by Tilda Shalof
He’s certainly looking his best now. His coat is glossy and smoothly brushed. His shining eyes are locked on Bryce, reading his body, figuring out what is expected of him and then ready to spring into action. This dog has a strong work ethic.
“First thing, I had to make sure he was safe around children, so I asked a family with little kids if we could test him out. ‘You can tell me to hit the road, if you want to,’ I told them, but the closer the kids got, the more Cody wagged his tail. They pulled his ears and stuck their fingers up his bum, and he didn’t flinch. Afterwards, he jumped into my truck right away. I chose him and he chose me.”
“Do you think Cody knows he has a job to do?” I have the strongest sensation that he does and, as improbable as it sounds, that he’s following our conversation.
“Seems to. When I took out his brush in the morning, he knew we were going to work.”
If a dog can smile, Cody is smiling.
“He’s pretty pleased with himself because we got past the ‘no pets’ sign today at the entrance to the mall. Once, we got stopped by the security guy. When I explained that Cody is a working dog, he seemed suspicious, but let us through. Another day, we got here early and Cody and I were walking around. This mall cop came to the VON office to complain. ‘Why is that dog in the mall? Dogs aren’t allowed.’ I explained he’s a therapy dog.”
Just then, Buzz and Lorne, two participants in the day program, come over to meet me. Buzz, who’s bald and looks exactly like Mr. Magoo, asks, “Didn’t you play the trumpet with us in the Big Band?” I shake my head, no, as his buddy Lorne takes my hands and twirls me around. We do-si-do for a few steps, then he dips me down, ballroom style.
“Did Cody have to have any special training?” I ask, returning to them.
“The testing was in-ten-sive. They let him lose in a room with ten people walking, some with walkers or canes, each person making sudden noises. Cody didn’t startle. Then they brought in a wheelchair – didn’t fizz him in the least. Took a metal garbage bag with empty cans, banged on it. Put treats out to test that he didn’t jump up and grab them or take them with his teeth. They even brought in other dogs to test for aggression. They put him through the paces and he came through with flying colours. Cody needed no training. He’s a natural.
“People think any dog can do this work, but if the dog is skittish, or growly, it won’t work,” Bryce continues. “They have to have the right temperament to help people. There are dogs that guide blind people, fetch for people in wheelchairs, and ones that can detect a seizure coming on. The owner has to be trained as well as the dog. It’s not as simple as people think it is. And it’s not so simple to get a helper dog. One lady called me up to say, ‘I’ve caught multiple sclerosis, can I get a dog to help me?’ Did she think these dogs are party favours?”
Cody whimpers a little, and Bryce reaches down to pat his head.
On their days off, Bryce and Cody keep busy. They go to Highway 401, the portion of it called the “Highway of Heroes,” where fallen soldiers are brought home in a procession. “That’s why I wear yellow ribbons on my cap.” He takes it off to show me. “It means ‘you are not forgotten.’ Cody and I go for each soldier, to pay our respects. There’s no traffic and it’s a cavalcade with a police escort and they slow down at the overpass. We wave our flags. No one talks, some people break down in tears. Oh, here comes Sister Anna.”
Bryce and Cody share a glance. “Don’t worry, Cody,” Bryce tells him. “I’ll be good. I promise. No dirty jokes when Sister Anna is around.”
“I love Cody,” says Sister Anna, joining us at the table. “Co-dy, Co-dy,” she chants.
“One lady was scared,” Bryce continues. “Imagine that. It took three months, but she patted him. ‘That wasn’t too bad,’ she said. Soon she was patting him and calling him over.
“When people see Cody, it brings them out of their shell and they tell stories of their own pets. I can’t tell you how many Spots, Rovers, and Fidos that Cody has reminded people of.” Bryce gets up to bring us both a cup of freshly brewed coffee. I call Cody over to me, but he trots after Bryce into the kitchen and I follow them.
“You two are tied at the hip.”
“Cody and I had never been separated, until last year when I had to go in for a five-artery bypass. It’s a scary place, the hospital.”
