Until Tuesday (12 page)

“What took you so long?” I said with a smile.

“I oughta whack you,” Mary said, raising her stump.

“Why don’t you grab a chair,” I joked, “and sit down!”

And then, like she so often did, Mary smiled.

CHAPTER 11

THE RIGHT DOG

Nothing can dim the light that shines from within.

—M
AYA
A
NGELOU

After the train, I felt confident. That was a major test,
but I faced down my anxiety and, with Tuesday’s help, quieted my mind. I could tell Tuesday respected me more after that, or maybe he just felt more comfortable with me as his alpha dog, and with comfort came more responsiveness to my commands. By the second week together, we were knocking our training out. Walk around the block. No problem. Turn on the lights. No problem. Walk, stop, step onto a chair, back down, pick up the cane, switch sides . . . that’s all you’ve got? We could do that in our sleep, even in our tiny bunk bed with our roommates Andrew and Blue snoring ten feet away.

Sure, Tuesday wasn’t the best-behaved dog. He was good at commands, but he still tended to get distracted. Instead of staring at the road ahead, he’d wag his head from side to side, his tongue hanging out when he saw someone he wanted to impress. We practiced drills where Lu piled ten or twelve objects together and I told Tuesday to fetch one in particular.

“Get the ball, Tuesday. Good boy. Now get the sock.”

He didn’t have trouble identifying the right object, but after a few runs he couldn’t help taking a victory lap around all the dogs and people in the room, the object bobbing in his mouth while his ears and long leg hair flowed beautifully behind him.

“You can’t let him do that, Luis,” Lu told me. “You’ve got to be the boss.”

There was never any doubt of the leader between Tuesday and me. Lu always says: “A service dog should be more enthusiastic and less assertive than its owner.” That’s her mantra. Well, Tuesday wasn’t more enthusiastic than me, but that wasn’t his fault. No dog could have been as enthusiastic as I was for those two weeks. We were a perfect match, though, on assertiveness. I had a leader’s mentality from my years as an officer, plus I was a stubborn, hardheaded soldier, and Tuesday was a natural wingman. He liked to have fun, to be the jokester in our pack, and I like that about him. I took the training seriously, and I always listened to Lu, but I could also see Tuesday’s smile behind that sock in his mouth, and I didn’t put much heart into disciplining him. He was a happy-go-lucky dog, making everyone smile. Didn’t I want him to be himself? Wasn’t that one of the reasons I chose him?

It was impossible for me, blinded by joy as I was, to see the problem. Tuesday followed all my commands. He was attentive, at my side, and always snuggled tightly against me in bed, although I must admit that might have been to keep from falling off. Compared to even the most loving, devoted, and affectionate “normal” dog, Tuesday was an octopus impaled to my face with its tentacles wrapped tightly around my head. I couldn’t get away from that dog, even if I had wanted to. I couldn’t look around without seeing Tuesday in my peripheral vision. I couldn’t take a step without feeling the tug on the leash as Tuesday stood up and followed. He was with me in the bathroom, for Christ’s sake! (Fortunately, the Army had destroyed my need for comfort and privacy.) Whenever I needed a reassuring touch, Tuesday was there. He was my miracle dog. I already loved him and depended on him more than any other animal I’d ever known—and most other people, too.

So how was I to know we weren’t connecting, that there was more to a service dog relationship than following orders and standing side by side? I had been told that the leash, not the voice, was the ultimate connection. Tuesday, Lu told me, felt everything I communicated down the leash: fear, anxiety, distrust, hesitation, pride, power, respect, and love. Eventually, when the leash became an umbilical cord between us rather than a means of control, I would feel Tuesday’s emotions, too. I heard that, but I didn’t understand it. When I held the leash, I felt slackness and pulling. I felt when Tuesday wanted to go in a different direction, when he was impatient to walk faster, when he wanted to stop and rest, and I thought that was how it worked.

