Dogged Pursuit

by Robert Rodi

  Which, admittedly, it probably will. It’s canine agility, not chaos theory. What I haven’t told him, he’s perfectly capable of figuring out. I’ve just got to trust him. He’s certainly earned my trust. In the days following my surgery, he’s taken over running the household with such boldness and brio that I can’t help feeling a little, well, irrelevant. I’d been accustomed to thinking of myself as indispensable.

  And possibly I am, to Dusty. How’s he going to react to having Jeffrey suddenly there giving him orders instead of me? Dogs are creatures of habit, thriving on routine. I can’t imagine anything more jolting than this kind of switcheroo. The idea of him refusing to accept it, and just rebelling or falling apart, plagues me. It doesn’t help that I have nothing to do but lie on my back and let my mind wander where it will.

  When we arrive at Dee’s class on Thursday night, I perch on my crutches outside the ring and send Jeffrey in to warm up. He unhooks Dusty and takes him over the dog walk, through the tire, over a few jumps. He looks a little stiff and uncertain at first, but as he makes his way around the room he loosens up. As for Dusty, he looks fine. Peppy, even. I know I should be relieved. But would some token show of unwillingness or confusion be too much to ask?

  The other dogs now come spilling in for their warm-ups and Dusty grows shy and tentative. I call out to Jeffrey, “Just keep him motivated and focused on you!” and he gives me a look back that says all too clearly, “Thank you I know, and please do not narrate my evening.” So I bite my tongue and try to content myself with merely observing. It’s a very odd feeling, watching Dusty perform from this angle. His tail is wagging, he’s smiling—obviously he’s enjoying himself. Is he always like that?

  After the warm-ups Dee calls the class together. She introduces Jeffrey as a guest handler, then gets down to the exercises. As usual she’s laid out a few courses incorporating the various obstacles in different permutations, and everybody lines up to have a go at them.

  Jeffrey does surprisingly well. Dusty stays with him, goes where he’s told, and even nails a six-weave-pole set on the first try. I nearly keel over. Dee must know what I’m feeling, because she looks over at me and mouths the word, “Honeymoon.” I feel immediately consoled.

  Afterward Jeffrey comes over and asks, “Was that a clean run?” He’s obviously already picked up the lingo. I tell him yes, it certainly was clean. “It felt clean.” Okay, we can stop saying clean now.

  He asks if I have any suggestions, and in fact there are a few things I’ve noticed. For instance, he sometimes uses the wrong arm to direct Dusty to an obstacle, which can throw the dog off (you always want to use the arm nearest to the animal). Also, his handling is just a little softer than it should be. It’s like he’s offering suggestions more than giving commands. But the moment I try to tell him these things, his face goes rigid, and I can tell it’s too much, too fast. What he really wants to hear is how good a job he’s doing. So I backpedal and tell him that, and he smiles again, rejoining the others.

  I get distracted by people arriving for the advanced class. These are my usual training partners. They’ve all heard about my accident and want to kid me or commiserate or hear the story again from my own lips. I comply while trying to keep an eye on Jeffrey and Dusty. Each time I steal a glance I find them doing pretty well, though Jeffrey occasionally has the appearance of someone trying to carry two gallons of Jell-O in a one-gallon tub.

  When the class ends, he comes out breathless and slick with sweat. “Man, that is way harder than it looks,” he gasps, and I’m very gratified to hear this, though a little disturbed that he’s apparently thought I’ve been slacking all these years. On the drive home he asks, “So am I ready for the trial?”

  “I think so. You’ve got most of the moves down and you’re functioning as a team. You could probably continue practicing, but honestly I think it’s more helpful to learn by doing.”

  “It’s mainly Dusty,” he says. “For most of the class, he was the one leading me.” And with that my singed pride is salved. I’m not entirely out of the equation; what I’ve taught Dusty, he’s now teaching someone else.

