Until Tuesday (2 page)

PART I

TUESDAY

CHAPTER 1

MOTHERLY LOVE

Love and work . . . work and love,
that’s all there is.

—S
IGMUND
F
REUD

Tuesday was born on September 10, 2006, one of four in
a litter of beautiful purebred golden retriever pups. No, it wasn’t a Tuesday. It was a Sunday, so that’s one explanation for his name out the window. I have a few others I’ve made up over the years. I met him on a Tuesday, the day of the 2008 presidential election. I like the Rolling Stones song “Ruby Tuesday.” The day was named after the Norse god of war and dedicated to the Hindu god of mischief, and both seemed appropriate.

The truth, though, is that Tuesday’s name is a mystery. He may have been one of four in his litter, but he was also about the 200th golden retriever born over thirteen years at East Coast Assistance Dogs (ECAD)
*
, a nonprofit in upstate New York that trains dogs for the disabled. The two years and $25,000 of training it would take to turn him into a life-changing companion were paid for by an anonymous donor, so the donor named him and two of his littermates, Linus and Blue. I don’t even know who the person was, much less why they chose Tuesday.

“People used to make fun of that name,” an ECAD employee told me once. “Now everyone loves it.”

I can only imagine Tuesday as a puppy, since I didn’t meet him until he was two, but like everyone else I have seen pictures of newborn golden retrievers, their tiny hairless bodies pressed against their mother, squirming for milk. They have sleek bodies, just right for holding in your hand, and adorable faces that droop around the lips, making them sad and helpless and completely irresistible. Tuesday was more amber-colored than his siblings, and I imagine him as the goofball of the litter, rolling and nipping at his brothers and sister and then tottering off on baby legs to collapse in a bundle of happy exhaustion. Tuesday was a family dog; he loved the constant contact of his siblings. When they lay together in a heap of puppies, with heads and legs and tails sticking out in all directions, Tuesday was no doubt the one you noticed, his orange fur peeking out in several spots from the big yellow pile and his dark eyes, opening for the first time, staring at you with fascination. Even then, I suspect, his tiny brown come-hither eyes were impossible to resist.

But that wasn’t the extent of Tuesday’s early life. Not really. Tuesday was born to be one of the most highly developed dogs in the world—an assistance dog for the disabled—and he began his training when he was three days old, long before his eyes opened, while he was still pushing himself on his belly toward his mother’s milk. Nursing is the most calming activity of an animal’s life, and thus the best reward. Tiny, sightless, three-day-old Tuesday felt calm when he nursed. He felt nurtured and safe, and that was something ECAD needed him to experience with humans. So at three days old, Lu Picard, the extraordinary founder and lead trainer at ECAD, started tapping his feet as he nursed, associating human touch and smell with the pleasure of mother’s milk. Tuesday was so young that his senses weren’t developed. His ears were pinned to his head, his eyes shut. His feet were his most sensitive area. As a newborn, they were his guide to the world.

At fifteen days old, Tuesday’s eyes opened, small and innocent. I can imagine his face: the baby fuzz on his snout, his delicate mouth, his inquisitive brown eyes fascinated by colors and shapes. At the same time, his ears opened and, for the first time, he could sense the world beyond his touch. When Lu tapped his feet now, she said “pa-pa-pa,” then “smk-smk-smk,” like a kissing noise. She was imitating the sound of nursing, offering him the one sound he already knew.

Now that he could sense the world, Lu gently held him back from feeding. Tuesday, like his brothers and sister, whimpered for his milk. It was all he knew; he desired its safety and comfort. But Lu touched him and said “pa-pa-pa, smk-smk-smk,” until slowly, incrementally, he stopped struggling and crying. As soon as he was calm, she let him go to his mother. She was teaching him patience and manners—that self-control was rewarded while pleading and aggression were not.

At five weeks, Tuesday’s formal training began with several hours of leash-walking exercises and an introduction to simple commands. He was also driven to Green Chimneys Farm, a service dog training facility where elementary-school-age children in treatment for emotional and behavior problems—the first of many people Tuesday would help—placed food in his mouth. There was no biological need. Tuesday was still a bundle of fur, barely able to see, tottering and tripping instead of walking, wholly dependent on his mother. The food was a training tool. Puppies start by eating food their mother has regurgitated; the smell of her saliva tells them the food is safe. It is a fundamental biological trust. Tuesday was learning to trust human beings as well.

