Joy Unleashed Read online

  A torrent of words escaped Leonard’s mouth. Most of them I couldn’t understand except the word dog. The nurse, who had come into the room to see how we were doing, told me she thought he had had a dog. I helped Leonard move one of his hands so that he could feel her fur. Bella was sleek; her short, white fur soft over her muscular body. She snuggled up next to him and was still while Leonard and I had a conversation of sorts. He made sounds and I nodded and smiled. But Bella didn’t need words, didn’t care that everything was garbled—she could feel his side along her back. She could smell him. And somehow she knew, she just knew, to simply be there.

  We stayed a long time. We forgot about the other patients, as it was clear to me that this was where we belonged. I had learned something surprising—not that she was in charge, but that if I got out of the way, she would do the right thing. I smiled as I thought of myself as her chauffeur—the one who drove her to work. But that wasn’t quite it either, as we worked together. We really were a team.

  At the end, the nurse asked me how our visit went and then told me that no one ever came to see Leonard—not even his wife. “She came once to get him to sign over his Social Security check, and that’s it.”

  I was stunned—how could a person be abandoned like that? I didn’t get it.

  “Will he go back home?” I asked her, knowing as I did that I wasn’t supposed to ask about personal information.

  “I don’t think so. His problems are too severe.”

  Once out in the hallway, I gave Bella a treat and told her, “Good girl.” And then, because I was so proud of her (and the hallway was empty), we played tug of war. I had to keep reminding myself that a therapy dog is still a dog. Bella’s head snapped back and forth as she tugged on the leash. We both grunted with the effort and with pleasure. Before I came face-to-face with a doctor or some hospital official, I told her, “Okay, girlfriend. Leave it.”

  She looked up at me as if saying “really?” I nodded and she let the leash drop from her teeth. “Good girl,” I told her again. I was amazed at how she “read” Leonard. How she knew just what he needed. And for several weeks, until Leonard was transferred to a nursing home, we were there every Thursday afternoon and became friends.

  The boxes were mostly unpacked and we had taken endless trips to the dump to recycle the packing boxes, as well as several trips to Goodwill to give away duplicates or things we didn’t need. It was a mathematical equation that I was not particularly good at: two houses down to one house. We had only so much room, and although I was not a pack rat, I couldn’t part with boxes of letters and journals and my past writing projects. I told myself that I would go through them on cold winter nights. I insisted that I needed them. It took almost three years before I could even look at them.

  I gave myself lectures. I’d been counseling people who had lost their jobs for almost eighteen years. I knew the routine. I’d sympathized with the emptiness, the loss, the not belonging. Career coaches called this “transition,” and that made me think of labor, of giving birth—which I’d already done, twice. Transition was when all hell broke loose. When the body became a vise. When you had to submit.

  I preferred control. Being naturally bossy, I wanted to run the show. I wanted a plan, answers, income, colleagues, and purpose. I wanted to be valued. I didn’t want to be retired. I didn’t want to be only a housewife, although I was blessed with a wonderful husband and lived in a spectacular place near the coast. I didn’t want to admit that I needed help, that I was unsure of the way ahead, and that all I really wanted was to stop thinking about it. If I just got my job back, if I got hired by another outplacement firm, or by the New England office of my former company, I’d be all set. I knew how to run an effective job search, but I was like a little kid having a tantrum. I wouldn’t admit it, but I was feeling sorry for myself. One day, Bob invited a college friend who lived nearby and her husband for lunch. I made a Focaccia with caramelized onions and fresh mozzarella, a salad, fresh fruit, and homemade cookies for dessert. I felt like Martha Stewart. We had cloth napkins in tropical colors, the sun was shining, and we were outside on a perfect summer day. This was home.

