by Susannah
"Ugly," he says.
"Ugly," I agree.
He points to the cottage's serial number for warranty's sake, then slides the little sign under the right edge of the front porch. He taps his forehead and then mine, as if to say remember. I lift a soda can in tribute.
The dogs rush out of the house when the cottage is finished. They stream to the fence to bark away the last remaining scent of the two men that still hovers across the yard, and without breaking a stride, they rush to the cottage to examine it. Though the adult- and child-size doors are open, they first dash around it in a circle, examining it on the fly. It's their old game of chase with a new objective. Puzzle is in the joyful lead, Sprits'l is already acting a little territorial, and I get the sense that Puz is much less interested in the cottage than she is in its current ability to provoke a chase from the Poms. She wheels around and play bows to Sprits'l, who takes the gesture as a challenge and an insult and begins to chase her around the cottage in earnest— stay-away-from-this-thing-that's-now-mine —her canter leading his furious hop-chop-chop of a gallop. The other little dogs pick up on the energy and follow, yapping and nattering at her heels.
Around and around the cottage they go, never once dashing inside until Sprits'l ducks through the adult door after Puzzle blazes around a corner ahead of him. Smart boy. She doesn't realize he isn't back there still chasing her; the other Poms are slathering behind her and haven't missed their ringleader, either. When Puz circles around the cottage again, Sprits'l leaps out from the door with a yap that sounds very like hiiii-ya! They collide, spin briefly together like Elmer Fudd and the Tasmanian Devil, then fall apart panting, a cue for the other dogs to collapse on the grass and look dazedly at the cottage and one another. One by one, they recover themselves and totter into the little house to claim it.
Friends insist that the cottage needs to have a name. In the days before its delivery, I have considered a few pretty, artful titles, but nothing seems to fit until the dogs' chase makes the house their own. Charlotte, a Canadian, suggests La Folie des Chiots —the madness of the pups—which seems completely right. The house is my folly, in the English architectural sense, a structure built for no reason other than pleasure, but it is also—yes—a place to share with the dogs. There is much to do to complete the cottage and integrate it into the garden. It needs a complete paint job over the primer, its window boxes planted, and walls, a floor, perhaps furniture on the inside. I imagine a faux-tin ceiling and a small electric heater that mimics a wood-burning fireplace. There can be no question that I'm about to play house for a while. What I don't understand is why the project seems necessary and why, from the moment I buy the first cans of paint to bring home, the future seems a little brighter, if not entirely clear.
Field assistant Ellen has never wanted to work a search dog, and she doesn't want to work one now. Not even Puzzle, though she has long collaborated on her training. It's a hard moment when I ask if she'd be willing to learn to run my dog in the event I can no longer do so. And it takes a while for her to respond. For her, it's not a matter of disliking dogs. She has dogs of her own. For Ellen, it's the question of vulnerability. She has seen a dozen dog-and-handler relationships and she's seen the environments where they work. She has never wanted to become a handler, because the risk of loving and losing a dog is too great, and she doesn't know that she'd be able to bear that loss. And, she says, knowing she would be working my dog makes all those concerns even greater.
Trouble is, all the team handlers have dogs of their own, many of them in their prime and far from retirement. If Ellen doesn't want to handle Puzzle, and if I get too sick to partner my dog, I'll need to decide what's better for her: leaving to work with another handler on another team, or living quietly with me as a pet. Either option makes my stomach twist. Puzzle seems to love her job, and she seems to love me. I cannot retire her before she's been on a single search. On good days, I refuse to think I'm going to have to make a choice. On bad days, I make a note to call her breeder to discuss this. Somehow word spreads to other handlers in other states and to strangers. I get an e-mail from Mike in Vermont titled I will take your dog.
Kindly meant, I'm sure. But I think, The hell you will.
That e-mail is a snap-to message. There are alternatives I can make peace with, and alternatives I cannot.