He didn’t want the food. At least not at first. None of the puppies ever did. They were the equivalent of seven-month-old children, and they were being fed by strangers. So Tuesday closed his mouth. He shook his head. He spat out the food when it was pushed through his lips. The children petted him, encouraged him, gave him more. He pushed it away with his tongue, coughed it out, his eyes pinched shut and his mouth hanging open as his tongue slapped in disgust.

Eventually, he started to lick the food. There was no point in resisting, and besides, he was hungry. The children said “yes, yes, yes,” “good, good, good.” They had been told to reinforce good behavior, but it was their excitement and joy, more than their words, that Tuesday responded to. Dogs love making people happy. They are pack animals; it’s in their DNA. Even newborn puppies, barely coordinated enough to tumble, wag their tail when they experience positive reinforcement.

So Tuesday ate. “Yes, yes, good dog, good dog.” Tuesday happily ate more. The children praised him again. “Good dog, Tuesday, good dog.” They were both learning to focus on a task, to have patience and trust. Instead of acting out for attention, they were discovering that accomplishment was a powerful reward. Tuesday was also learning one of the primary lessons of his life, that there was a payoff for following directions: positive affection and love.

Back at ECAD, he was moved from his whelping box, where newborn puppies were cared for, to a larger indoor-outdoor area where he could totter and roll with his siblings. He was still breast-fed by his mother three times a day, but since the introduction of food she no longer cleaned his messes. Mother dogs never do, once a puppy has eaten solid food, so this was another opportunity. Lu added wood shavings to the larger cage, and Tuesday, already attuned to human desires at six weeks of age, immediately understood the shavings were for poop and pee. Each day, Lu moved the shavings farther from his mother so that Tuesday had to walk farther to relieve himself.

After a few days, a piece of wood and a piece of nubby plastic were placed between the puppies and their mother. Instead of playing innocently in that warm pile, all legs and ears and wagging tails, the puppies now had to negotiate an obstacle course to reach their milk. The alpha of the litter was always the first, tottering across the nubs and scrambling up, then collapsing over, the piece of wood. Once he made it, the others followed. That’s how I know Tuesday was never across first. There’s nothing alpha about Tuesday, which is one reason he’s a great service dog. In fact, most alphas flunk out of service dog programs because they are too assertive. Lu’s dogs were different because, after generations of mating malleable dogs, even her alphas were soft. From Lu, “soft” was a compliment. It meant her dogs weren’t bullheaded and dominant; they were amiable and confident, the perfect traits for a service dog.

In Tuesday’s litter, Blue was the alpha. But I always imagine Tuesday second. Not because he was stronger, although he was always bigger than his siblings. And not because he was assertive, although he is certainly an inquisitive and opinionated dog. Tuesday’s defining trait, for me, is his desire for affection, his need to be touched and nurtured. I was once told there are two types of dogs: leaners and nonleaners. Leaners are always touching you, rubbing against your hip when they walk past, flopping on your feet when they rest, putting their paws on your lap when you sit down. Nonleaners stand a few feet away, lie near you but never on top of you. This is not lack of affection. They are with you, but they want their space.

Tuesday is a leaner. In fact, in the grand hierarchy of leaners, Tuesday might be the king alpha. He craves contact. He needs it like water or air. From the day we met, he encouraged me to touch him, and he is constantly brushing against me or bumping me with his head. That’s why I imagine young Tuesday, his new eyes shut tight with the effort, wriggling his little butt energetically to squeeze under an obstacle or bouncing once, twice, three times, his tongue hanging out and his front paws scrambling, before flopping over on his face on the other side of a barrier. He can’t stand to be alone now; it must have killed him to be separated from his mother as a tiny puppy, even for an instant. I imagine him nearly sprinting, in the lurching awkward way of very young animals, across the knobby floor and then whimpering quietly as Lu held him back until finally, finally, his mind slowed, his scrambling stopped, his breathing calmed, and he waited obediently for his turn.

