Joy Unleashed Read online

  “Hey! Take it easy.”

  “I want to see your dog,” she said, ignoring me.

  “You can see her but not like that. You’re scaring her.”

  She circled me and tried to get her hands on Bella. The leash got tangled in my legs.

  “Come here!” she shouted. “Let me pet you!”

  Bella was quicker than she was, though, and managed to pull away just as one of her hands was ready to slam down on her head.

  Now I was angry. “Stop it!” I told her. “You’re scaring her. This is not the way to approach a dog.”

  Something got through.

  “Oh,” she said, finally still. “But I just wanted to pet her.”

  “You can pet her, but you’ve got to be more gentle. She doesn’t understand what you want.”

  Bella was looking at me as if to say, can we please get out of here?

  “But, but—”

  “No. If you’d like to give her a treat, you can squat down and she’ll come to you.”

  “Can’t do that. Can’t.”

  Still between her and Bella I asked, “Why not?”

  She ducked her head and mumbled, “ADHD.”

  Now I was stunned. “I’m sorry, but she’s small and you’re big, so you have to move slowly and then she’ll be fine.”

  The girl gave me one last look and darted down the hall.

  Just then Cathy came out of the patient’s room. “What happened to you?” she asked. I told her and she laughed. “Well, we’ll never be bored here, will we?” And then she leaned down to pat Bella. Bella loved her, even allowing Cathy to touch her head. “She’s such a sweetie.”

  We visited a few more rooms in the unit and then took the elevator up to the oncology ward. On our way to the nurse’s station, we passed a room in which several nurses attended to an elderly man. We hesitated, not knowing if we’d be in the way or a help. One of the nurses saw us and said, “Can you come here for a minute?”

  “Sure,” said Cathy, and we entered the room. The man was agitated, talking about going home, and wouldn’t let the nurse put in his IV. Because his bed was so high, he couldn’t see the dogs.

  “Would you like to see my dog, Bella?” I asked him. He seemed a bit stunned but nodded. At least this was something different.

  “Can I put her on the bed?” I asked the nurses and they told me it was fine. So I lifted Bella, careful to put her down gently beside this man. She sniffed his arm and then curled up right beside him. All the fear and tension left the room. He took his other hand and slowly stroked Bella’s back.

  “Nice dog,” he said. “What a good boy.”

  I didn’t correct him about her gender and simply said, “Yes, she is and she’s happy to visit you.”

  While he and I chatted, the nurse got his line in and they thanked us and left. Cathy and I stayed for a while because Bella’s warm body pressed up against his was probably the nicest thing that had happened to him in a long while.

  We were in our final week before our house closing, and it felt as complicated as planning a major military offensive. We had endless lists of things that had to get done each day as we prepared for the movers to come. It was a poignant time—everything was marked by “last”—the last walk on the canal, the last time at church, the last game of tennis with my group, and so on. In the midst of this countdown, a former client, Kamora, asked me if Bella would come to her Girl Scout Troop, as the girls were working on their Animal Helpers Cadette Badge. I knew it was crazy to say yes because I was supposed to be home packing boxes, but I did it anyway. I said yes because this was an opportunity to see how Bella did in a room full of children—and I was dying to get out of the house.

  I told Kamora that the girls couldn’t run at her when we came into the room. They needed to sit and let her approach them first. We drove to the nearby town and found the church where the meeting was held. I was amazed by how easily Bella adapted to strange places, sniffing the grass, not at all spooked by walking down long hallways.

  “Hey, Jean!” said Kamora, meeting us outside the auditorium. “She’s even cuter than you!”

  We laughed and she told me a bit about the troop and the work they were doing. When we entered the room, all eyes were on Bella.

  “Oh, look!” said several girls, but none moved from their places on the floor.

  Kamora told them that I would talk to them for a few minutes about Bella and what she did, and then they would have a chance to pet her.

  We went to the front of the room and I told Bella to sit. She did.