I ask Ellen again. It's a little easier when I tell her that learning to run with my dog is a backup plan, a what-if safety net. I don't want to think that the past two years of hard training and testing have been for nothing. And I also want to be fair to Puzzle. When she isn't working, she seems to watch and wait for some sign from me that we're heading out—the pager, the gathering of the search gear, the words, "Are you ready to go to work?" She's a good girl, young and motivated. I don't think she'd be happy as a housedog yet. And there are larger issues here: quite apart from our history together is the truth that she's a dog able to make a contribution. The job is still there to be done, with or without me in the search field beside her.
These are all arguments that make sense to Ellen. One day after training, she gives Puzzle's ear a tug and says she'll give it a shot.
Puzzle seems to know where she is the minute she hops out of the Jeep, bounding across the parking lot to the greenbelt beside the road, happily nosing through the brush. This is the same hiking area where she certified for wilderness search months ago. It is warmer today, humid and airless. Nevertheless, the winding trails, hilly terrain, and thick brush seem to excite her in ways that urban landscapes do not, reminding me that Goldens have a love of the field in their genes and that the crashing and bounding required here must feel very right to Puzzle. She has her head up now, and her tail waves a wide, happy flag as she greets dog friends and human colleagues alike. Johnny and Cindi with Labs Buster and Belle, Rob and Belgian Malinois Valkyrei. Deryl and Max with German Shepherds Sadie and Mercy. Birgit and Pit Bull Ali. Terry and Border Collie Hoss. Jerry and elegant Husky Shadow.
On a good day with three sectors working here, every dog on the team can get in four to five searches during a three-hour training session. We will take turns as victims or as FAS team if necessary, rotating the dogs in and out across the area so that all canine units get a chance to work and everyone also gets a chance for water and rehab on this hot day. While the dogs stretch their legs and socialize, revving up for the work, each of us organizes the backs of our vehicles for ready access to training records, water, scent articles for the dogs working scent discrimination, and medical supplies both for dogs and humans. I toy with gear in the back of the Jeep longer than I really have to, tidying and re-tidying my first-aid kit and breaking up training treats for Puzzle.
I look up to see Ellen standing beside the Jeep. She's been there a while, watching. When I have no more excuses to keep rearranging my pack, I close the back door to the Jeep and tug Puzzle's long lead, calling her to me. She trots over easily, her smile deep and her tongue already out sideways. I take up her backpack of gear and move to a stretch of grass where we will wait together.
"Puzzle's number four to go out," Ellen says. "I'm going to go hide for Val, and then I'll come back and get..." She can't say it. She gestures to Puzzle. We both know what she means. While we settle in the grass, Ellen heads out to hide in a sector. We watch her disappear up the winding curve that marks the entrance to the second trail. Puzzle's head is up. She tilts it a little and moans when Ellen disappears from sight, looking at me in the way she does when one of her supposed pack leaves the group and goes off solo. Puz has seen the process for a couple of years now, but she shoots me a look every time, as though I were pretty sloppy about pack maintenance and in just a few bounding steps she could fix that.
We watch Deryl and Sadie head out for a sector off the first trail, while Johnny and Buster take their places, waiting for word to search, at the head of trail number three. Rob and Val are also ready to go. As soon as Ellen is hidden deep in the sector, they will be off. And running. Belgian Malinois Val never
takes things at a lope that would be much more fun at a gallop.
Puzzle lies beside me, but her posture is alert, and each time she hears a handler give the "Find!" command, she starts a little where she lies, the product of hundreds of searches bound in muscle memory. As the third handler disappears, she sighs but does not relax. Though she cannot see the dogs and handlers work each search, she seems to be able to follow their progress through scent and sound. We are down slope and downwind from two of the sectors, and as I watch her, I wonder how much she makes of all of this that totally escapes me. I see her head turn as though she were watching, but the bob of her nose and the delicate working of her nostrils suggest that even here where we sit together she has a good idea where dogs, handlers, and victims already are.
Johnny and Buster return quickly, two victims in tow. Val makes short work of finding Ellen. They also return in less than ten minutes. Rob is laughing and Val's bright dash around him suggests hers was a tight, efficient search. Ellen and Rob confer a minute at the edge of the wood; he glances over to the place where I sit in the grass with Puzzle. Then he puts Val in her crate, and after a word to two other teammates, Rob disappears up the third trail.