  The morning of the trial arrives. By this time my cast has come off and I’ve been given a big black walking boot that straps on all the way up my calf. It makes a significant difference in my quality of life—since it’s removable I can once again shower and drive and sleep unencumbered—but its sole is thicker than any of the shoes I wear on my other foot, so that while I’m able to walk and glad of it, I’m always tilting leeward and in peril of toppling over. Since toppling over is something I never want to do again, I’ve taken to using a cane to counterbalance. I look a bit freakish lurching around with my Frankenstein foot and wielding a cudgel, but I’ve been housebound so long that it’d take more than mere pride to keep me from venturing out today.

  When I get downstairs, I find Jeffrey packing a cooler with a variety of sandwiches, several kinds of fruit, and assorted bags of chips and cookies. “Are we going to an agility trial?” I ask. “Or driving south to feed Katrina refugees?”

  “Don’t be silly,” he says, shutting the lid. “Katrina was years ago.” And with that he wheels the cooler outside.

  I limp after him and he shuts the door behind me. Just before he locks it he says, “Can you think of anything else we need?”

  I shrug. “Oh, just . . . you know. The dog.”

  He turns the key while tossing his head over his shoulder. “He’s already out.”

  I turn and look, and sure enough Dusty’s in the yard, reclining by the fence and looking very much at ease. Why didn’t I ever think of that? I’ve always made my preparations with Dusty inside and underfoot, so that by the time I got him out the door he was already good and rattled. I have to wonder just how much more humbling I’ll have to endure before this experience is over.

  Traffic is light, so we arrive at the Sportsplex in St. Charles well before noon. One of my worries is that Jeffrey won’t deal well with all the downtime at the trial, that he’ll get fidgety and impatient or, worse, that he’ll see my All Fours colleagues as a bunch of freakish cult members. It turns out he’s much more comfortable hanging around in a canvas chair than I am and falls into easy conversation with the rest of the team. It probably helps that they’re doing their best to make him feel welcome and supported. Meanwhile I come in for some good-natured ribbing, because it’s the first time anyone’s seen me with my cane. Any hopes I’d had of coming off as Churchillian are pretty much dashed.

  The facility is another indoor soccer arena that’s been temporarily customized for agility. One of its courts is made over for standard, the other for jumpers. Unfortunately, our jumpers run is first. I’d have preferred that Jeffrey start with standard, which we still run in novice, but he’ll have to tackle this more difficult open course instead. I go over the map with him and try not to comment on how fiendishly tough it looks. There are lots of tight corners and hairpin turns. I’d have trouble running this one myself. Eighteen obstacles in all. “Are there always this many?” Jeffrey asks, his pupils starting to dilate. Performance anxiety is grabbing hold.

  I send him out for his walk-through, resisting the urge to go with him. “Let go and let God . . . ,” I tell myself. Also, I’m pretty slow on my feet these days and I don’t want to hold him back. But when Betsy kindly volunteers to go out and help him, I find myself unable to sit idly by; even if I can’t keep up, joining him will be easier on me than anxiously craning my neck to watch him from the sidelines.

  I reach him moments after Betsy does. He’s just started showing her the attack he’s got planned. I stick my head in between theirs, and as I do my clumsy boot propels me forward a bit too swiftly, so that I come across as much more of a busybody than I really intended. Jeffrey and Betsy exchange a glance—oh, fine, I’ve given them cause to form a bond against me!—then Jeffrey resumes sketching out his course for us.

  He actually has a pretty good idea of what he needs to do and how to do it; though wh
en I originally explained the concept of turning to get your dog on your opposite side without losing momentum, I apparently neglected to tell him the correct term for it (which is front cross) because he now announces that, on the far side of a certain jump, he’ll be doing a “pirouette.” Betsy finds this so cute she can hardly stand it. Jeffrey’s cheeks flush hot pink with embarrassment, and I quietly shrink back, hoping he has a good run so he forgets to give me hell for this afterward.

