Mountain Dog
Page 4
a nightmare
impossible
no.
10
GABE THE DOG
TOGETHERNESS
I don’t understand sadness,
but I can smell the way it makes
the boy feel unnaturally heavy,
so that his breath doesn’t seem
to be made
of air.
It’s an odor that rhymes
with the weight of aloneness,
so I press my head against the palm
of his hand, hoping to help him feel
the floating lightness
of never-lonely.
11
TONY THE BOY
THE RESCUE BEAST
Tío notices my mood.
He invites me to talk, but I don’t feel
ready, so he takes me with him
out to the woods, where I help him
by hiding for his search-and-rescue team
of volunteer handlers and their dogs.
Hiding offers me a strange escape
from feeling cheated by life,
even though the dog handlers call me
a volunteer victim.
The way they say it, victim sounds so useful,
because it means that when I hide
in the forest, all the dogs have a chance
to practice finding a real victim.
There are all sorts of complicated
training exercises, but the simplest
is the first one every SAR dog learns:
a runaway.
All I have to do is race away
from a dog as it watches me.
The handler holds on to its collar
so it can’t follow until I’ve vanished
behind a tree or a boulder.
Once I’m out of sight, the dog
is turned loose, and the handler
shouts, Find!
The eager dog rushes
to do his playful
hide-and-seek work,
running to my hiding place
so that he can receive
two rewards—his handler’s praise
and a treat, or a toy.
Even the most experienced dogs
love to do runaways
just for fun,
but they also need
more difficult problems.
It’s like they’re doing math,
and they already know fractions,
percentages, and word problems,
so now they have to move on
and try to master
prealgebra.
Dogs don’t separate reality
from fantasy. It’s all the same,
all work, all play. Imagine a world
where homework is fun. That’s
a dog’s world. Just thinking about it
encourages me. Maybe there’s hope
for a kid who hates numbers.
Research for an online article
about SAR dogs
calms me too.
It helps me feel safe to know
that search-and-rescue volunteers
practice all year, just in case
someone gets lost.
Even a stranger.
Especially a stranger.
Tío risks his life each time he goes out
in wild weather, at night, in rough terrain,
to search for a child or a thru-hiker.
My uncle claims
he’s not brave.
He says there’s a fierceness
that takes over his mind, giving him
endurance and strength. He insists
that anyone who has ever
searched for the lost
knows how it feels
to be transformed
into a Rescue Beast
thinking of others
instead of himself.
Rescue Beasts are the opposite
of werewolves. They’re people
who turn into wilderness heroes
instead of villains.
There’s so much to know.
Where do I start? Tío advises me
to study the dogs, not the Beast.
He shows me how there are two kinds
of searches, area and trailing.
Gabe is one of the few dogs trained
to do both. When he zigzagged
all over the apple grove, his nose
was up in the air, searching for any
human scent, any human at all.
That’s called area work.
Trailing work is different.
It can only be done when there’s
a PLS—a place last seen—a spot
where someone saw the lost person
right before she vanished.
A trailing dog sniffs any object
that carries the victim’s scent—a pillow,
a jacket, a hat. Whenever there’s a PLS,
Gabe searches on a long leash,
like a bloodhound in a manhunt movie,
nose to the ground, following only one
set of footprints as he sniffs to match
the smell of those tracks
to the scent of the pillow.
It’s eerie, thinking how easily we
can get lost and how little of ourselves
we leave behind. Sunglasses. A backpack.
Winter gloves. After a week or two,
even the unique smell of a person
is gone. The place last seen is only
fragrant and useful for a few days,
or at most, a few weeks.…
Thinking of lost people
reminds me of Mom, but instead
of letting me focus on loss,
Tío goes into Rescue Beast mode,
showing me how to concentrate
on helping others. On SAR training days,
a bunch of us gather in the forest, and I
have my chance to help the dogs
by hiding.
First, I’m escorted to a hiding place
by Tío, who gives me a two-way radio
so I can call him for help
if I get scared.
