with them.”
Rachel shrugs. “He’s just not interested in other people. He’s only interested in you.”
“Well, what can I do to get him over that?”
She gives me a penetrating look. “Why would you want to?”
I sputter for a moment. I don’t really have an answer. “Well,” I say, grasping, “it’d be nice, for instance, when we have people over, if he weren’t so antisocial. When we’re having a dinner party or something—I mean, I’m usually the one who’s cooking, plus, you know, I’ve got guests to entertain, and it’s just . . . well, having to keep an eye on Dusty too, that’s just one more burden on my shoulders.”
Rachel looks at Dusty for a while and then looks at me even longer. I’m beginning to squirm beneath her gaze when she says, “Dusty tells me you like that.”
I blink. “He tells you what?”
“He’s having a hard time expressing himself,” she says. “But what I’m getting from him is that you like keeping track of him during parties.” She gives him a quick glance, as if to confirm this. “He says you get nervous with a bunch of people around, unless you have a job. That’s why you like to do the cooking and keep tabs on him. It makes you feel less awkward when you have something to do.”
I can feel my face flush. It’s almost as if I’ve been physically struck. I can’t argue with any of this. In fact, hearing it spoken, I know it’s undeniably true. I do feel at sea among people—even good friends in my own home. There’s something about the formless drift of casual cocktail chatter that unnerves and unmans me. I need touchstones; I need anchors.
Goddamn it. What the hell is happening? Who exactly is being “whispered” here?
“It sounds like you and Dusty both like structure,” Rachel continues. “That’s why agility is so good for you both.”
It’s a moment before I can speak, my throat still constricted by emotion. But I’m grateful for the chance to get back to the original issue. “So,” I ask, trying to disguise the tremor that’s crept into my voice, “what can I do to give him more confidence when we’re competing?”
She recommends aromatherapy and a few herbal extracts, and I take up my pen again to scribble down the names she rattles off. “Before we wrap things up,” I say, “I was wondering if you could give Dusty a body scan.” Andi had suggested this—said it could be very enlightening, especially for animals whose backgrounds are unknown.
“Sure!” Rachel says, as though I’ve requested the most unexceptional thing in the world. I might’ve just asked her to lend me a fiver or sing a few bars of “Eleanor Rigby.” She puts her hands on her knees and looks hard at Dusty. After a few moments, she says, “Well, this is interesting.”
“What?”
“It seems Dusty is nearsighted.”
“You’re kidding. Nearsighted?”
“Yes. He’s telling me so now. When he’s with you in the agility ring, it’s like the obstacles come up out of nowhere, which makes him kind of timid. He sticks by you, doesn’t he?”
“Yes. Most of the time, anyway.”
“That’s why. He doesn’t want to get too far away from you because running toward things he can’t see makes him a little hesitant.”
“Well, I do tell him what’s coming up. He’s just got to listen to me.” “You’re whining,” says my inner cynic, who seems now to have changed sides.
“He does listen to you. And he’s trying
to get better at it. But be patient with him.”
I sit back, trying to absorb this.
“Anything else I can help you with?” she asks.
I shake my head. “I think this is about all I can take for one day.”
She laughs, then in a great cheery bustle she’s on her feet and out the door, once more back in a world that now seems far too small for her.
It’s minutes before my heart stops pounding.
I look at Dusty—who seems entirely unperturbed—and say, “Geez, boy. Way to knock the old man on his ass.”
Then I go and give him a big hug.
And what do you know, he lets me.
CHAPTER 25
On, Blitzen!
With my fresh new outlook, we reenter the world of competitive canine agility at the biggest trial of the year: Blitzen Agility Club’s, held at the McCormick Place convention center on Chicago’s lakefront. The event is cosponsored by the International Kennel Club, and the event is known in the agility world as IKC.
It’s also much more than an agility trial; it’s part of a self-described “cluster” of dog shows, including obedience and conformation trials (Westminster-style “best of breed” shows), plus vendors of every kind of dog-related product you can imagine and a few you probably can’t. As Dusty and I wind our way through the bazaar-like environs, we pass booths selling T-shirts, pot holders, paperweights, frames, porcelain figurines, decals, canned food, dry food, vitamins, snack treats, mouse pads, tea towels, shampoos, brushes, clippers, shears, leashes, collars, clothing, furniture, photo portraits, oil portraits, caricatures, bowls and dishes, welcome mats, baseball caps, cutting boards, crates, blankets, mats, purses, luggage, plush toys, squeaky toys, pull toys, flower pots, cookie jars, temporary tattoos, pooper scoopers, pet-stain solvents, books, videos, and magazines. The Anti-Cruelty Society has a booth, as do several rescue societies, so you can just bypass the accessories and get yourself an actual dog.