  The competition begins with the big dogs. Jeffrey watches each team to pick up pointers on what they do right and, almost more valuably, how they screw up. He’s taking this very seriously, which is gratifying; I couldn’t have borne it if he’d treated it as some kind of lark, free of consequences. But then I should’ve known better. He’s always had a keen competitive streak. In fact he’s got himself so geared up that I feel compelled to put the brakes on his ambition a bit. “Just remember,” I tell him, “there’s no expectation here. It’s your first run ever, it’s in open instead of novice, and the course is a tough one. Just concentrate on getting through it.”

  “Screw that,” he says. “We’re gonna tear the place down.”

  I just smile and nod, because it’s not my job to humble him. That’s Dusty’s. And of course he does exactly that. He refuses to jump, runs circles around the weave poles, and pops out of the tunnel from the same side he entered it. He’s really giving Jeffrey a crash course in “La la la la la, I can’t hear you.”

  Jeffrey looks absolutely stricken afterward, so much so that all his annoyance with me is utterly forgotten. “What went wrong?” he asks as he mops his face with his discarded sweatshirt.

  I can only shrug. “If I knew that, I’d have had him running in excellent by now. Sometimes he’s just not with you.”

  He plops down into his chair. “How much water did I bring?”

  I open the cooler and root through it. “Four bottles.”

  “I’ll take two of them now.”

  The novice standard run is a fairly straightforward course compared to the one Jeffrey barely survived earlier, although it does have the disadvantage of featuring the full complement of obstacles. There’s even a set of broad jumps thrown in. But he walks it several times (this time without my help), and he’s so far recovered from his earlier calamity that he’s back to feeling confident—even cocky. He hands me his video cam and asks me to record the run.

  “Are you sure?” I say.

  He half smirks, as if to say, “Dude. Please.”

  And—what do you know. He lines Dusty up, and when the timekeeper says go they sail right over the first jump, and the momentum from that carries them clear up the A-frame, like the breath of God is puffing away at Dusty’s tail. From there Jeffrey pulls one his “pirouettes” to get Dusty into the tunnel, and while it doesn’t quite work as planned, somehow Dusty figures out where he’s meant to go, and goes there—it’s almost like he and Jeffrey are compensating for each other’s lapses.

  And that’s when I start watching him, in a way I’m never able to when I’m running beside him. And yes it’s true he’s not a fast dog, nor is he poetry in motion or an unstoppable juggernaut or anything like that. He’s a little wad of scruff with a scrap of determination, that’s all. But there are times—when he’s right at the apex of a jump, with his forelegs stretched before him and his hind feet still recoiling from the launch; or when he’s plunging through the tire, the velocity streaking the fur on his face and splaying his cheeks into a smile; or when he’s loping across the dog walk, his head low and his tail erect—that he seems suddenly beautiful, suddenly graceful, suddenly powerful. They’re just split-second images, flashes, nothing more, but they have the startling effect of drop-kicking me into profound emotion. In this setting, I’m seeing him for the first time as separate from me—not just physically, in the sense that I’m not out there with him, but as an entirely separate entity. And it occurs to me that I really do love the little guy. For all his peculiarities and pathologies, he has such tremendous dignity. The blood of wolves runs in his veins, the race memory of primeval packs that took down mastodons, the pedigree of canine legions who sprinted alongside the armies of Alexander. I can see all this in him, and I’m aware as never before that as fiercely loyal as he may be, he doesn’t disappear when I’m not there. In fact outside my shadow he seems to grow larger—as does his integrity, his honor.

  I’ve just begun humming “Summon the Heroes” when he and Jeffrey reach the teeter and everything comes apart at the seams. Once again he’s a nineteen-pound head case dithering wildly on a glorified playground.

  But I can’t forget what I’ve just glimpsed in him. Afterward I play back the video of the run, trying to recapture the sensation, but the camera is small and Dusty is barely visible—just a little charcoal blip moving across the puny screen. Never mind, it’s all still in my head, etched indelibly on my brain. I’ve seen my dog in an entirely new light—seen him as something besides my dog— something greater and grander. What this means for our relationship, I’m still too shaken to know or guess.

  On the drive home, Jeffrey asks, “Do you have any suggestions on how I might improve?”

  “What?” I say, certain I can’t have heard him correctly. “ ‘Improve’? You—you actually want to do this again?”