If I had been able to read the leash, I would have felt . . . apathy. Well, not apathy, exactly. Tuesday liked me, I have no doubt of that. He enjoyed being there for me, because he knew that made me happy. But he didn’t have a connection with me. Not really. It’s so easy to overanalyze the moment on our second day together when I saw potential in Tuesday’s eyes. It’s easy to imagine it had all been planned. Tuesday had been watching me. He knew I was the one. He was testing me, opening up to me alone, saying,
This is who I am. I am loving but wounded, and I need someone to take me as I am
.

But that wasn’t how it worked. To Tuesday, I was just another special trainer, like Brendan or Tom. I was a great trainer, mind you, and he appreciated that. After all, he got to stay with me all the time, even at night. When he did something well, I gave him treats, which he hadn’t received much of in the past year. I was extremely affectionate. Every ten minutes, I knelt down and gave him a big burly two-armed hug, roughhousing with his head and neck and saying in that enthusiastic, almost raspy talking-to-a-dog voice, “You’re a good boy, Tuesday. I love you, Tuesday. You’re a good, good dog.” He ate that up. He puffed out his chest, lifted his head, and curled his lips into a smile. When I was finished, he’d spring up and look at me, ready for his next command. I was using classic touch-talk affirmation, but I was using it with an enthusiasm he’d never experienced. How was Tuesday to know I wasn’t using a training technique, that I was petting him from the heart?

I could see the difference in the other dogs. Mary and Remy, for instance, were bonded from the start. Remy didn’t need a reward; she would have done anything for her friend. Mary improvised a system anyway. She had her husband wrap two-sided duct tape around each of her upper arms, then pressed them against a pile of dog treats until she had ten or twelve stuck to each piece. When she wanted to give Remy a reward, Mary bit a dog treat off the tape and held it in her teeth. Remy slowly stretched up and, with a gentleness I’ve never seen in any other dog, grasped the treat in her own teeth. For a long moment, they would linger with their lips together until Mary pulled away with a smile. Remy was even happier, judging by the way her tail whapped the floor. She was exactly the kind of dog Lu intended to provide: a well-trained obedient animal salivating for a loving bond. If Remy threw her arms enthusiastically around Mary from the moment they met, then Mary was no less enthusiastic in return. I know, I know, Mary didn’t have arms. Neither did Remy. When I say arms, I mean heart. The thing war can break, even mangle, but never destroy.

Tuesday and I didn’t have that relationship. Not to put those guys down, but we were both more complicated—or wounded, if you prefer—than that. We were more like Ricky and Raeburn, who, despite their Wonder Twins–style matching gold jewelry, were feeling their way toward a relationship.

We were tighter, though, than Andrew and Blue, who were clearly working hard to reach an understanding. Andrew was funny, but he was also quiet, a laid-back small-town Minnesota kind of guy, never caused any trouble. Between his
Hogan’s Heroes
DVDs and his nightly dose of
South Park
, he was pretty much set. I needed a go-getter, a dog that liked getting out of the house and stretching his world; Andrew needed a chill partner. He also needed a patient dog, because he was a double amputee recently fitted with prosthetic legs, and he wasn’t too good at getting around on them yet.

Blue wasn’t that dog. He was the alpha of Tuesday’s litter, and he liked being in charge. That’s fine for a type A owner, but that wasn’t so good for laid-back, physically awkward Andrew. Several times, I saw Blue almost pull Andrew off balance, and there was a certain lack of enthusiasm when it came to commands. But Andrew stood by Blue, even when it became clear that trying to corral the headstrong dog was stressing him out, and for a few days Lu let the relationship ride.

“I’ve got no patience,” Lu told me once, but that’s just the New Yorker talking. Lu Picard has more patience, and a bigger heart, than anyone I know. It takes patience, after all, to train a dog. And it takes patience to lead hurt and scared people through the training they need to change their lives. Imagine all the disabled people who have come through her doors, desperate for a better life but barely able to hold a leash. She helped them. Think of all the mothers who cried themselves to sleep for years, praying for a way to empower their sick children. She relieved their pain.

