The trainer watched the two of them together, and cut quickly to the heart of the matter. Max had not been camouflaging his fear as well as he’d thought. This, plus Max’s natural reticence—a cool reserve that sometimes crusted into a frosty veneer that even an irrepressible dog could not penetrate—was confusing Calvin, blocking the bonding process. A dog like this needs to know he is connected to and liked by his partner, Charlie said; a dog like this needs to feel trusted.
There were ways to get past this, Charlie assured him. He offered several observations and many suggestions.
First, Barbara’s instant connection to Calvin in the face of Max’s emotional distance was interfering with Calvin’s ability to develop the connection with the man he was supposed to be helping, Charlie said. He reminded Max of the admonition during his month at school that others in the family should have minimal contact with a service dog until the bond with the partner had grown solid. Because Barbara was inclined toward affection and Max was not, this was especially critical in Max’s case. She would have to pull back.
Charlie also reiterated the warnings issued in class: that dogs should not be given people food, a rule that Max also had not followed, especially since he’d been worried about Calvin’s weight loss. That, too, must cease. Eating half a turkey sandwich every day was not exactly fostering much interest in eating dog food, he pointed out.
The list went on.
“Be more vigilant about praising him whenever he does anything right,” Charlie said.
Also, it would be extremely important for Max to work much harder to show his regard for Calvin. Play with him more, make time to have some fun together away from the specter of work. Try to infuse that flat, measured speaking manner with some warmth and melodiousness. When petting Calvin, don’t be so perfunctory; lean into him and use a lingering touch.
Charlie had never really had to provide step-by-step guidance about how to show affection to a dog. He had never had a client like Max before.
Max was certain he could pull this off, now that he had been guided through scores of specifics that would allow him to present the kinds of things the dog had seen and felt from other people—the warmth, affection, and trust that would regenerate his confidence about his ability to work.
“Charlie knows Calvin. He knows what he’s capable of, and he knows me. I believe that what Charlie has told me will help me achieve what I must so we’ll be able to work together as we should,” Max said to Barbara.
Yet, by the time Calvin had been with Max for nearly three months, the dog was willing to go only a block or so, sometimes not even that, and the animal’s depression seemed even more intense.
The evidence was clear, Max decided one morning. This whole idea of having a dog had been a mistake.
“I can’t rely on Calvin,” he said to his son Steve. “I have tried this and tried that, and nothing works. I’m exhausted. Maybe I am not cut out to have a dog.”
That this hoped-for freedom could be refused him—by a dog—was torturous. There was so much he wanted to do. Volunteer work. Explorations of the city. He had received a couple of invitations to speak about the Holocaust as a result of pieces he had written, and the speaking was something he thought he might possibly take to occasionally, on his own terms, sharing only what he was comfortable sharing. A guide dog would have made all that possible.
“I have done as they said, and still, it’s not working,” Max said to Barbara in late August. “I think Calvin just doesn’t want to work for a man like me.”
He called Charlie Mondello again, this time to propose having the dog reassigned to someone else, someone who could love Calvin enough that he would perform again in the way everyone, Max included, knew he could. It would be best for everyone.
The trainer listened quietly. He had a pretty solid sense of the strength of the man, and a very solid sense of how important a guide dog could be to him. When Max had finished detailing all that was wrong and presenting all the supporting evidence about why the reassignment was imperative, Charlie spoke.
“I will not take that dog back, Max,” he said. “You have not done everything you can to create the bond with him that he requires. You must work harder.”
Another week passed, Max doing everything he could to overcome his reserve, show affection to Calvin, demonstrate to the dog that he was counting on him, that he was prepared to trust him.
The sought-after shift in Calvin finally, slowly, began to trickle forth. The spark that had all but illuminated the dog in New York was not reignited, just a guttering memory of it, but, as August turned into September, Calvin started to work again, guiding Max along the sidewalks, moving as asked. The dog was shoving himself through whatever reservations he had, through his worry and his confusion, and was responding to Max’s instructions.