  “Sure!” He turns and calls over his shoulder, “We’ve got to win, right Dusty? Win win win!”

  What have I set in motion here? I’ve effectively cut myself out of my own projected destiny. My dog, my partner—both are rushing off to glory on their own, leaving me behind, choking on their dust. The world has gone topsy-turvy. There’s a weight bearing down on me, the sky above us is big and heavy, and so is my leg. I lean back in my seat and close my eyes, and try not to think about it.

  Terry Simons is on TV again, standing with someone who’s smiling just as hard as he is. And I know who it is, I do:

  TERRY: I’M HERE WITH JEFFREY SMITH, OURSIXTEEN-INCHWINNER!JEFFREY, WHAT’S THE SECRET TO YOUR SUCCESS?

  JEFFREY: I have to thank my partner, Rob, who did a lot of preliminary work with Dusty before I took over and made him a champion.

  TERRY: IS YOUR PARTNER HERE TONIGHT?

  JEFFREY: No Terry, he’s at home with a broken ankle that refuses to heal. Medical science is baffled by his condition . . .

  I’m jolted awake by a speed bump. I blink and look out the window; we’re cruising down our street.

  As I hobble into the house, Carmen’s there to greet me—no, not me—she’s looking past me. Everybody’s looking past me these days.

  I wander upstairs to revel in self-pity, shutting the door and taking some extra shut-eye. When I’m finally sufficiently rested, I yawn, stretch, and stumble across the hallway to check my e-mail. There’s already a message from Jeffrey:

  I took the liberty of checking your calendar. I have nothing scheduled April 19-20 and would relish the opportunity to QQ if you are still hobbled. I will work on my pirouette technique, as it does not appear all that seamless on the video.

  It was great bonding with Dusty today; he seems to look at me differently, like he’s the Karate Kid and I’m Al Morita. Thank you for trusting me with his handling.

  At this point, there’s really nothing for me to do but give in.

  CHAPTER 31

  At the Crossroads

  Weeks pass. I’m able to dispense with the cane, but the boot remains for the foreseeable future, which of course means I’m unable to run Dusty when April 19 rolls around. Just as well, ’cause if I were, I’d have a struggle on my hands wrenching him back from Jeffrey. He’s been looking forward to this with a kind of crazy confidence that alarms me. He’s obsessed with qualifying—and since that’s really another way of saying “glory,” I can’t really criticize. The difference is that I gave myself a year. Jeffrey’s done exactly two runs to date and feels he’s overdue. He expects to end this weekend bedecked with blue ribbons and smiles all around. Failure, as Mrs. Thatcher once pronounced from a slight
ly more enviable perch, is not an option.

  Upon our arrival, Jeffrey nearly sprints onto the court, map in hand, and starts strutting like the cock of the walk. Meantime I set up Dusty’s crate and our chairs and greet the other All Fours attendees—Marilyn, Diane, Alise, and Cyndi, so far, with several others expected as the days draws on. They’re all friendly enough, but their eyes keep straying to Jeffrey. Something about him intrigues them; possibly it’s his shimmering positivity and beguiling naïveté. They all seem to want to tweak his cheek and stroke his mop of hair. I’m not jealous, though. I’m not.

  Once Dusty’s secure in his crate and has ample water in his dish, I thump out to see what Jeffrey’s come up with. It’s a fairly straightforward course. The first third is easily handled with the dog on the left, then there’s a middle section where it’s best to switch to the right before going back to the left for the finish. So there are only three places Jeffrey needs to front cross—or pirouette, as we now refer to it, completely unironically. Simple stuff.

  But he has a question. “When I pirouette,” he says, “do I go clockwise or counterclockwise?”

  I blink. “Well, that depends what side you’re . . . Look, you don’t really need to think that way. It’s just a matter of switching sides while keeping the dog in your line of sight. Here,” I say, and I demonstrate pretending to come off a jump, extending my left arm to focus the hypothetical dog’s attention, then swiftly replacing it with my right as I pivot myself to his other flank.