  “This is Bella” is how I started, telling them where she was born, how long we’d had her, and a bit about all the training she’d had. Then I told them about the hospital and how she made people feel better. No one moved. Some girls looked a little scared, while others were curious.

  A little girl, I think from India, raised her hand.

  “Yes?” I said.

  “Does she do tricks?”

  “She can do a few tricks, and I’ll show them to you, but a therapy dog is not a circus dog. Bella’s job is to help people feel better. We’ve been going to the hospital every week and visiting patients.”

  “I was in the hospital!” shouted a pretty blonde girl.

  “What happened to you?” I asked.

  “I broke my arm.”

  “That’s too bad,” I told her, “but wouldn’t it have been wonderful if a dog like Bella had been there to make you feel better? Most people are afraid when they end up in the hospital, right?”

  The girls nodded. The Indian girl reminded me that she wanted to see tricks.

  “Okay. Here are a few.”

  Bella was watching me intently. I told her to come closer. When she did, I closed my fingers into a fist and she sat.

  “How does she know to do that?” asked another girl.

  “I taught her.”

  Then I pointed to the floor and she lay down.

  “Here’s the really hard one,” I told them. “Watch closely.”

  I put a treat on the top of Bella’s paw and told her, “Leave it!”

  She waited. Then I picked up the treat, told her, “Good. Take it,” and she was allowed to eat the treat.

  The girls clapped. Bella the wonder dog.

  She stood up and shook her whole body, tail whipping. I had learned to stay clear of that—it hurt when it hit my legs.

  “If you’d like to meet Bella, she will come and greet you. But if you’d prefer just to see her but not pet her, that’s fine, too. Just let me know as I walk around the room, okay?”

  They nodded and Bella then decided that these were her puppies and that the best thing to do was to lick them all on the face. Kamora beamed, and after we’d seen each girl, I asked if they had any questions.

  “Why did you pick this dog?” one child asked.

  “You know, I think she picked us. When we went to the shelter where she was being cared for, and they let her out of her pen, guess what she did?”

  “Ran away?” suggested one girl.

  “No, she stayed really close to my husband and me, and then she sat on his foot. She told him with her body that we were the ones she wanted. Isn’t that neat?”

  They laughed and after a few more questions we left. Walking out down the long hallway, I paused and said to Bella, “Good girl. That was really good work.” And then she got one more treat.

  I sat in my car for a few minutes before driving home. It’d been nice to see a former client—to connect again to my years as a career coach. But now, both of us were volunteers—Kamora with her troop, and me with Bella. And that was fine. I didn’t have to be the counselor anymore; the one with advice and answers. Not just yet. This new me was a little unsure and still worried about finding work. I was still hurt from losing my job, but excited about what was ahead—something that would be a better fit for who I was now. So in the midst of all this change, the one sure thing was that I was willing to partner with Bella and go where we were needed. In
just a few days, we would be living in our new home in Connecticut, and I knew that somehow Bella and I would find a way to continue what we started. We were both hooked.

  Chapter 7

  PROGRESS

  Summer–Fall 2007

  Yardley, Pennsylvania

  Maybe, just like children, it takes a village to raise a dog well. Even before our training with Trish ended, we realized we needed to enroll Bella in doggie daycare. Bob had to go back to work in the fall, and we didn’t feel comfortable leaving her in her crate all day on the three days a week I was at work as well. Luckily, a new facility had opened one town over, and we called to find out the details. Bella had to have an interview to be accepted.

  “What do you think?” I asked Bob. “Will she make it?”

  “Hard to say. I guess it depends on what they expect.”

  So, like parents taking a child for a college interview, we drove over to Four Paws and entered the main lobby. It smelled of dog and we could hear loud barking from an outside pen. Bella looked nervous and I wondered if she thought we were returning her to a shelter. We were led into a room where a staff member took down our information: her age (not yet a year), her breed (our vet said she was a whippet, lab, terrier mix, but could also be part Mexican Hairless as she had black skin), any issues we knew about (we were a little coy about her reaction to other dogs but shared that she did best with small dogs), and all our contact information.

