In secret places in the neighborhood of her house in East Hampton Niobe used to bury her best bones. They were her treasures, and she knew they were still where she had left them, safely hidden, waiting for her. She smelled earth now, the same old earth, but she could not get into the garden because the gate was closed, and locked. There was a lady in the garden, walking near the gate, and Niobe wagged her tail, but the lady didn’t see her, or didn’t want to see her. Niobe stopped wagging, and two or three minutes later she turned from the gate and went around the corner onto Christopher Street. And there, as she walked west on Christopher Street, Niobe saw a vision. She saw the public road that cuts through the golf course in East Hampton, with the cars passing each other, going north and south, just as they always did. She was looking at the West Side Highway, which is cut out of the air around it just as the road in East Hampton is cut out of the green golf course. All she really saw was cars moving in the distance. It was months since Niobe had seen cars at a distance, and the distance between where she was on Christopher Street and the elevated highway was much the same as the distance between her old lawn in East Hampton and her old view of the golf course. Everything was happening at once. Her head was still full of the smell of new earth, and she was seeing her view again, and now she smelled, very close to her, the Hudson River. The river did not smell like the Atlantic Ocean, but Niobe knew she was walking toward water, big water. Perhaps she was going to have a swim. Her ears went up and she began to hurry, pulling on her leash. But then she turned another corner and found herself back in the same old concrete quadrangle, walking her geometrical city-dog walk, with only miserable lampposts to tease her starving nose. In her disappointment Niobe lost her temper and charged furiously across the sidewalk to threaten a five-pound nuisance, a miniature white poodle who yapped rudely at her, and who stood like a hero on his four tiny paws and glared up at her until she was dragged away, seventy pounds of raging disgrace.
Poor Niobe. She is being made foolish in her old age. She would like to go swimming, show them all what she can do. She would like to go swimming, show them all what she really is. She would like to dig up a bone. She would like to go for a ride in a car. She would like to find that door on West Tenth Street. Most of all, she would like to get away from Home. Yes, she would very much like to get away from Home, who now marches along behind her, holding her leash.
Home speaks: “Good Niobe. Good Dog. Nice Walk. Good Niobe.”
Home’s voice is consoling, but Niobe can’t be bothered to listen. Niobe is sick of Home, who holds her on a leash and won’t let her go anywhere or do any of the things she wants to do.
“Good Niobe,” Home says.
Niobe begins to go faster and now it is Home’s turn to be dragged along, hanging on to the leash. Home protests angrily.
“Stop it, Niobe,” Home says. “Bad Niobe. Bad Dog. Bad.”
Niobe doesn’t care. She begins to speed.
Home shouts, “Bad, bad!”
Niobe is pulling so hard that her chain collar hurts her throat but she only goes faster and faster. Disappointment and boredom have turned her into a fiend, and all she wants is to get as far as she can from Home.
But that was several days ago. Today, Niobe is going to Katonah for a holiday in the country. The car comes at twelve, as it promised to do. Niobe is led out of her apartment house on her leash, just as though she was going for her ordinary walk. But then the car door is opened and Niobe leaps into the back seat. She is mad with joy. She tumbles over herself and tries to tumble into the front seat, but as soon as the car starts off she quiets down and sits looking out through the window at the streets she is leaving. She is trembling with happiness. She makes no sound, but her eyes are shining with adoration for everything she sees—for the streets, and for the car she is in, and for the driver of the car, and for Home, who sits beside her in the back seat. Yes, Niobe is going away from Home, and Home is going with her. Niobe turns her head from the window and looks at Home, who is smoking a cigarette and smiling. “Good Niobe,” Home says, and Niobe stretches herself out on the seat and puts her head in Home’s lap. “Good Niobe,” Home says. Niobe sighs and half closes her eyes. Her tongue comes out and she licks her lips. She settles herself for a long ride. The wheels of the car go round and round and they sound as though they might keep going forever and ever.
| 1967 |
RED DOG
We bought you for our son. Half-grown,
already your bag of skin sagged everywhere,
you fell to sleep like the dark in corners,
predictably where we wouldn’t look: under
wash piled and waiting, in closets, the moan and
wheeze of your easy breathing pointed
with pips and starts of other sounds, cries
rising, a chain of woof-woof-woofs soon to
decline like cars down the hill’s far glide
of night where we said he might never go.