As Ellen approaches, I push awkwardly up to stand, and when I stand, Puzzle also rises, shaking herself and giving a little whimpering strain at the lead as if to say she's ready to run. Without comment, Ellen takes the treat bag from my hand and clips it on to her belt. I hand her Puzzle's lead. In a low voice, she asks Puzzle if she'd like a drink. Puzzle puts her nose to the bowl and takes a casual lap, but she isn't thirsty and she's eager to head out, and she isn't confused about the change of leadership until Ellen gives her lead a tug and asks if she's ready to go to work. The phrase is a familiar one, and at the sound of it Puzzle responds with a shiver of anticipation, but as they step away from me, she turns and looks at me with a bewildered expression on her face. I can't be sure what I'm seeing from her, and I wonder if what I do see is merely a reflection of my own feelings: confusion, hurt, and a hint of betrayal.
Ellen gives another command and urges Puzzle away. I watch the dog's reluctance shift to subdued obedience, the tension of her walk away from me giving way to a loose-lead trot. As they move to the edge of the sector and wait for word to begin, Puzzle stands quietly beside Ellen, her focus already deep in the woods. This is the first time I've seen Puzzle begin a search from a distance, and I'm struck by how my girl has grown up, and how rapidly. She is a different dog just in the five months since her certification, as though the tests had given her a sense of purpose that training had only hinted at.
Ellen seems anxious. I watch her gather and ungather the long lead in her hands, bunching it against her stomach and then dropping it free. She checks her watch and pushes the hair back from her face. She encourages Puzzle, the usual rev-up words. Puzzle flicks an ear and stands, as though she knows something about the sector before Ellen has had word of it. When Max, who has hidden Rob as victim, comes down the trail and gives Ellen the word, they are ready to search. Ellen glances at me once, then quickly away. She clicks Puzzle off-lead. When she shouts "Find!" to Puzzle, the dog springs forward to meet the woods. For a moment, I can see her flash through the green. She bounds quickly up the trail. She does not look back.
There are good days and there are bad days. On the good days, I train with Puzzle as I always have—a little slower, perhaps, and bathed in sweat and nausea, while she bounds ahead of me, alight. On the bad days, I stay out of sight while Puzzle runs with Ellen. Sometimes I wait in cars parked outside the buildings where we train, watching for the flick of my blond Golden Retriever running past a window, Ellen and FAS team assistant in trail. Sometimes I see her. Once, from a parking lot and through the glass of two windows, I witness the moment when Puzzle orients from faint scent to the location of her hidden victim. I watch her pivot on that upturned nose, a 90-degree change of direction so sudden that her back end spins out a little, the way it did in her puppy days, before she scrambles out of sight and into the room she has chosen.
"How's it going?" I ask Ellen of their work together, and she says, "Fine," but adds after a pause that Puzzle is different—she's doing the job, but completes the training searches without her usual joy. Refusing treats for the most part, shrugging away from praise.
"Not even weenies?" I ask, thinking this dog can surely be bought.
"Not even weenies," Ellen answers.
Returning from one training scenario, Puzzle spots me sitting half a football field away. She abandons Ellen and ignores nearby teammates and dashes across the turf, exuberant with success, colliding with me, wiggling the way she did as a puppy. I-was-wonderful-you-are-wonderful-I-was-wonderful.
"She'll do it for me," says Ellen, who has caught up with her, breathless, "but she wants to search with you."
Birgit is always acute about dog-human relationships. She says, "Susannah, you better get strong."
During the months while my strength boxes the compass, Puz and I train at every opportunity, large or small. Friends and teammates are generous. Some hide for us in the park a couple of blocks away; a few come over and hide in the house, the yard, the garage, or in cars for Puzzle: currency training that doesn't require as much stamina from me. On Labor Day weekend, one neighbor brings his own son and two little nieces, giving Puzzle the opportunity to find three giggling children wedged in small spaces. One friend gives me four pairs of old shoes for scent discrimination training, so that I can scent Puzzle on a single shoe and ask her to find its match amid the other ones. Having the Golden fetish for shoes in general, this is a game Puzzle enjoys. She puts her nose deep in the chosen shoe and huffs her bliss, then scrambles around the yard to find its mate.
