Joy Unleashed Page 7

  Another challenge was the weave poles—getting her to start on the correct side of the first pole and then thread her body through without missing a single one. We started with them far enough apart that it wasn’t that hard, but as the poles were placed closer together, it demanded greater concentration. I ran beside Bella and with my left hand pointed to the poles, shouting “Weave!” She would get through two or three and then run out, looking very proud of herself.

  “No!” I told her, bringing her back to start all over again. When she did it right, she got a treat. As our instructors liked to say, “Do you work for free?” And for the really challenging sequences like doing figure eights over a series of jumps, it helped to have stinky treats. Something with salmon or bacon in it. Something motivating.

  We were mostly women of a certain age, in our late fifties or early sixties, except for one man, Ted, who was amazing. He and his dog were dance partners, and they glided through the course as though they’d been doing it their whole lives. I said to another woman, “I don’t think Bella and I will ever be like that.” And it’s true—we wouldn’t. Bella was more interested in adventure, in running, in doing her own thing. In these ways, she was a lot like me. Despite her limitations, I loved seeing Bella master a skill like the dog walk—the high plank that initially scared her. With enough repetition and the lure of treats, she got it, and nearly pranced with pride as I told her “Good girl.”

  Another woman, whose dog was too old to continue, gave me a jump so we could practice at home. With my friend, Kim, whose dog Lela was now also taking classes, we bought weave poles and shared them. I brought Bella out to the yard as often as I could, and over and over she ran through the weave poles. Cathy and Brandon also signed up, but they were in the beginner class with Kim and Lela, while Bella and I were in advanced beginners. We enjoyed talking about class and what our dogs were learning, but I was the only one crazy enough to think that Bella would someday be able to compete.

  If I had thought of agility training like math class, I would have realized much sooner that a great deal of success depended on the teacher. Gail and Tina were good and knew their stuff, but as I got to know them, I saw that Gail was deeply frustrated by her own dogs (Dalmatians with as strong a wild streak as Bella), and that Tina, an animal behaviorist with five Australian Shepherds, was more interested in her dogs than the class. As we started our second year, Gail cut her schedule back. A new teacher was hired, and Tina became a participant.

  Sue, our new teacher, was amazing. She knew animals, having been a horse trainer before taking on agility. She forced us to think like dogs and she made learning fun. One evening in class, it was our turn to run the course. She said to me, “Jean, you talk too much and all Bella hears is yap, yap, yap. No wonder she won’t pay attention to you.”

  “Oh,” I said, suspecting she was right, but not knowing what to do.

  “Now, you and Bella are going to run this course again and you can do whatever you want with your body, but you can’t say a word. Got it?”

  I nodded, wondering how this was going to work. I got Bella into position on one side of a jump, held my hand up like a traffic cop while I positioned myself on the other side of the jump and halfway to the tunnel, the next obstacle. Then, I put my hand down and made a sweeping motion so that she’d go over the jump. And she did it! I pointed to the tunnel and ran like crazy to beat her to the other side. Out she came, and I gestured to the A-frame and then the teeter. She made it halfway over the teeter and bailed. I signaled her back to me and we approached it again, but this time I stayed close to her side so she wouldn’t be afraid. She did it and I clapped! Two more jumps and we were done.

  “That’s it!” shouted Sue. “Perfect! When you practice at home, keep your mouth shut. Bella’s not an easy dog, but she watches you. She loves you. Build on that.”

  I was so excited I couldn’t stand still. “Good girl, Bella,” I told her, giving her several treats. “What a good girl.”

  But despite moments like these, the frustrations mounted. Every week, Tina had to run each of her five dogs through the course and it took forever. Also, having been the teacher, she was clearly not one of us and always went first. When I suggested that a few other dogs have a chance to do the course after her first three ran, I got a look. She was the professional, the expert with purebred dogs, and who was I to challenge her?