Of course he went, as with him went also you.
You dragged, then lost a bright steel chain: two tags
hung like my dad’s world war loudly declared
“Red Dog,” your name, our place, and that year’s
shots, identities you’d shake off to wander
the possible world. I’d hear you, coming back,
my son still out looking, afraid you’d got
worse than traveller’s bite on your mopy flanks.
His shoes puffed up dirt like spurts of time. You
mostly don’t expect to find the lost—and yet
fearful, I’d shout, then sleep, then shout. Gone.
You’d wait. You’d creep like sun across the lawn,
then, with him, leap up everywhere, dying splits
of rockets in the roses, crushing mulched shoots
faithfully planted year after year, and roots
whose volunteers you watered brown. When we knew
he’d leave, you’d chase God knows what twitch
of spoor, still, we took your balls. You slowed. Dirt
bedded you till you smelled. Your bones fouled floors.
Squirrels reclaimed their nuts. The awful spew
of what spoiled in you, lying by our fire,
comes back to me as the vet says you’ve worn
out the heart that banged to sleep beside my son.
What does it sound like, I ask? The vet listens.
Once you climbed a six-foot fence, barking, one leap,
a storm of breath we loved. Now you only eat,
ninety wheezing pounds, a processor of meat.
Like my dad, you face me, hesitate, then piss
blankets and floor. Deaf, eyes blank, the chain
slipped again, you’re lost. You don’t miss a boy’s
games, nothing swells your interest, even the moon’s
rattling tags I’ve hung above old yard rakes.
The vet claims it’s time; he’d put you down.
Calling at last, I say “Son. It’s Red. Come home.”
—DAVE SMITH | 1999 |
OBEDIENCE
JOAN ACOCELLA
The other day, we accompanied our favorite dog, Louis, to his class at the Port Chester Obedience Training Club. Louis is a two-year-old German shepherd, and he is not what you would call a natural student. At the end of his first semester in obedience training, he got left back. But all that is forgotten now. He has passed Basic I and Basic II and is currently in Novice. In the car on the way to the class, Louis’s owner, Diane, told us she hopes that he will eventually get his C.D. (Companion Dog) title, or even a C.D.X. (Companion Dog Excellent). Louis looked skeptical.
We get to school early. Basic I, the occasion of Louis’s early humiliation, is going through its paces. There is a Siberian husky, a German shepherd, a huge, hairy brown poodle named Saki (after the writer), and a tiny, refined cocker spaniel named Zach. Presiding over the dogs is their teacher, Mary Ann O’Grady, who is wearing bluejeans and a shirt with a cer
amic dog pin on the collar. Under Mary Ann’s direction, the owners are putting the dogs through their sits, stands, heels, pivots, and stops, for which they are rewarded with dog cookies. “Remember to randomize your treats!” Mary Ann urges the owners. If a dog gets a treat for every deed well done, he or she will soon get full or complacent, with predictable consequences for obedience motivation. The dogs do not get the point of this rule, and neither do some of the owners. We observe several treats being quietly distributed on an unrandomized basis.
Now Mary Ann is explaining to the owners another principle: they must start giving their dogs hand signals at the same time that they issue vocal commands. “Dogs get deaf as they get older,” she says. “If they only know vocal commands, they’ll stop obeying.”
To show what she wants, she brings out her own dog, Cora, a Border collie. Cora is so obedient that she gets to do television commercials. “Here, Cora,” Mary Ann says, and that is the last thing she says to Cora. From then on, Mary Ann performs a mime routine worthy of a Japanese temple dancer—hand up, hand down, hand scooping the air, hand sweeping the air, hand with fingers open, hand with fingers closed—all of which clearly means something, for Cora, in response, walks, heels, turns, jumps, stays, sits, puts up her paw, and, as her finale, lies down on the floor like an odalisque. The other dogs finish their lesson while Cora, still reclining, looks on, impassive.
