Until Tuesday (3 page)

You don’t create that dynamic with training alone. It’s not simply a matter of instilling in a dog an understanding of people and a desire to please. There’s something else vital to the relationship, too: a bond. A service dog must develop absolute devotion to its owner; it must feel a closeness with that person beyond ordinary life. In order to create that special bond, ECAD creates a need. In the first three months, a dog like Tuesday is never trained by the same person two days in a row. He is taught from three days old to find acceptance and love in humans, but he is never given a single person to bond with. He is surrounded by love, but he is isolated from the ultimate object of that affection: a constant companion.

That’s a little tough for me to think about. After all, I’ve been there myself. I came back from two tours of duty in Iraq alienated from those around me. I cut ties with my family. I lost connection with my fellow soldiers, choosing to live in a fenced trailer thirty miles away rather than on post. I spent two years in New York City, surrounded by humanity on every side, and yet I was completely isolated. It didn’t matter if I spoke with a dozen people, or attended classes at Columbia, or even, as I sometimes did, went to baseball games or concerts with my fellow veterans. Inside, I was unmoored, unable to connect, and empty.

Lu doesn’t buy my worries. “Dogs aren’t like people,” she explained. “They live in the moment. Am I happy now? Am I getting what I want right now, in terms of food and shelter and stimulation? They don’t worry about where their life is going.” They need a bond, biologically, I mean, but they don’t long for it like I did, because they don’t miss what they have never known. “I can’t give this dog every single pleasure in life,” Lu explained. “He has to wait until he gets to the client to realize the grass is actually greener over there.”

I know Tuesday was happy at ECAD. I mean, he goes completely nuts every time we return for a visit. We don’t go often, because the three-hour round trip via public transportation from my apartment in Manhattan to the center in Dobbs Ferry, New York, is psychologically draining, but as soon as we enter the commuter train at Grand Central Terminal, Tuesday knows our destination. I can see it in the way he holds his body and in the way his tail swings so fiercely it pulls his haunches from side to side. He does a good job sitting beneath my seat on the train because he knows I need him to be calm in confined spaces, but as soon as we are in the Dobbs Ferry station he begins to pull at the leash. Often, I have to stop two or three times on the platform and tell him to heel, which he does for a moment before springing back to the lead. That’s not like Tuesday. He knows I need him beside me; he’d never pull me up the stairs. But sometimes, in Dobbs Ferry, he loses himself. In the shuttle van, he has a habit of continually popping up to look out the window, his tail slapping the seat, his tongue out, panting with excitement. This time, when we arrive at ECAD, he leaps over the seat of the van and out the door, a serious breach of professional duty.

But I can’t hold it against him, any more than I can his love of sniffing fire hydrants and watching squirrels. My apartment is Tuesday’s home, but he has a primal attraction to this place. If he were a person, I’d say it was where he became a man. Two years for a dog, after all, is like fourteen years for a human being. His brothers and sisters are long gone, but Tuesday still finds sanctuary in the big concrete room with yellow training lines on the floor. He still loves to see the dogs, even if he doesn’t know them. He watches them walking with their trainers, a twinkle in his eye, as if he were an old sergeant major watching a platoon of promising recruits. It’s not just the joy of seeing your profession well represented by fine young men and women. It’s the atmosphere. The cool breeze on a crisp day, the late-afternoon clouds rimmed by sun, the smell of autumn over the parade grounds, the cadence of boots. This is the world you know.

When I sit down with Lu, Tuesday watches her intently. As we talk, his eyebrows bob double-time, like dancing caterpillars, processing everything. He has an eager sense about him, his neck craned forward slightly, his tongue hanging out so that his lips curl up into his natural smile. Eyebrows up, eyebrows down, head back and forth, looking between us.

When Lu says “my lap,” Tuesday reacts. It’s what he’s been waiting for, and he bounces his front feet onto her knees, letting his momentum carry him forward so he can lick her once on the nose.

“I forgot that about you, Tuesday,” Lu laughs. “I forgot how loving you are.”