  What surprised me was that no one else said anything. They deferred to her and I realized it was not a battle worth fighting. But it took a lot of joy out of the class. As Bella and I advanced, more and more teams were going to the agility trials, and when a dog got a ribbon, its owner brought in goodies so we could all celebrate. That was fun but also stressful—when would it be our turn?

  The paperwork for trials was daunting. Bella needed a jump-height card based on her size, so we got that and learned how to sign up for our first trial, which happened to be in our small town in Pennsylvania in June. I was a wreck, but by asking a lot of other people at the trial, I got my paperwork turned in, had Bella measured again (a necessary procedure as this was her first trial), and got to the right gate at the right time. We were given five minutes to walk the course, which reminded me of catching a subway in New York City at rush hour—people and dogs were tripping over each other.

  We stood and watched the teams compete before us—some did a fantastic job, while others were as challenged as Bella and I were. I had one moment of great comfort as Gail’s dog not only didn’t listen to her, but jumped the fence and left the ring altogether. This was a huge no-no. Someone grabbed the dog for her but I could see that she was humiliated.

  Finally, the call came: Bella, All-American, and we entered the ring. I gave the leash to a volunteer who put it by the end of the course and put Bella in a “stay” before the first jump. I got into position between her and the next obstacle. This particular competition allowed you the choice of how you wanted to run the course, but you had to have a certain number of points within a very limited time frame. We had no room for mistakes. I gave Bella the release command—”Okay”—and we were off.

  She did really well on the first three obstacles, but as she came down the A-frame and I decided to make a sharp turn to the right to get her into the tunnel, we nearly collided with the judge. That flustered me so that when we got to the tunnel and I saw that Bella was too far to the left, I gave her a little push.

  “Disqualified!” shouted the judge. And it was over. I couldn’t believe it. I knew not to touch her, but the urgency of getting through the run made me forget. Rather than walk off in defeat, we ran the rest of the course and I put on her leash and left the ring.

  “Good girl, Bella. Good job!” I told her, getting treats out of the bag that I had left outside the ring. (Another rule—no treats during competitions.)

  I was worked up and shaking, but she had done her first trial, and I knew I’d never touch her again in a competition. We were on our way.

  I rushed home, told Bob all about it, and we packed up and drove to Connecticut for a long weekend. We had bought a house there a year and a half earlier as part of our plan to retire when we were ready to stop working. It was starting to eclipse our home in Pennsylvania because we loved it so much; the smell of the ocean, the sunlight, somehow more radiant reflecting off the pine wood floors of our new house, living between a fresh water pond and the cove. Each time we left to come back to Pennsylvania, it got a bit harder. And Bella and Henry, our cat, always came too. They seemed to feel the same way we did.

  I believed in rewards and in freedom. In letting a dog be a dog. So one of my goals as we moved into fall and there were fewer ticks to worry about in the woods, was to train Bella to be off-leash. To let her run, let her go where she wanted, without losing her. I started small in a large field near our house in Pennsylvania—a community lot. It bordered the pond on two sides, and the road on the other side was residential and not heavily traveled.

  Because Bella was obsessed with tennis ball
s, I used them to keep her from running away. Once I got her to the field, I unhooked her leash and quickly threw the ball. She tore after it and ran back to me. It took her a few seconds to release the ball; she didn’t entirely trust me to give it back to her. We did this over and over while I was on the lookout for other dogs, stray cats, anything that might distract her.

  The upper and lower pond were connected by a narrow foot bridge. I got her to go over this and let her walk a bit more before reattaching her leash. Bob was nervous, but he saw that Bella was not trying to escape as much as she loved to run.

  On a chilly Saturday, Cathy, Kim, our dogs, and I headed to the trails in a nature preserve north of us. Once we were past the parking lot, Kim let Lela loose. Brandon stayed on the leash—Cathy had no interest in finding out if he would come back. With my heart in my mouth, I let Bella off the leash and she ran after Lela and then tore off into the dense woods.