Mary Ann dismisses Basic I. “Next week, we talk about grooming,” she says.
“Good. We could use it,” says the owner of Saki. If Tiny Tim were a dog, he would look like Saki.
Once Basic I has cleared out, the Novice class moves into the teaching area. There are two Welsh corgis, a Great Dane, a boxer, a golden retriever, a Portuguese water dog named Clyde, and two German shepherds, Lucas and Louis. Diane and the other owners have given us the lowdown on each of them. Lucas is being trained by one of the school’s senior instructors, Margie English. He is as large as she is, and when she pats him on the chest it makes a big, hollow thwonk, as if it were a wine barrel. Katie, the Great Dane, is going to be a show dog. Hope, the golden retriever, has a sort of saintly status in the class. She has been chosen to be a brood bitch for Guiding Eyes for the Blind, an organization that breeds and trains guide dogs. Her puppies will lead the blind. As for Louis, Diane confesses, he has a tendency to walk out of the class when he gets tired of it.
The Novice dogs are way beyond the simple sits and stops of Basic I. They don’t just do steps; they do combinations. They also undergo psychological trials, which test whether they can go on sitting and staying while faced with dire temptations to do otherwise. They all sit down in a row on one side of the room, their owners next to them, and Mary Ann, now wearing a Mephistophelian expression, weaves in and out among them, squeaking a squeak toy and bouncing a tennis ball. Necks become rigid, breathing becomes short, eyes gaze upon owners in an agony of indecision, but all the dogs stay put. Then Mary Ann throws the ball. This is too much for Ivory, the boxer. She races after the ball and has to be brought back into line. “We didn’t see that,” Mary Ann says. Then she ups the ante further, bringing out Cora and playing fetch with her. All the dogs hold their places. They saw what happened to Ivory. Now Mary Ann asks the owners to go to the other side of the room, so that the dogs can try the exercise without them. Diane is not even halfway across when Louis walks out of the class. Diane goes to retrieve him. “He did it perfectly on the first day,” she says. “I don’t know what’s the matter.”
Now the dogs get to do their jumps. Mary Ann erects an eight-inch hurdle in the middle of the room, and the dogs take turns charging over it. For the small dogs, this is an inspiriting challenge, and they go at it like Olympians. To observe Marvin the corgi, his stubby legs drawn up, his little tubelike frame quivering with joy as he sails through the air like a kielbasa shot from a bow, is to see a creature rising to what for him is one of life’s great occasions. For the large dogs, however, an eight-inch hurdle is nothing to write home about. Katie and Lucas step over it nonchalantly. Louis leaves the class.
Finally, the session is over, and Louis leaves for good, with Diane in tow, while we stay to put some questions to Mary Ann. In addition to teaching obedience class, Mary Ann operates a private service, Cara Na Madra Dog Training, out of Greenwich, Connecticut. “Cara na madra means ’friend of the dog’ in Irish—I’m Irish—and when I say ’friend of the dog’ I mean it,” she explains. “By the time I’m called in, it’s almost always a matter of saving the dog from euthanasia or from getting dumped in the pound. When people dispose of dogs, it’s usually for one of two reasons—barking or no housebreaking. Housebreaking isn’t really a problem. Mostly, you have to train the people, not the dog. They have to take the dog out more often.
“With barking, too, you have to train the owners. They stick the dog out in the yard for four hours, and he gets bored. Or he gets anxious. ’Hey, I’m out here. I don’t know what to do. I’m scared.’ So he barks. And they won’t let him inside because he barks. You have to get the owners to praise the dog when he’s quiet, not just scold him when he barks. That’s why I say, ‘Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative.’ I have that on my business card.”