“Tell me about it,” I groan. “I love it as a nurse, but as a patient? Not so much.”
“So, one day last year my chest was paining me. The wife drove me into town and the doctor told me I needed an operation. Just before I went under, he asked me, ‘Sir, do you have any concerns?’ ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Are you old enough to do surgery?’ He looked like my teenage grandson. My little granddaughter said, ‘You’re sick, aren’t you, Grandpa?’ ‘Grandpa’s gonna come right,’ I told her. ‘You can’t get married before you’re twenty because I have to learn to dance first.’ The first thing the doctor said when I woke up after surgery was, ‘You’d better sign up for those dancing lessons, Mr. Balson.’ I was still in the hospital and I had to see Cody, so they managed to wrangle an okay from the doctor to have him brought in. Did me a world of good. And didn’t he go to work when he got there? We went room to room visiting patients, making them feel better. Cody is practically a nurse himself.
“One girl we visited was having a bad day. She was down in the dumps. Cody went to her. Seemed to understand she needed cheering up. He nudged her hand to get her attention. He doesn’t usually lick people, but that day, he licked her hand. What a smile on her face. Cody reads people, he knows how they’re doing.
“Cody’s specialty is therapy, but I have read about a beagle named Cliff from Holland who sniffs human feces samples and can detect C. difficile bacteria with 99.8 per cent accuracy. He gets to sniff stool all day – what a sweet gig for a dog. I have a friend whose cat lets her know when her diabetic daughter’s blood sugar is too low. In the dog park I met two dogs who work downtown detecting the presence of bed bugs.”
Bryce knows of dogs who serve in the military, helping soldiers who come home from service with PTSD. “I know one bitch, if you’ll excuse the term, who’s high-strung, but when she’s on duty, caring for a traumatized soldier, she dials it back and calms the guy down.”
There is no doubt in my mind that Cody is listening to our conversation. He puts his head down on his front paws and heaves a contented sigh.
“Yup, Cody works hard. He also makes his rounds at the local retirement home. At first, it was like trying to herd cats. People were all over the place, wandering off in different directions. Cody comes from a long line of herders, but he soon realized he wasn’t supposed to round up this crowd, nor bark or nip at their heels to bring them in line. At home he’s frisky, but here, he’s super-careful not to brush against anyone or get in anyone’s way. Once, someone fell, and Cody went over to touch them on the nose to let them know someone was coming to help.
“He greets each person as they arrive, and if someone’s sad or upset, or just having a bad day, Cody senses it. He goes over to lean into them and send them good vibes. He nuzzles them and stays close. He has his favourites, though, but he tries not to show it.”
“What else does Cody like to do when he’s not working?”
“Ordinary dog things – chase squirrels. Spooked a chipmunk the other day. It was chittering at him, right in front of him. Cody faked a lunge, deked him, and let out a bark. It worked. That chipmunk doesn’t mess with Cody no more. You can learn a lot from a dog. Cody’s an old dog, but he’s still learning new tricks.”
Bryce looks at Cody with love and Cody returns it.
FRIENDS WITH BOUNDARIES
“IF HE FINDS ME,” she drops her voice and looks around furtively, “he’ll kill me. Please don’t use my real name.”
Of course not, I assure her.
She takes a deep breath, looks me in the eye, and is ready to speak.
“More than one time, I have experienced the last few moments before death.
”
Even in her distress, Shahida remains articulate and beautiful, with dark, sad eyes and a smooth, perfect complexion. She sits in a booth at a suburban Tim Hortons, Nurse Allie Clinton at her side. She’s frightened, cowed, but clearly wants to talk to me, to tell me what happened. The clothes she wears are in a style that’s foreign to her. The blue jeans, high-necked sweater, oversized plaid shirt are uncomfortable; she’s used to wearing a hijab to cover her head and neck, and a long dress with sleeves called an abaya, but her usual attire would make it easier to be recognized by someone from her Muslim community. Shahida needs to be unnoticed – ideally invisible – because she has gone into hiding. “That’s why I’m wearing these Canadian clothes they gave me at the shelter.” That’s where she’s staying after fleeing her husband, who tried to choke her. It wasn’t the first time he’d attacked her, or the first time she’d tried to escape. But this time was different; she finally got away.