  “I’m going to bring Sadie into the room,” she told us, “and we’ll see how Bella does with her. Be right back.”

  I was tense, worried that Bella would try to attack Sadie. I let Bella wander around the room, sniffing all the good smells, and in came Sadie, a beagle-boxer mix. Bella’s hair rose and she backed away from Sadie.

  “Give them time,” said the staff person. “This isn’t bad.”

  Bella did not want Sadie sniffing her hind end and bared her teeth.

  Sadie wasn’t easily put off and tried again to sniff Bella’s hind end. Bella growled, her ears flat against her head. She whipped her body around so that Sadie couldn’t get to her.

  I made things worse by pulling on the leash, trying to create a safe distance between the two dogs.

  Sadie, being considerably larger, came at Bella from the side and tried to push her down to the floor using her huge head as a battering ram.

  I couldn’t stand it and yanked Bella away from her. “Could we try a smaller dog?” I asked, fearing that it was only seconds before we’d have a dog fight.

  “Sure. We can do that.”

  Sadie left, and Bob and I exhaled. “I wish she liked other dogs the way Cooper does,” I told him, still shaken, the mother lion in me on full alert. No one was going to hurt my girl.

  “Well,” said Bob, always the practical one, “she doesn’t. We don’t know why, but she just doesn’t. And I think Bella is aggressive because she’s afraid. Did you see how her ears were back and her tail between her legs?”

  “Yes, I saw that, but Sadie was pushy. She didn’t get it that Bella didn’t want her in her face.”

  Like most parents, I’d clearly decided that my dog wasn’t the real problem. I took a few deep breaths and tried to get my blood pressure back to normal.

  When Spark, a toy poodle, was brought into the room, Bella wagged her tail and ran playfully around him. Here was a dog she liked. The staff person was impressed and said, “She’ll do fine. When do you want to start?”

  We picked a date a week before Bob’s classes started so that we could get her used to Four Paws. I promised to bring in her vaccination record and to get a kennel cough shot, as well. We put Bella in the back seat and told her she was a good girl. We were both a little nervous but knew this would be good for her.

  Back at home, we made sure she did her business before coming into the house, but let her loose. We only used the crate at night or when we went out. We trusted her, and Henry had learned when it was a really good idea to escape up his cat pole and when it was safe to play. But we never left them alone together—Bella was still too unpredictable—and Henry wasn’t smart enough to avoid wrestling with a creature four times his size.

  One rainy day when I was working from home, it seemed a bit too quiet, so I went upstairs and found Bella happily lying on our bed, eating the corner of the duvet cover.

  “No!” I said sternly. “Bad dog!”

  I examined the duvet to see if it could be mended, but it wasn’t ripped. I found a hole and a chunk of the material was missing.

  “No, Bella, no!” I shouted, angry and frustrated, wondering why on earth she did this.

  “What’s wrong with you?” I yelled, giving her a whack on the hind end.

  She pulled away from me and cowered.

  “You are in so much trouble! Let’s go!” I yelled.

  I grabbed her collar, yanked her off the bed, and chased her downstairs. “Outside!”

  I put her outside so that she could think about what she had done and made myself a cup of tea in an effort to calm down. I hated being mad at her. I hated that she got to me. I didn’t feel sympathetic—I didn’t want to remember that she was only a dog, doing what dogs do. I expected better. I expected her to be like Angus. No, I thought—she should be like me. And then that sounded so crazy that I laughed and my anger dissipated. While the kettle was coming to boil, I checked on her outside and discovered she had used that unsupervised time to dig a nice big hole in the middle of the backyard.