That’s a funny admission, because Lu remembers everything about Tuesday. She has placed 120 trained dogs; she can talk about them like cars on an assembly line, if that’s what it takes to explain a concept to you; but these aren’t cars to her. Lu knows the personality and habits, both good and bad, of every dog she has ever trained. She knows what motivates them, what bothers them, and the best type of person to pair them with. She’s a dog lover, after all. That’s why she leash-broke them for suburban housewives; that’s why she’s spent seventeen years training them for the disabled. That’s why, as soon as Lu gave Tuesday the opportunity, he bounced onto her lap and gave her his full-tongued love. He doesn’t do that with anyone else but me. Ever.

But Lu Picard? She’s special. I am Tuesday’s partner. I am his best friend and companion. But Lu . . . she gave him this life. She started him down the path.

She’s also the one who pushed him away. It seemed like a good idea at the time. It seemed like the right way to support a good cause. But in the end, prison wasn’t the best place for a three-month-old, or at least a sensitive three-month-old golden retriever like Tuesday.

“I would have skipped it,” Lu told me, laughing while Tuesday tried to maul her with his great pink tongue, “if I knew then what I know now.”

I understand what she means, but given how the story turns out, I’m not sure I agree.

CHAPTER 2

PUPPY
BEHIND BARS

Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth
until the hour of separation.

—K
AHLIL
G
IBRAN

Tuesday wasn’t the first service dog to be trained by
Puppies Behind Bars. Not even close. The program had been around for ten years when Tuesday joined in 2006. It had its own wing in several New York State prisons, where prisoners trained in its intensive twelve-week program, then lived and worked with a dog for up to sixteen months at a time. It had hundreds of graduates—both canine and human—who had gone on to purposeful lives on the outside.

Tuesday was, however, in the first group of ECAD dogs to be trained by Puppies Behind Bars. The program had recently expanded to providing service dogs for wounded veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and Lu Picard reluctantly agreed to help the cause. It wasn’t that she was against giving prisoners meaningful work, life skills, and the kind of loving relationship that can open their hearts and revive their humanity after decades in the dehumanizing modern American prison system. Those were, of course, worthy goals. And she wasn’t against helping wounded veterans. Who but the most hardened soul would be against that?

Lu simply used a different training method than the prison program, and she wasn’t sure the two were compatible. For Lu, the elimination of premature, trainer-specific bonding was a key ingredient in creating the best client–service dog bond. With Puppies Behind Bars, a professional instructor was only at the prison for a few hours each week. The rest of the time, the dogs trained with one specific prisoner and lived in his or her cell. It was impossible, Lu figured, for longtime prisoners, offered an adoring and affectionate twelve-week-old puppy, to not fall on their knees and give that dog a hug just for being there.

She was right, of course. I saw that firsthand when I visited a Puppies Behind Bars program with Tuesday during the second week of our training together at ECAD. I hadn’t expected to be moved, at least not in my heart, but when I looked around the large concrete prison room where Tuesday had received some of his training, I felt a surprising kinship with the men sitting around me. They were mostly shaven bald, and many had neck tattoos, but they weren’t broken or hard. They were a lot like me and the young soldiers I had known in the U.S. Army.

It’s not that hard to imagine myself in jail, because it’s just one mistake. One night of drunk driving. A descent into drug addiction. Standing with the wrong person at the wrong time. A bar fight goes wrong, someone gets killed, and that’s it. It’s over. I mean, I’ve killed people in my life. I was probably the biggest killer in the room; they just never called it murder. In Iraq, a rifle went off while being cleaned and killed a twenty-one-year-old specialist in our small outpost at Al-Waleed. The shooter, a sergeant, isn’t in jail. Nor should he be. Exhaustion was an official cause, so in my opinion that death is on the generals for having too many objectives and too few men in the field. And accidents happen. Terrible decisions are made. But there are no wasted lives. There remains potential. Everybody deserves a second chance.

These men were taking advantage of the opportunity. They were cast-offs who decided to give back to society, rough men softened by their companionship with dogs. They had helped train Tuesday and a hundred others like him. How many lives had they changed? How much hope and happiness had they given to the world? Did it outweigh the damage they had done?