  After lunch we took a walk to show them the neighborhood, then we sat in the library (that’s what we call our family room as it has built-in bookcases), and Bob and his college buddy talked about their former friends, old professors, who did what. Her husband was like a cat sitting in the sun. He was content. He nodded. I did a lot of nodding and smiling, and then after almost an hour of this, got restless. I got up and went into the kitchen to put the dishes in the dishwasher. I grabbed Henry’s comb and rejoined the group in the library and groomed Henry. That sustained me for about five minutes. I asked if anyone needed something to drink. They didn’t. I realized I was invisible. I could crawl under the couch and no one would notice. And suddenly I was on the brink of tears.

  I left the room again, grabbed a book and my glasses, and went back out to the patio. But I couldn’t read. Tears slid down my face. I was pissed off—at Bob for not noticing and for not including me in the conversation—but mostly I couldn’t stand not knowing what I was supposed to do. I was sixty-five years old, wanted to work, needed other people in my life, was deeply grateful for so many blessings—but I felt broken and discarded.

  When I was first notified that I was losing my job back in October 2011, a colleague told me to read my own book, Eliminated! Now What? I had laughed then and told her that was great advice. Writing about it and counseling others was not the same. I could sympathize with my clients, offer helpful advice, but I hadn’t been the one thrown under the bus. Even as I felt sorry for myself, I knew that I needed a change, that my world had become too small, too predictable. This made me smile, for there certainly wasn’t anything routine about my life now.

  Bob came out onto the patio. “What are you doing?”

  I couldn’t answer. He saw my face, saw the sadness, and said, “Come inside. We’ll talk later.”

  I could tell he was upset with me, but I couldn’t help it.

  I rejoined our company and acted as if everything was fine. They were tentative with me now—I was clearly a wild card. A loose cannon. I did my best, but I didn’t really care. For that moment, this was who I was.

  Chapter 13

  TIME TO WALK AWAY

  Fall–Winter 2010

  Yardley, Pennsylvania

  In what many would call “my salad days,” I lived in New York City and discovered an odd phenomenon: if a subway was late and I was standing on the platform with a whole bunch of other people, the longer we waited, the more certain I became that the train would come any second. This investment, sweltering hot in the summer and frigid in the winter with winds that howled through the station, made it impossible to leave. The same thing happened initially with agility training.

  Bella had advanced several levels and could be off-leash the whole time except when we were waiting our turn. Her whippet genes made her fast, and she turned on a dime, racing from a jump to the tunnel and then through the weave poles. And I got better in helping her navigate the course, anticipating the next obstacle, trying desperately to stay ahead of her. Cathy and Kim, my two best dog friends in Pennsylvania, had both dropped out after a year, but were willing to go to a trial with Bella and me in New Jersey.

  The drive took more than an hour, but once there, we walked Bella, got signed in, and found out where her event would take place. We had hours to kill but it was a beautiful fall day and it was wonderful to see other dogs compete. Some were so accomplished and had clearly been doing agility for a long time. Others, like me, were beginners and were struggling to get their dogs to follow instructions where every second mattered.

  We ate lunch and finally it was Bella’s turn. Unlike our first trial, for this event we had to run the course as it was set up. Numbers marked each step of the way. Parts of it were pretty easy: a jump, the A-frame, the teeter. Others were more challenging, like getting your dog to turn after a jump and circl
e back to run through the tunnel.

  My heart was pounding as Bella’s name and breed were announced. I gave her a pat (the last I’d touch her until the run was over) and got her to stay while I got myself into position. Once I said “Okay,” the release word that told her we were good to go, the whole thing was a blur. After the second jump, Bella went running off across the ring and flew up the A-frame, stopping at the top to look down at me, as if saying, “Where the heck are you?”

  I called her, I gestured, but she was enjoying her bird’s-eye view and didn’t want to come down. Now I was screaming and she finally came. I got her back on course and only had three obstacles to go when she suddenly veered off after the dog walk and circled behind me. The judge blew a whistle and we were out of time. I was angry and discouraged as I walked to the exit gate, not caring if she was with me or not. I grabbed her leash, attached it to her collar, and left the ring.