Shahida is a young mother of two from Pakistan who has lived in Canada for the past five years. “Shahida’s home is not safe,” Allie had explained tersely on the phone. “We can’t meet there.” She was careful not to say more, leaving it to Shahida to decide how much to disclose. But Shahida wants to talk. Before she begins, she warns me that what she is about to tell is “maybe 1 per cent of the story.”
“My husband is a lawyer and he got a doctor friend of his to diagnose me with bipolar disorder.” She pulls open a side pocket of the knapsack beside her to show me a plain, plastic red ring. “This key chain. It was the first thing. It was blue. He changed the colour to make me think I was losing my mind.” Shahida wills tears not to fall from her eyes. “He told me I was crazy, unstable. ‘Mental,’ he kept saying, and he’d slap the side of my head.” Shahida smacks the side of her head to show me how he did it.
“When I met Nurse Allie at the shelter, I told her, ‘I have bipolar, you know.’ ” She looks to Allie to tell her part of the story.
“When Shahida said that, something clicked in me,” Allie recalls. “ ‘Do you think you are bipolar?’ I asked her.”
“The way she asked my opinion validated what I believed deep down. That I wasn’t crazy. He had me put on Valium, lithium, and other meds. I developed tremors and insomnia. I slept on the box spring; he slept on the bed. ‘You’re mental, mental, mental,’ he kept saying. He told the kids, ‘Your mother is mental.’ I began to doubt myself. One day I asked him, ‘Why do you call me mental?’ ‘Because you are crazy. I have no need for you, except for sex.’ ” She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes to calm herself before going on. “The credit card. That was the next thing. He left it on the kitchen counter. My son splashed water on it and bent it. That night I told him I needed a new one.” She pulls the waterlogged credit card from her knapsack. “Here, I keep it to always remind me. He said, ‘Imran didn’t do this. You ruined it, so I’d have to get you a new one.’ I was living with a man who didn’t treat me like a human being. I sat like a statue for hours. Then, I went into the mosque and prayed for hours. The next day I went back and hid there, but he came and found me, and dragged me home. ‘I want to go back to my home, to my parents,’ I told him. ‘You take the kids and I’ll go.’ But he’d hidden my passport. He told the judge I wasn’t capable of being their mother, that I was unstable, had attempted suicide. I am crying now for the kids, but otherwise I am normal.”
Her husband kept Shahida locked up at home, told the children’s teachers that their mother was in a psychiatric facility. He hired two nannies to take care of the house and children.
“ ‘Your words are killing me,’ I told him. ‘Your mother is crazy,’ he told the kids. He hit me. Many times, he covered my mouth and nose, pushed me against the wall. That’s why I always wear a turtleneck.” She pulls it down to show me purplish-red streaks. “He made me keep my neck covered. A week ago he grabbed me by the throat. I tried to scream, but I couldn’t. I pushed him back and ran to the bathroom and locked the door. This is it. This is the time I will die. I remember thinking that. Then I collapsed and blacked out for I don’t know how long. When I woke up, I was still lying on the bathroom floor. He had gone to work and taken the kids to school. I took a cab to the shelter where I’m staying now. A friend told me about it. I had no money for a taxi and no idea where I was going. I’d only been out of the house a few times, just to go to the shopping mall. That’s all he’d ever allow me.”
Allie gives her money for lunch and while Shahida goes to the counter, Allie explains the odds against a woman escaping domestic violence. “It takes, on average, thirty-four assaults before a woman finds the courage to get out. Most don’t.”
It takes twenty pounds of pressure to flip the tab on a can of soda, and only a few more to occlude the trachea. I remember Morag’s research on strangulation.