He marks the spot on his GPS—
a Global Positioning System gadget
that uses beams from satellites
out in space—to show him exactly
where I am at all times, so that even
if the most experienced dogs
and their handlers
happen to have a bad day,
I’ll be found.
So I’m safe, and the forest sounds
are soothing, and there are squirrels
and birds to keep me from feeling
completely alone
and I know that no matter how long
I have to wait to be found, Gabe
and the other dogs will take turns
and while they’re searching,
they’ll learn how to find
real victims.
Even though I enjoy all that oddly
comforting quiet time, alone
and relaxed in the wild,
wondrous woods,
I’m always relieved to hear
the eager pop-pop-pop
of a panting dog’s breath
as it races toward me,
helping me feel
like such an important
part of the heroic
Rescue Beast
team.
12
GABE THE DOG
TEAMWORK
All I need are my energetic nostrils
so I can follow
the hiding boy’s
scent trail.
As soon as I find Tony, I run back to alert my Leo,
who follows close behind me, paying his own special
human attention, with eyes and mind instead of a smart,
twitching nose.
At the end of our practice search, all three of us
know
that we’ve done our best seeking
and hiding.
13
TONY THE BOY
LOSER
I would hide in the wilderness
forever if it meant avoiding
prison visits.
Mom’s arms
are crisscrossed
by new tattoos
of paw prints.
As long as I can remember,
she’s always had a few
dark blue designs
on her skin
but now there’s a mark
for each fighting pit bull
that ever won a battle
and a teardrop
for each dog
that lost
its life.
Does she actually care
about the dogs that lost fights?
She used to call them losers,
the same name she gave me
each time
I tried
to turn away
from the sight
of blood.
I hate visiting the prison,
but each time Tío assures me
that I don’t have to go, I always
decide to give Mom
one more chance.
I don’t have much to say
when she chatters
on and on
about all her new
prison friends.
I don’t even want her to know
Gracie’s name.
Or Gabe’s.
I come away from those visits
feeling like such a loser.
If I turned into a tattoo
on Mom’s face,
I’d be
a teardrop.
14
GABE THE DOG
BOY TRAINING
How do I train a boy? I try to show him
how to be joyful just walking and running
and chasing
roundness
but each time Tony goes back down
to the flatlands
he comes home smelling
like sorrow.
15
TONY THE BOY
LONELY SMELLS
Prison visits are getting harder,
but helping Tío and Gabe solve
their search-and-rescue mysteries
has given me a new way to face
the mysterious side of math.
Compared with trying to figure out
how Mom’s weird mind works,
school is almost easy.
Numbers aren’t always scary anymore.
They don’t have to remind me
of mean men betting
bad money
at dogfights.
I understand some types of problems,
if I go slow and count trees or rocks
instead of fangs
and claws.
Gabe tries to cure my worries
with demands. He needs attention.
I throw a tennis ball so many times
that my shoulder gets sore.
Then he wants to swim, dive, plunge,
paddle, drip, and shake.
All Labs love water.
Gabe swims like a dolphin.
I don’t.
I’m terrified of depths. No one ever
taught me how to laugh when I splash,
so I sit on a creek bank while Gabe
plays in the water, begging me
to join him, begging me to leave
my safe shore.
Heart dry.
Mind dusty.
Over and over, I promise Gabe
that someday, somehow, I’ll learn
how to swim with him so we can be
happy
together.
Back in the cabin, when the phone rings,
I’m secretly glad that it’s a call-out
for a search. I know I shouldn’t be glad
that a stranger is lost, but I need a chance
to show my uncle
that I can be trusted
to stay at base camp.
This time, the subject of the search
is a sad old man
who drove uphill,
far away from his room
in a nursing home.
He parked at a wilderness trailhead
and started walking away from his life.
A couple of Italian thru-hikers saw him
when he got out of his car,
so the driver’s-side seat
is the place last seen.