Puppies Behind Bars, which was sponsoring the event, asked each of the wounded veterans to say something to the prisoners. There were four of us; I went last. By then, it felt intimate. Very intimate. It was just a small gathering in a concrete block prison room, but it felt like my words mattered.

“You are doing God’s work,” I said simply. “It is incredibly meaningful. From one brother to another, I am proud of your service. If circumstances were different, I’d take any of you to be one of my sergeants.”

I noticed a few tears when I sat down. I hadn’t expected that, not from prisoners. Then I felt moisture on my own cheeks. I had expected that even less. Maybe, I rationalized, it was the presence of the dogs. It is hard to be angry or cold with a puppy at your feet. During the question-and-answer session after the thank-yous, I even found myself talking freely with strangers for the first time in years. In fact, we talked so long that most of the dogs, including Tuesday, eventually fell asleep.

“So how do you maintain a young puppy’s attention,” I asked, “when it’s tired like this?”

The men looked at each other. Then a few of them started to laugh. “Show him, Joe,” someone said.

A giant of a man stood up from his chair. He looked like Curly from the Three Stooges, if Curly had been three feet taller and eighty pounds heavier and had spent twenty years lifting weights, repressing his anger, and getting tattoos on his neck.

Then he smiled. “We call this jollying,” Joe said.

Next thing I knew, Tattooed Curly was on the floor, rolling and wrestling in front of his puppy while making a nonstop string of noises that, I swear, included Curly’s classic “nyuk-nyuk-nyuk” and a breakdancing-inspired backspin. Every dog in the place was immediately at attention, staring at Curly Joe, because the big man could dance, or at least he could move on the floor continuously for a surprisingly long time. When Curly Joe finally stopped, every single dog was alert and ready to go.

“That’s how we do it,” one of the inmates said.

Jollying. I think of that crazy Curly dance every time I wrestle with Tuesday. At night, I love to lie in the bed and grab the sides of his face, rustling his fur and telling him what a good boy he is. Tuesday always gets excited and starts jumping on me, scrambling for leverage to fight back while I bite his ears like a mother dog and shake his neck, his sides, even his tail.

Jollying. That seems like exactly the right word.

But what a change it must have been for Tuesday. He was three months old when he went to prison, having lived his whole life in a place where discipline was strict. Where his life had been carefully planned since he was three days old. Where he was juggled between trainers so that he wouldn’t bond with any single one of them. Where the love was abundant, but only if you worked for it.

In prison, he was in a place where the strict professional trainer was only present three hours a week. Where he spent all day with one “raiser” and even slept in his cell. Where he could be jollied not for doing something right but for being distracted and inattentive. I love Lu, but no one on staff at ECAD would ever give a dog-in-training spontaneous, unearned love. It would upset the whole course of their development. And they would never do a Curly dance on the floor to jolly their dogs. Prison was a completely different world.

Tuesday loved it. I can’t imagine that he didn’t. He’s a very emotionally intelligent dog, or what some people might call needy, and he loved attention. No matter what Lu says, I think Tuesday felt the loss of a strong bond in his life, even if he didn’t know what was missing. When he found a person who was always there with him, he immediately grew attached. By all accounts, he was a good dog, maybe even a great one. He learned his commands quickly. He always walked by his raiser’s side. He was smart. He behaved. He was inseparable from his cellmate, but nobody worried much about that. They were a team; wasn’t that how it was supposed to be?

Then, after three months, his cellmate was transferred to another prison.

It must have been a difficult parting. It’s hard to disappoint Tuesday, especially when he looks at you with those sad intelligent eyes. There must have been tears shed as his raiser hugged him for the last time. As Tuesday stood at the door of the cell and watched him go, the poor dog’s heart was breaking. You can see sadness in Tuesday; it settles all over his body. It’s almost as if he’s collapsing, the pain starting in his eyes and then moving inward, untying everything. Three months with someone might not seem like a long time, but a dog’s life is short. Three months to a dog is like two years to a human being. Tuesday’s experience was like giving a sensitive three-year-old a doting father, then taking that father away when the child turns five, never to be seen again.