Allie has been visiting Shahida in the shelter every day and will accompany her to a psychiatrist to assess competency, as well as to the custody court to bolster her courage and make sure her voice is heard. Making sure her client gets heard is challenging because, as Allie muses, “I don’t think I ever realized the extent to which the medical and legal systems can be influenced by culture, especially dominant patriarchal ones. Shahida and I will be navigating together through this frightening labyrinth. I want to make sure she is seen and her voice heard.”
“Nurse Allie is my lifeline,” Shahida explains, returning to sit with us, a sandwich in hand. “I couldn’t go through this without her.”
“You are social worker, lawyer, and therapist, too,” I say to Allie, “as well as nurse.”
“Nursing puts the pieces together. I want to bring everyone to the table and make sure Shahida has choices. I’m the constant, ensuring everyone knows the story and stays on track.”
“Nurse Allie gave me hope,” Shahida says. “She was the first one who saw me as possibly sane. What I’ve told you is just bits and pieces,” she says, thanking me for the opportunity to share even that. “Maybe it will help some other woman to get out like I did.”
Finally! Thanks to the sympathetic ear of my friend Annie’s nurse manager, and her willingness to slice thorough the bureaucracy for me and expedite the process, I’ve been given permission to go on visits with four nurses who work for Toronto Public Health. That’s how I got to meet Allie. I’ll now spend an hour or two with Annie, and then accompany the other nurses tomorrow. These nurses all work with new mothers, and I’m here to watch Annie teach young women how to connect with their babies. “I wish I’d had someone like me when I had my babies,” she says. “I do, too,” I agree.
Annie works with young mothers who are poor, new to the country, or struggling in some way. “If you’re young and have a baby, I want to support you to be the best mom you can be,” Annie says, her practical intelligence showing through her lighthearted tone.
We drive to a strip of row houses in downtown Toronto. Her first client of the day is a young mom named Rita, a tall, attractive nineteen-year-old with long dark hair, holding a squirming baby on her hip. Today, Annie is here to talk with her about baby safety. She explains that the baby might go into unsafe places. “As his mother, you are there to protect your baby. You have to decide whether to keep your eye on him constantly or make sure your home is always safe and clean so you don’t have to worry.”
Rita thinks this over, putting visible effort into showing interest in what Annie is saying. “I still can’t believe I’m even a mother,” she says as she sets Darwin, her ten-month-old bright-eyed baby boy, down on the carpet in front of her. Annie gives her a toy to hand to Darwin, and, when cued, Rita does that. Annie helps Rita figure out which option she prefers, constant vigilance or baby-proofing. Together, they plan a strategy to make this small, stuffy studio apartment safe for Darwin on Rita’s minimal budget.
“At six months, babies don’t know the word ‘no,’ ” Annie explains, “so you must keep the home safe.” Rita does not look pleased with the work that baby-proofing entails. She sighs wearily.
“My son’s baby-daddy left me during the pregnancy.” Rita sits back up to explain her situation to me. “He doesn’t give me money, never tells me if he’s going to visit the baby. He left while I was giving birth, came back a few days later, then left again.”
Annie fills in the rest. Rita had to be admitted to the hospital for psychiatric treatment for a few weeks. Her brother and sister took care of the baby during that time. We watch Rita play with her baby in the ways that Annie has taught her and has rehearsed many times.
I ask Rita about her family. “They try to be good to me, but I don’t trust them. I prefer to stay away from them, indoors alone, by myself.”
“You’re not alone now. You have Darwin to look after,” Annie reminds her.
Rita nods. “My family is very educated but they keep reminding me about my schizophrenia and nagging me to take my meds. Part of me doesn’t believe I have this thing, but it’s also a relief to think I have it and that it’s not my fault that I have a thing that affects my judgement.”
The baby’s father’s absence is the matter that seems to vex her much more. “He comes over but won’t bring any diapers and won’t look after the baby. Sometimes I feel scared when he’s over. But I promised Annie I’d tell her if there’s a problem. Annie has helped me a lot. She tells me what to expect, and how to play with Darwin, how to teach him. When I ask her questions, her answers are not just fluff, they’re scientific. I couldn’t manage without her.”