Think of the people like me. I was all in for Tuesday. If it didn’t work out, I don’t think I could have gone back to living on my own. I had pinned so many hopes on finding a partner that returning to Brooklyn without a dog would have sent my life into an irreversible spin. At best, I’d probably be a broken veteran, as my father feared. At worst, I’d be homeless or dead. Lu understood that when she took me into the program. She knew this was my chance. She understood that with all of us, which is why she kept asking, “Are you all right with that dog, Andrew?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

There were times I wondered if she was pressuring him. There were times I thought she was wrong to keep asking, “Are you sure you’re all right, Andrew? Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” Andrew kept saying. He didn’t like to cause a fuss. And he hated the attention. I think he just wanted Lu to leave him alone.

Near the beginning of the second week, we took our dogs to the movies. It was a treat, but also a challenge—two hours together in a dark, cramped space. Before we left, Lu pulled Andrew aside.

“I want you to take Jackie instead of Blue.”

“No, Lu. I’m fine. Really.”

“It’s a movie, Andrew. It’s not a commitment.”

He hesitated. “All right.”

By the time the lights came on at the end of the movie, it was a love affair. For a week, Andrew and Blue had waged a war of the leash, trying to figure out who was boss. Within two hours, Andrew and Jackie were hugging and rubbing noses like teenagers in love. “Feel her ears, Luis,” he said in a dreamy voice. “They’re so soft.”

Andrew had never been like that with Blue (although I admit he was right, Jackie’s ears were ridiculously soft). I don’t think he’d ever been like that in his whole life. I swear, I think he and Jackie spent the whole movie making out. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

Lu had known Andrew’s relationship with Blue wasn’t right, but Puppies Behind Bars, the sponsor of the veterans program, had limited her choices to dogs they had trained. She waited patiently and hoped for the best, but in the end she ignored the limitation and chose another animal. She risked her funding, and possibly the program, to give Andrew the dog he needed.

“I can’t promise you a Ferrari, then give you a Volkswagen,” she told me later. “That’s not how I work.” It was a typically unromantic image from Lu, but the next sentence is the one I remember. “I can’t tell you I’m going to make your life better, then not do everything I can to make that come true.”

Shortly after the switch, we were riding in the ECAD van to an outdoor training session when I felt something jiggling my hair. I looked over and Andrew, whose prosthetics often rubbed him the wrong way, had his leg bent backward and was scratching under his artificial knee. “Get your foot out of my face, man,” I said, knocking his toes away. He looked at me and smiled. I’m not saying he came out of his shell—he was a quiet guy by nature—but after that, you never knew when you were going to get a metal foot in the face.

I appreciated Tuesday more, I think, after seeing Andrew struggle with Blue. Even at ECAD, I realized the relationship won’t work with the wrong dog. Not a bad dog, mind you, just the wrong dog for that particular person. Andrew wasn’t an alpha by nature, so he needed a dog that would chill with him while he played video games, not butt heads with him over control. I must have given Tuesday a dozen hugs after that, thinking how lucky I was to have a dog I could love.

That doesn’t mean we didn’t struggle. I had intentionally chosen the complicated dog, after all. The smart one. The goofball. The one that figured out after sitting between my last row seat and the back wall of the movie theater that the space was too small for me to come in and get him out. So what did he do? He ran back and forth behind the seats while I grabbed for him, refusing to come out. Occasionally he stopped, and I don’t even want to think about what he was finding to eat back there, but he loped off again as soon as my fingers grazed his collar. Eventually, we had people guarding each end of the row and four of us reaching over the seats trying to grab him. It took several minutes for Tuesday to tire of that game. He finally trotted out with an insouciant air and a giant grin, as if that was the most fun he’d had all week.

That behavior was fine at ECAD, I suppose (although Lu would hasten to disagree with me), but the closer we came to the end of class, the more anxious I became about Tuesday’s attention lapses and playful episodes, as minor as they were. My frustration culminated, finally, on a trip to downtown Dobbs Ferry. A photographer from the local newspaper wanted to document the first class of wounded veterans to receive service dogs, so the four of us paraded up and down in front of the store windows of Dobbs Ferry’s quaint downtown with our dogs. The rest of the dogs walked calmly, as instructed, but Tuesday was . . . well, being Tuesday. He was showing off, bouncing around, and focusing on the other dogs and the photographer instead of me.