  “Oh, my God!” I shouted, but then decided who the hell cared about the craters. Let her dig. Bob read somewhere that dogs didn’t like the smell of Listerine, so he filled the pits in the backyard with Listerine. This made our yard smell like a dentist’s office, but had the amazing result of preventing Bella from digging where she had already dug. This smart dog, this driven terrier mix, had it all figured out: dig new holes and everything was just fine!

  Sometimes at night, Bob and I would look over at each other and say, “I miss Angus.” And we really did—especially his calmness and the fact that we could trust him completely. And he would always be our first dog, the one who grew up with our children, the one we loved unconditionally.

  “But that took time, right?” I asked Bob, trying desperately to find a ray of hope.

  “Some of it, but Angus was different, that’s all. This is another creature and we can’t compare them.”

  And then we’d look over at her, curled up on a towel on the couch, her nose tucked under her front paw, her pink ears folded like fortune cookies, and all the frustrations of helping her grow up would melt away. She was a wonderful dog, and instinctively we knew she had a bright future ahead of her. We just had to get her there, that’s all.

  The best part of that summer was our first grandchild, Molly, who turned one year old that July. She learned to walk and was interested in everything. I was Nonna and Bob was Nonno. She couldn’t say that yet, but she knew we were people who loved her. And we saw her often enough that she was no longer shy or hesitant with us.

  We were careful with Bella, not sure how she would react to this creature who pulled things off shelves, cried, and was pretty much at her eye level. Bella saw that we loved Molly—that the whole world stopped when she visited—and so, while still being a little jealous, she became her four-legged mother. She licked crumbs off Molly’s fingers, waited patiently under her high chair, and any chance she got, washed her face with her tongue. Molly’s father hadn’t been raised with dogs, so we were careful not to make him uncomfortable, but Emily, our daughter, who had Angus as part of her teenage years, thought it would be good for Molly to get to know dogs at an early age.

  But if Molly came around a corner in the house and saw Bella, she screamed. An ear-piercing deadly scream. So I taught her to say “sit” (it came out sounding like “shit”) and hold up her hand in a fist. Bella obeyed, and Molly’s fear dissipated. We practiced this over and over, but put Bella in one of the bedrooms and closed the door when Molly first arrived. Her exc
itement was a bit overwhelming for a one-year-old. For anyone, really.

  Later in the fall, when Bella had adjusted to going to Four Paws twice a week, I signed up for an obedience class held at their facility. Jody and Cooper were taking the class, too, so we drove over together and then lined up in a circle in a large room. The instructor had clear goals for us: the dogs had to learn to walk on a loose leash, they had to be able to pass each other without reacting, and they had to learn how to do a sit/stay. That’s it. And of course, no jumping, pulling, biting, or aggressive behavior.

  It was fun, and seeing other people struggle with their dogs gave me hope. Bella wasn’t the only one with challenges, and several other puppies had just as much energy as she did. If someone could have told me at that moment that she would evolve into a mature dog able to compete in agility trials and then work as a therapy dog, I would have laughed. I couldn’t see it, but I kept reminding myself that things worth doing took time. A few months later, Bella graduated from this class with flying colors, and as we neared her first birthday in January, she had begun to settle down. She knew what to expect, and except for squirrels and a few other irresistible distractions, she mostly obeyed. Even at her worst moments, she made it clear that she wanted to please us—that we were her pack.

  PART II: FINDING THE RIGHT JOB

  Chapter 8

  SAYING GOODBYE

  April 2012

  Moving to Stonington, Connecticut

  I’ve always hated saying goodbye and was terrible at it. In third grade, I remember the last day of school and my teacher, Mrs. Armstrong, standing at the door to the classroom. She was a good teacher, but tough (no recess if you answered a question wrong, a whack on the knuckles if you misbehaved), but as I approached her, I felt my face burning as tears slid down my face. I couldn’t look at her—couldn’t talk—and ran from the room, out of the school, and onto the bus, hoping that no one would see me crying. I couldn’t believe that she’d never be my teacher again.