  Kim and Cathy were there, and I was both glad and embarrassed to see them.

  “She’s learning,” said Cathy, the peacemaker.

  “She got some of it right,” added Kim, the diplomat.

  “It sucked,” I said, fighting back tears.

  “How can she be so stubborn, so strong-willed after all the classes we’ve taken and all the practice? Why doesn’t she obey? Why doesn’t she come when I call her?”

  “She’s young,” added Cathy. “She’ll learn.”

  “I don’t know,” I told them. “She’s three and a half. Maybe she isn’t meant to do this.”

  “Don’t decide now,” said Kim. “You’re upset. Let’s go get some ice cream and get out of here.”

  And we did just that.

  Several people asked me how she did in class the next week, but it was obvious that we failed as we had no ribbon and I didn’t bring in goodies to celebrate. I nearly got into a cat fight with Tina after she insisted on running one of her dogs a second time while the rest of us waited endlessly, shifting our weight, trying to pay attention.

  On the way home I asked myself: Why are you doing this? Who says you have to have an agility dog? I told Bob how discouraged I was and he suggested I take a break. But I couldn’t do that. I either continued or I quit. Hanging on to a hope that she would do better would just be frustrating, and I was already tense and unhappy. To top it off, I was swimming upstream at work. I had been with the same company for fifteen years and loved career counseling. What I increasingly realized I didn’t love was the pressure to do more with less. My client load had almost doubled, and we were swamped with rules and paperwork. To do my job half well, I had to spend hours every Sunday before the week started, editing résumés and catching up on endless emails from clients. Bob told me not to do it, that I was giving away too much of my time, but if I waited for the workweek, I was perpetually behind and in a panic.

  As my daughter would say, I was a grumpy puppy. But I liked Sue, the agility teacher, so we continued with classes and I even drove an hour each way to take a few private lessons with her. I wished I could be like her. She’s was so sure of herself, so good at “reading” dogs, and equally good at figuring out people. She saw where I was pushing and asking too much and where my signals to Bella weren’t clear. She was good at breaking down each part of a routine into simple steps, but when it came to running next to Bella and making it happen, Bella seemed to be fighting me every step of the way.

  If I were a dog, I would have to be at least half pit bull-terrier because once I got hold of something, I couldn’t let go. I ignored my frustration, I ignored Bella and the good advice of Bob and my friends. I was in what I called “bulldozer mode.” I would make this work if it killed me.

  So we signed up for another trial and did this one on our own. Bella was amazing. She only made one mistake, running past a jump, which I easily corrected. We were flying, moving so fast from one obstacle to the next. In between I gasped, “Good girl,” and down she came, off the dog walk, and we were done. I threw my hands into the air and shouted “You did it!” But as I went to get her leash, Bella headed toward the exit of the ring. “Right here, Bella,” I called, and she came to me so I could attach her leash. And then I couldn’t believe what I heard. The judge said in a loud voice: “Disqualified. Left the ring.”

  I was stunned and couldn’t move. Disqualified? After an almost perfect run? And she didn’t leave the ring, she only went toward the exit and then came right back. I was so close to tears that I quickly walked away, and as I waited to buy a cup of tea for my drive home, one of the volunteers came up to me and said, “You did a good job. I have to tell you, that judge is really strict and she has a thing about dogs going out of the ring.”

  “But she didn’t,” I said.

  “I know,” he told me. “But that’s just the way she is.”

  I thanked him for telling me, got my tea, and headed outdoors. As I gave Bella time to sniff around on the grass, I keep replaying what happened. Disqualified? The judge had taken what took years of practice and had thrown it out. She didn’t see the way Bella sailed over the jumps or shot through the tunnel. She didn’t see how she overcame her fear and pranced over the teeter. She didn’t understand that this dog, who was lucky to be alive, who came from a horrible place, had grown in trust and skill and had done a fantastic job.