"Oh," I cry out when she makes an accurate find, shrieking in a nasty, guttural voice that Puzzle has always loved, "she's FABULOUS." Puzzle tosses her head at that and begins to race through the yard, galloping a figure-eight around the cottage and the fire pit that I've come to call her "Folie 500." "FABULOUS," I shout again, throwing up my hands, and she races a little faster. Around and around again, until she stops, flopping down on the slate path and bobbing her head up to me with the yo-babe! expression I've come to associate with her own pride. "Good job. You're fabulous," I say, but softer, stroking her ears while she grins up like I so am.
On a particularly awful pair of bad days, I lie on the couch and fiddle with paint swatches and decide to paint La Folie candy-box colors—a bright green called "Picnic," and for the trim a butter yellow, a periwinkle blue, and a pearly white called "Marshmallow." Gerand once said that the right colors together inspire energy, and maybe I've stumbled onto a clutch of good ones, because one late-summer morning, I feel strong enough to lug the paint cans out into the yard, prizing them open and stirring the paint with fat sticks. That's my goal for the day: just to open the cans and stir the paint with fat sticks. But the paint smells fresh and good, and the row of bright cans is cheerful. And I think there are brushes in the garage, and what would it hurt to get a little of the base coat up?
This is a day I should feel lousy. Certainly my neighbors do, creeping like suspects from their cars into the artificial cool of their houses, where the central air has droned since June. I don't blame them. Even beneath the deep shade of pecan trees, the heat is palpable, roaring up from the street beside the house. There's a row of grackles on the lowest power lines, their mouths open wide in an attempt to cool.
Against all better wisdom, I let the dogs out in the yard, where they circle and yap the grackles and are immediately curious about the paint, putting their noses to the open cans and coming away with their dark whiskers tipped green and yellow. While I get pans and brushes and drop cloths, the Poms assume supervisory poses on the slate sidewalk, frog-legged to press their bellies against cool stone. Puzzle prefers to saunter into the garage and out of it beside me.
The day progresses, the heat rises, and by midafternoon, two-thirds of the cottage is green and all of the comfort-loving Po
ms are back inside the house, worshipping the central air, draped like roadkill across the tile beneath the ceiling fan. Puzzle alone has remained with me. She lies inside the cottage and watches me paint through the open doorway, panting lightly, her smile wide in easy camaraderie. When I head for the garage, she follows. When I take a break from the painting, she shares my water, then offers me a ball to toss or simply lies against my feet. We study the hummingbirds as they hover along the Turk's Cap, sometimes inches away from both of us.
At the end of the day, we both seem pleased. It's 102 degrees, and Puzzle and I look a little goofy as we stand admiring La Folie with our mouths open against the heat. I'm liberally smeared with green. Puzzle has somehow avoided the green, but in the process of inspecting the paint for the doors, she's acquired a spot of periwinkle on her muzzle, another smudge on her haunch, and the waving feathers of her tail are so liberally streaked blue on one side that when she wags, she appears to be waving a Go Team pennant.
"Whoa," says trainer Susan about the cottage later that afternoon. "You got a lot painted for a sick girl. Actually..." she amends, "you got a lot painted for a well girl." She looks down at my periwinkle-smeared Golden. "Puzzle in her blue period?"
She is. And across the coming weeks, she's in her yellow period. Her white period. And, at last, her green period, when I give a few sections of the cottage a second coat. Whatever the weather of the day and whatever my own strength directs, Puzzle seems deeply content beside me. Indoors or out. I look down at her and find it hard to remember the puppy that, two years ago, turned away from me with a shrug.
But it is not hard to remember the search dog. One afternoon the pager pips, and green-speckled Puzzle springs up to stand eagerly at the door while I scramble for the cell phone. It is a call to search, but it's a drowning call, an advanced water search that Puzzle has not yet certified to work. I am able to deploy. For a few anticipatory minutes, she seems sure she's heading out too, and it is as though the world is back in the greased grooves she remembers, but when I head for the door without her vest and long lead, her face falls. I am heading out to work, she is ready to go to work, and I'm not taking her. She huffs to the back of the couch muttering, clearly aware there's something very wrong with this system.