  “Hey, Bella!” I shouted. “Right here.” Nothing happened.

  We walked another five minutes and now my heart was starting to pound and I knew that Bob would never forgive me if I lost this dog. The only comfort I had was that she was micro-chipped, but that wouldn’t do any good if she was lost forever in the woods or got killed by something.

  Another hiker came toward us on the trail.

  “Excuse me. Have you seen a white dog—midsize?”

  He shook his head.

  By now I was screaming Bella’s name in full panic. Lela had come back, Brandon was on his leash, and the three of us stopped to listen. We heard birds, some insects, but no thrashing or sounds of a dog.

  “Let’s spread out,” said Kim. “Jean, you stay here, I’ll go ahead, and Cathy, go back a ways. We’ll find her.”

  I wished I could believe her. I made a promise at that moment that I would never let her off-leash again. Never.

  “Bella, here girl. Come on!”

  The thick woods absorbed my voice. Just as I was about to cry, I heard something—something moving in the underbrush.

  I made sure my voice didn’t sound angry. “Good girl. Come on.”

  And suddenly there she was, panting, blood streaked across her face.

  “Oh, Bella. Good girl. Good girl.”

  I quickly attached the leash, shouted to Kim and Cathy that I’d found her, and bent down to see where she was hurt. The side of one of her ears was torn. It looked as though she’d gotten caught in brambles, but the blood had stopped. She looked worse than she was.

  Cathy and Kim fussed over her, and we finished our hike. At three years old, I had thought she was ready for this—I thought she’d obey. I guess the smells and adventure of the woods and of being free were too tempting. It was a long time before I tried again.

  Chapter 12

  LEONARD

  July–August 2012

  Stonington, Connecticut

  On my second visit to the hospital, Kat and her dogs couldn’t come. As I signed in at the volunteer office and put on my blue smock that made me look like a Wal-Mart greeter, I learned there was a request for a therapy dog on the fourth floor. The nurses were having a hard time getting a disabled patient, Leonard, to respond.

  I checked in at the nurse’s station on the fourth floor and asked for Leonard’s room. A nurse offered to go with me. Bella had her ears up and was staying close to my left side.

  “Good girl,” I told her, more to comfort myself than her.

  “Leonard. Someone here to see you!” shouted the nurse. The lump in the bed didn’t move.

  “Look, Leonard!” she said, then turned to me and asked me to pull a chair up next to the bed so that he could see Bella.

  I pointed to the chair and said “Up!” Bella, all forty pounds of lab, whippet, and terrier leapt onto the chair. She looked at the bed and something moved.

  “This is Bella,” I said softly. Leonard’s head turned and one eye opened. The nurse watched.

  His hands were twisted into each other, like the gnarled roots of an old tree.

  “Would you like to pet her?” Bella stayed motionless as we waited.

  The other eye opened and he clearly saw the dog.

  He said something like, “Neya.”

  “You can give Bella a treat.” I held a small, round dog treat in my hand, and as I watched, I think Leonard’s eyes brightened.

  “Can I put one in your hand?” No objection.

  I uncurled his fingers and managed to slip a treat between his index and middle fingers as there was no way he could fully open his hand. Bella leaned forward and very gently extracted the treat. Her tongue brushed his fingers. He watched her and we stayed another ten minutes or so, just being quiet together. Before I left his room, I promised to return the following week.

  The nurse said to me in the hall: “That went well.”

  “It did?”

  “That’s the best reaction we’ve ever gotten out of him. Please come back.”

  I told her I would and walked down the hall. Bella’s idea of what to do after such concentration was to bite the leash and play tug-of-war.

  “Not now, girlfriend. Leave it!”

  Giving me a look like a sulky teenager, she did.

  We visited a few other patients, always asking first, “Would you like a visit from a dog?” and I quickly learned that the friends and relatives who were visiting the patients were often as needy as the patients themselves. Sometimes more.