  I wanted to kick something. I talked to myself, repeatedly dropped the f-bomb, but then I looked down at my dog, my three-year-old bundle of energy, and took a moment to give her credit. She had come such a long way.

  I gave her a drink of water, got in the car, and called Bob on my cell phone.

  “Almost did it,” I told him, explaining what happened.

  “Good for you,” he told me. “I’m sorry the judge threw you out. Come home and we’ll talk about it.”

  I took a deep breath, started the car, and turned around to make sure Bella was okay. She was sound asleep on the back seat with her tail over her nose. I found an oldies station on the radio and turned the volume up high. Nothing like singing rock and roll when you’re down in the dumps.

  When we returned to class the following week, Tina wanted to know how we did.

  “Really well,” I told her, “but the judge thought Bella left the ring so she was disqualified.”

  I got a smug look from her. Her dogs wouldn’t do that. I wasn’t past caring, but something had shifted. I saw the work we’d done here as excellent training. Bella and I were a team. We “read” each other. Because the instructors and most people in the class were focused on the trials, I was too. But it was a choice, and right now I was choosing not to put us through that. In the short, cold days of December, we finished up the few classes left in the session and thanked Gail and Tina for their help. We were done. I didn’t need ribbons to know that Bella was a wonderful dog.

  PART III: SIT, STAY, PAWS UP

  Chapter 14

  NAVIGATING THROUGH A HOSPITAL

  Summer 2012

  Stonington, Connecticut

  When we entered unknown territory, it was good to have a guide. Kat Bishop knew the dog world. She was an experienced handler of therapy dogs, an evaluator, and connected in our community in Connecticut. It was encouraging to me that her dogs, like Bella, were a work in progress. Boo had a strange habit of breaking into a high-pitched howl without warning. We had finished our visit and were standing near the elevators on the fourth floor of the hospital, waiting to go down to the main floor, and opposite us, exiting another bank of elevators, we saw a woman on a gurney being pushed by a young volunteer.

  She must have just had surgery as she looked half-asleep and didn’t notice the dogs. But when Boo let out one of her electrifying howls, she lifted up off the gurney and almost screamed. Kat was mortified.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said, as the woman was wheeled past us. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  Boo looked very pleased with herself.

  “No, Boo, no!” Kat told her.

  When we got into the elevator and there was no one else ins
ide, she told me: “I don’t think this dog is going to make it.”

  “Because of the howl?” I asked.

  “Not just that. I don’t think she’s suited for it.”

  I thought to myself, if Boo wasn’t suited for therapy work, then Bella wasn’t either, as she still backed away from people and was head-shy. And Boo, like Bella, radiated sweetness.

  “Maybe she needs more time,” I said, always the optimist, always rooting for the dog.

  “I think I’ll work with Wren instead. At least she doesn’t make the patients levitate.”

  We had a good laugh as we walked down to the Community Cancer Center. Kat didn’t want to go there—wasn’t sure why—but I had promised my best friend that Bella and I would always stop by there as a way of supporting her fight against breast cancer, though she was being treated in a different hospital out of state. I’d done it in her honor in Pennsylvania and I’d continue to do it here. Kat and Boo hung out in the waiting room while we found the infusion room. The nurse at the front desk told me where to go and thanked me for bringing Bella in. “We never get dogs here,” she told me.

  The nurses in the infusion room were startled and not sure at first why there was a dog there. “This is Bella,” I told them, “and she’s a therapy dog. Is it all right if she visits the patients who would like to see her?”

  I held up Bella’s badge, which I wore on a lanyard around my neck. “She visited the infusion room back in our hospital in Pennsylvania and did a great job.”

  They nodded and I asked who would like to see her. A man who looked to be in his early seventies waved at me. “Bring her over,” he said, “I love dogs.” I’d been reinforcing a new command for Bella—paws up—because in the infusion room patients were seated in large recliners and couldn’t reach her unless she got closer. I asked this gentleman if Bella could put her paws up on the side of his chair.