“Do dogs have humanlike feelings?” we ask. “Do they feel proud? Do they feel guilty?”
“They certainly feel proud,” Mary Ann says. “You can see it when they know they’ve done something good. They stick up their ears. Their whole body says ‘Look at me!’ As for guilty, I don’t know. If they do, it’s not for long.”
We go out to the parking lot to rejoin Louis and Diane. Louis is now happy as a clam. He scratches himself, he chews on his leash, he smells the grass tufts sticking through the sidewalk. Life stretches before him. Obedience class is behind him, at least for this week.
| 1992 |
DOG ON A CHAIN
So that’s how it’s going to be,
A cold day smelling of snow.
Step around the bare oak tree
And see how quickly you get
Yourself entangled for good.
Your bad luck was being friendly
With people who love their new couch
More than they love you.
Fred, you poor mutt, the night
Is falling. The children playing
Across the road were cold,
So they ran in. Watch the smoke
Swirl out of their chimney
In the windy sky as long as you can.
Soon, no one will see you there.
You’ll have to bark even if
There’s no moon, bark and growl
To keep yourself company.
—CHARLES SIMIC | 2000 |
REACH FOR THE SKY
Fiction
JIM SHEPARD
Guy comes into the shelter this last Thursday, a kid, really, maybe doing it for his dad, with a female golden/Labrador cross, two or three years old. He’s embarrassed, not ready for forms and questions, but we get dogs like this all the time, and I’m not letting him off the hook, not letting him out of here before I know he knows that we have to kill a lot of these dogs, dogs like his. Her name is Rita and he says, “Rita, sit!,” like being here is part of her ongoing training. Rita sits halfway and then stands again, and looks at him in that tuned-in way goldens have.
“So …” The kid looks at the forms I’ve got on the counter, like no one told him this was part of the deal. He looks up at the sampler that the sister of the regional boss did for our office: “A MAN KNOWS ONLY AS MUCH AS HE’S SUFFERED—ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI.” He has no answers whatsoever for the form. She’s two, he thinks. Housebroken. Some shots. His dad handled all that stuff. She’s spayed. Reason for Surrender: she plays too rough.
She smashed this huge lamp, the kid says. Of one of those mariners with the pipe and the yellow bad-weather outfit. His dad made it in a ceramics class.
Rita looks over at me with bright interest. The kid adds, “And she’s got this thing with her back legs, she limps pr
etty bad. The vet said she wouldn’t get any better.”
“What vet?” I ask. I’m not supposed to push too hard, it’s no better if they abandon them on highways, but we get sixty dogs a day here, and if I can talk any of them back into their houses, great. “The vet couldn’t do anything?”
“We don’t have the money,” the kid says.
I ask to see Rita’s limp. The kid’s vague, and Rita refuses to demonstrate. Her tail thumps the floor twice.
I explain the bottom of the form to the kid: when he signs it, he’s giving us permission to have the dog put down if it comes to that.
SUMMARY
A young lady whose first name is Geraldine lost her dog under what she considered to be suspicious circumstances, so she went around to her precinct police station to report the matter. There she was introduced to a plain-clothes man, a keen-eyed Dashiell Hammett character, who asked for her name and address and questioned her at length about the missing dog. She was pretty much impressed by the whole business and thought that the dog was as good as found—until, as she was leaving the room, she got a glimpse of the detective’s notes on the case, written in a firm, official hand on a desk pad: “Geraldine. Dog.” | 1936 |
“She’s a good dog,” he says helpfully. “She’ll probably get someone to like her.”
So I do the animal-shelter Joe Friday, which never works: “Maybe. But we get ten goldens per week. And everybody wants puppies.”
“O.K., well, good luck,” the kid says. He signs something on the line that looks like “Fleen.” Rita looks at him. He takes the leash with him, wrapping it around his forearm. At the door he says, “You be a good girl, now.” Rita pants a little with a neutral expression, processing the information.
The Big New Yorker Book of Dogs Page 46