It was all part of the training. Puppies like Tuesday don’t just have to follow commands; they need a work ethic. They have to understand how to serve people, and they have to desire the rewards of that service. Over the next two weeks, Tuesday’s training increased while his contact with his mother decreased, so by the time he was completely weaned, at about week eight as is natural for all dogs, he was in training four days a week. By then, his bond with his mother had been gradually transitioned to the person that walked by his side, giving him commands and communicating with him through the leash. He received excellent care. He was groomed twice a day; he was fed the healthiest food. He spent time with his brothers and sister when he wasn’t working, so he was physically fit and intellectually challenged. But he wasn’t indulged. He was part of a system, and everything within that system, even the downtime, was carefully calibrated toward creating the ideal service dog. As Lu Picard described it, in her no-nonsense suburban New York City accent: “There’s a lot of affection, but there’s no free love. You work, you get love. You don’t get it for nothing.”

Or as she told me on another occasion: “It’s about the client. . . . I am trying to give my client more independence, more freedom, and more positive interaction.”

Tall and thin, with a wild mop of curly brown hair, Lu doesn’t glamorize what she does. She can talk about dogs like Volkswagens and Rolls-Royces when she’s describing her processes, but even her clipped descriptions don’t fool anyone for long. She isn’t in the dog-training business for the money, and unlike some other people I’ve met in the field, she isn’t interested in public adulation or hobnobbing with celebrities. She’s in the business for the clients, and the love of the dogs, and the memory of her father.

Lu’s father raised her alone after her mother died when she was a teenager. He worked hard, sacrificing for his daughter. He never remarried, but he always planned to travel, maybe move to Florida . . . someday, someday. When he retired, Lu was ecstatic. He was finally going to live his dream. Two weeks later, he had major stroke.

“I was livid,” Lu told me. “I’m not self-righteous, but I will jump you if you are kicking someone when he’s down. If there is a person on the ground and you are still beating him, I’m jumping in the fight,
you gotta get off now, you gotta get up
, that’s just the way I am. . . . So when my father had a stroke, I was livid. I was, like, this is wrong. What happened to your golden years?”

Unable to walk or talk without difficulty, her father moved in with Lu and her husband. Within a few weeks, he fell into a deep depression.

“I should have died,” he muttered over and over again. “I wish I’d just died.”

Traditional care wasn’t working, so Lu tried something different. She trained a dog. At the time, she was turning young dogs into well-mannered pets for wealthy suburbanites, so she had a veritable kennel in her garage. She built a mock harness with a solid handle and taught one of her best dogs to stand still—a hold, as it’s called in the service dog field, although Lu didn’t know that at the time.

She intended the dog to pull her father off the sofa and assist him in walking around the house. Her father was skeptical—until he tried it. The first day, with the dog’s help, he was able to stand up from the couch. Within a few days, he was walking to the kitchen. More importantly, he was talking, and not in his self-pitying patter. He was talking
to the dog
. It started as simple necessity, a running conversation of commands and encouragement. But soon it was conversational. The dog gave him freedom, but he also gave him something Lu hadn’t expected: companionship. He started calling the dog to his side and talking to him like a friend. They spent whole afternoons together and, before long, even slept together. As she watched the two of them walk to the kitchen one evening, smiling and happy, Lu turned to her husband and said, “This is what I should be doing with my life.”

“Then do it,” he replied.

A year later, after specialized training at Green Chimneys Farm, the legendary guide dog training facility in Brewster, New York (the place where Tuesday was fed as therapy for emotionally wounded children), Lu Picard founded East Coast Assistance Dogs. Her husband quit his job soon after and joined her. I can’t even begin to tell you how many lives they have changed since then. A boy severely brain-damaged in a car accident. An autistic girl unable to bond with any other living thing. A teenager with cerebral palsy. A soldier with his legs blown off by an IED. I can’t list the names, but I can tell you the effect on their lives. It is beyond profound: it is among the best and most important things that will ever happen to them. It is the answer to their prayer: not the “let me win this football game” prayer, but the one from the bottom of their souls. ECAD has changed the way they live every day. I know, because that’s what Tuesday has done for me.