He was devastated. I know him; he took the separation personally. What had he done? Why was he being rejected? I can almost see him standing at the cell door, staring down the cell block long after his raiser was gone, so long that his new raiser lost patience and started pulling on his leash, begging him to move. When he finally did, Tuesday walked away from his old life without complaint. He went into his new cell. Then he curled up under the man’s bunk, put his head down, and pined.

That’s the moment that makes Tuesday unique. I think of a young golden retriever heartbroken under a cot, refusing even to eat, and I think: only Tuesday. Only Tuesday would take separation so hard after just three months. Only Tuesday would feel the loss so profoundly. It was a rare and unfortunately confluence of events, a perfect storm of unintended consequences. Tuesday had been conditioned to leap enthusiastically into a human-dog bond. He had been trained through rewards to believe that all his master’s actions were a response to his behavior. And he was a deeply, deeply sensitive dog. His moping wasn’t an act. It was genuine pain and loneliness and regret. Dozens of other dogs went through similar experiences with only minor adjustments. Only Tuesday spiritually collapsed. Only Tuesday made you want to drop everything and throw your arms around him and say,
Come away with me, boy. I will give you what you need
.

The new raiser was high-strung. He wasn’t prepared for this outward display of emotion, and he quickly grew frustrated with Tuesday’s moping. I imagine him as a whiny Steve Buscemi type, tugging at the leash and saying, “C’mon, Tuesday, c’mon,” then throwing up his hands and saying, “It’s not my fault, man. Not my fault. It’s the dog, man.”

That wasn’t going to work. Tuesday, more so than other dogs, sizes people up. He studies them, and he understands. He responds, as I have come to learn, to people he respects. As the begging from his new raiser turned to excuses, then complaining, I can imagine Tuesday sighing and wondering how he had fallen so far in the world. He went through his training, because that’s what he was conditioned to do. But the moment it was over, he went back under the cot and didn’t move. For almost a week, he lived with his head down and his spirit flagging, missing his friend.

Eventually, an inmate named Tom intervened. Tom was the oldest prisoner in the group, having served more than thirty years of a twenty-five-to-life sentence for second-degree murder. As a young man, he had read almost every book in the prison library. He had lifted weights and worked mess hall jobs and earned several college degrees. But when his first parole passed, he stopped trying so hard to improve himself and started to accept his fate. By the time Puppies Behind Bars came along, he was spending most of his time in his cell or watching television.

“In the prison system, you shut down your feelings,” he said. “You gotta do that to survive, because it’s hard. But the dogs brought me back, you know, to the human side.”

By the time Tuesday came along, Tom had trained six dogs, all Labrador retrievers, and every single one of them had graduated to additional training. They were all out there in the world, making it a better place. This was rare. Lu Picard and East Coast Assistance Dogs had an 80 percent success rate, but many service dog training facilities graduate less than half their dogs. That’s not a negative statement on them; it’s just a reflection of the difficulty of the training. Service dogs must be elite in every aspect of their lives. So Tom was, understandably, proud of his perfect 6-0 record. There wasn’t anyone else in his facility with that kind of record. In the closed prison world, success was his social currency, the reason other prisoners looked up to him and listened to him and, perhaps best of all, left him alone.

The other prisoners couldn’t believe it when he offered to take Tuesday. “What do you want to risk your record for on that crazy dog?” they teased him. “That dog’s no good.” Tuesday was a washout. A bum. A broken-down six-month-old. None of the prisoners thought he was going to make it except Tom. And even he wasn’t sure.

“It was more about timing than anything,” he admitted. Tom’s previous Labrador retriever had recently graduated to become an explosives-detection dog for Homeland Security, and he hated being without a dog.

The dogs brought it all back to, you know, to the human side.

Tom didn’t cajole Tuesday. He didn’t leash him. Instead, he climbed under Steve Buscemi’s bunk and lay down beside him. Tuesday was about fifty pounds at the time, not the eighty he is today, so there was just enough room. Tom touched his paws and occasionally petted him behind the ears, but mostly he lay quietly, not saying a word. When he got up three hours later, Tuesday got up too and followed him back to their new home. He put his front paws on Tom’s bunk, accepted a pat on the head and a “that’s a good boy,” then lay down in the kennel in the corner of the cell.