  “Look, Mom,” said a middle-aged daughter. “A dog is here to visit you. Doesn’t she remind you of Goldie?”

  Or a husband, keeping vigil by his wife’s bed. “Thank you so much for coming in. This is the best thing I’ve seen all day.”

  I noticed that the older generation—the people in their sixties and up—had the best manners. Even in pain, they thanked me for coming in. They sensed what it took to do this work. They focused on others. Bella—who had her own ideas about what to do, how long to stay, whether or not someone could pet her on the head—didn’t care about compliments. But for me, these were the equivalent of dog treats. I loved them. They affirmed what we had set out to do.

  As we got used to this hospital, I learned that some visits were quick—just a hello and then we were gone—while others couldn’t be rushed. It all depended on what was required. During one visit, I asked a nurse if anyone would like to see Bella and she told me to go to room 218. I knocked on the door and saw a man who looked to be about seventy sitting on a chair, his suitcase beside him. He had on navy blue pants and a T-shirt with holes in it.

  “Going home today?” I asked, after introducing Bella.

  “Yes, just waiting for the doctor to let me out.”

  Bella was not at her best, maybe because she had been besieged by the nurses as we came onto the floor, or because she missed Wren and Boo and didn’t like being on her own. I let her sniff around while Jerry, the patient, and I chatted about dogs. Then, as if someone had flipped a switch, Jerry said, “My father was a coal miner. Black lung. Shoulda died at fifty-two when the doc told him it was hopeless. Son-of-a-bitch made it to seventy-nine!”

  He laughed and I smiled and said, “He sure sounds tough.”

  Then I asked Jerry if he worked in the mines, too.

  He nodded and said, “Yup, one day.”

  “One day?”

  “That’s all I lasted. I was nineteen and right out of high school. There were no other jobs in West Virginia, but when I heard that mountain crack—a terrible groaning—I turned around and ran out. Never looked back.”

  Bella was inching closer to a waste basket while my attention was diverted.

  “Leave it!”

  She obeyed.

  “So what did you do?” I asked.

  “Joined the army and before I knew it, I was in Korea. You don’t know what cold is until you’ve served over there.”

  “Bad?” I asked.

  “Blistering.” And then he told me a complicated story about his sergeant who played a trick on him while he was on guard duty at night.
He was on high alert since the enemy often attacked at night, and he was shivering and stomping his feet to keep them from freezing, when someone came up from behind him and grabbed him. He took his rifle butt and slammed it into the stomach of what he thought was an enemy solider. As he was about to finish off this intruder, he saw that it was his sergeant. He helped him to his feet, endured an avalanche of cuss words, and the next day faced a court martial. Instead of being in trouble, the commander told him that he should have shot his officer for playing such a stupid prank in a war zone.

  He threw his head back and laughed, and I could see that he was back there and it was so real: the war, the terrible cold, and this strange twist of events.

  Bella must have liked the sound of his voice; she was still and attentive. “I was lucky not to lose my toes or fingers. A lot of guys did.” We talked a bit more about his service in the army, and then I said good-bye and wished him luck getting home. As Bella and I walked down the hall, I was amazed that something I’d never given much thought to—the terrible conditions that the soldiers endured during the Korean War—was suddenly so vivid. I thought about him all the way home and thanked him for his service.

  One week later, we went back to Leonard’s room, but this time, when I put the chair in place next to his bed and told Bella “Up!” she wouldn’t budge. I looked at her to see if something was wrong, but her clear, brown eyes looked untroubled.

  “Bella, up!” I pointed to the chair, and again she refused to move. Before I could figure out what to do next, she jumped up on Lenard’s bed, and in one swift motion, circled and lay down next to him.

  “Oh,” I said, wondering if the nurse was going to be upset. She wasn’t in the room, but I had been told at orientation that it was okay for the dogs to get on the beds as long as the patient wanted it. There was no doubt, looking at Leonard, that this was exactly what he wanted.