Gabe is on a long leash, working
as a trailing dog. He sniffs the dusty
upholstery, inhaling the old man’s
hospital scent, a mixture
of skin, soap, and medicine,
along with invisible clues
that only a dog’s nose can detect—
adrenaline from excitement or fear,
and probably all sorts
of mysterious chemicals
produced by loneliness
and confusion.
Gabe matches the smell on the seat
to the only footprints
on this rugged trail
that were made by soft
bedroom slippers
instead of steel-toed
hiking boots.
I’ve learned to wait.
Hiding in the woods has made me
patient. Visiting Mom has helped me
want to help others—the people who
are willing to be helped.
I know I can be useful to Tío
by obeying his command to stay
at base camp, which, as usual,
is a sheriff’s van and a table where B.B.
is in charge of deciding which
dog teams, horse teams, ATVs,
and ground pounders
will search the areas
not covered by Gabe.
Gracie chatters, but I hardly listen,
because I’m trying so hard
to imagine what it must be like
for Tío
out there
in the forest
where the old man
is lost.
Where does he find
his Rescue Beast courage?
When I’m his age, will I know
how to search?
I wait for hours.
By the time Gabe finds the old man,
he’s hungry, dehydrated, weak,
and grateful.
He thought he wanted to die
alone in the woods, but now he’s glad
to be alive and surrounded
by people who care.
I’m happy for him, but I’m also
happy for myself. In a small, quiet,
satisfying way, by hiding out in the woods
during training, I helped teach SAR dogs
how to save lives.
I also proved that I’m trustworthy.
Tío ruffles my hair with his hand,
and I grin when I imagine
that if Gabe could praise me,
he would probably shout,
Good human!
Instead, he rewards me
with a ball-chasing game
and the warm, brown
roundness
of his wise, happy
dog eyes.
16
GABE THE DOG
SNIFFING SCHOOL
I search for the sad-scented old man.
I find him.
I win!
Now Tony wants to learn all my search games, so I show him how my Leo teaches agility—
crawl through tunnels
climb up ladders
leap onto a seesaw
while
it
moves
balance on a long, narrow beam don’t fall but
if you do tumble don’t be afraid to try again
and again and again.
I can teach obedience,
too:
Come! Sit! Stay! Down! Heel (always on the left).
I also share what I know about NO.
NO chasing squirrels.
NO chasing rabbits.
NO chasing deer.
NO chewing boots.
Finally, I teach Tony to see how I get along
with other dogs, and I’m not afraid to jump
right into a roaring, whirling HELO, the helicopter
that takes me to other mountains
for faraway search games …
and when I’m through teaching
all that I know
about work-play
it’s time to show the boy
how we can both
lie down and curl up
and rest.
17
TONY THE BOY
INSECT MATH
There are so many ways
to get lost. Each search is a surprise.
One day, an experienced outdoorsman
goes hiking alone, and when he doesn’t
come home, his wife calls 911,
and the sheriff calls Tío.
By the time Gabe finds him,
he’s feverish, his legs broken
and infected from a fall.
The next week, a teenage girl
separates from her friends,
promising to meet them
at the far edge
of a rocky slope.
She’s hiking with flip-flops
instead of boots.
A tank top and shorts.
No jacket, no warmth.
She suffers hours of terror
all night, and then a swift burst
of relief
when Gabe finally appears,
collar bell rattling,
orange vest glowing.…
Tío runs close behind Gabe,
offering the cold girl
a space blanket,
silvery and magical
like moonlight.
Panic. It’s the topic of my next
online article. A lost person often
runs in circles, following the same
frantic pattern
over and over,
like an orbit around a planet
of hope.
Both Gracie and our teacher
love the article. They tell me
I’ve learned so much!
It’s true. Gabe has helped me discover
new things each day. Dog truths.
People truths, too.
For instance,
there’s this one
really great
prison visit,
the biggest surprise
of my new life,
because I never expected
to be able to smile
on the other side
of that heavy gate.
Mom looks cheerful,
and she acts
gentle.
Her hair is supershort.
She tells me she volunteered
to cut it and donate it to Wigs
for Kids with Cancer.
She’s also started volunteering
to read books out loud