Calvin, Max figured, was finally feeling something approaching what he needed from his partner, was finally moving toward the bond Max was offering. And if their relationship wasn’t everything that others in his class were reporting they enjoyed with their dogs, he could live with that if Calvin could.
So they walked, Max inching toward confidence in Calvin’s dependability, and Calvin, Max assumed, inching his way toward whatever it was that he needed.
One warm late-September morning, Max and Calvin were making their way along the neighborhood sidewalks with no real purpose other than to enjoy the final days of Indian summer. They stopped at a crosswalk. When Max heard the sounds of stopping traffic that indicated the light had changed, he gave Calvin the command to cross the street. Two steps into the crosswalk, the dog suddenly stopped and jerked backward, hauling Max with him. It took a split second for Max to process the sounds—squealing tires, a car roaring off—that had prompted Calvin to do what he did.
A driver, Max realized, had come up the side street, ignored the light, cut into the crosswalk, and would have hit him had Calvin not been with him, or if Calvin had not been paying attention, or if Calvin had not taken the steps he took.
Staggered by what had happened—and what might have happened—Max crouched and hugged the dog, the first time he had ever offered affection not on a prescribed schedule. As he pulled the dog’s chest against his own, felt the silky heat of Calvin’s broad muzzle against his ear, he felt some resolve or barricade inside that he’d kept shored up falling away. Strange, this feeling. He didn’t quite know what to make of it.
As the man returned to his feet, dusting off his knees, and gave Calvin the forward command again, the dog seemed suddenly jauntier, more confident. Just like that. Just like what happens when the unappreciated kid in class answers a question no one else could answer, Max thought. A tidal shift in the time it took a heart to beat forty or fifty times.
It was something to build on. And within days it was as though there had never been a problem between them, man and dog completely confident with each other.
Maybe Calvin had finally had sufficient time to adjust, Max thought, exactly as the trainers had suggested. But that didn’t seem to fully explain the difference between how Calvin had been and how he was now.
Was it possible, Max wondered, that Calvin had felt the falling away of his wall? Could the dog have sensed with the crosswalk incident that Max was beginning to believe in him, and this had sent forth the initial strands to knit the elusive bond that Max had understood was necessary but had lacked the skill or emotion to bring into being?
It was, Jan suggested much later, probably a combination of all of these factors. A guide dog has to feel a reciprocation of feeling that, prior to this moment, just hadn’t been evident to Calvin, and, in truth, probably hadn’t existed. Also, she surmised, it was a clear moment of teamwork that had cemented the man and the dog—Calvin did what he was supposed to do, and Max learned in a split second that he could count on the dog, and he let Calvin know that.
There are pivot
al moments in every relationship. And if Max didn’t understand everything about what had transpired, he knew something important had happened—for both of them.
The two meshed, and with this dog, Max experienced a new level of freedom. He could set off whenever he wished, no real destination in mind, and walk for as long as he wanted to unfamiliar places with confidence. He could leave the house at dawn if he wished, and he often did, before Barbara even awoke, and stride off the aftereffects of a sleepless night.
They covered miles, month after month, Max and Calvin, reveling in the ever-changing sounds of leaves crunching beneath their feet or of packed snow squeaking and squawking the way it does when the temperature is just right. They visited the barbershop every month, where everyone knew Calvin’s name; they went to dental and doctor’s appointments and lunch outings and coffee shops.
“He is my guide and Barbara’s pet,” Max announced to all they encountered. “He tolerates me and loves Barbara.”
Max had no problem with that, he said, his tone edging so uncharacteristically close to affection that it stunned those who knew him well and recalled how he used to be. “Calvin’s heart is big enough for both of us.”
Indeed, the dog quickly sorted through quite a number of ways of being helpful. With the children gone and a diagnosis of emphysema added to the arthritis that sometimes flared to searing levels, Barbara needed a couch buddy when she felt sapped. Calvin gladly took on the job. He became a soft bundle of affection, as close to a lap dog as an eighty-pounder can be, nestling his head comfortingly in her lap as she watched television or read. He would awake from his nap to look into her eyes with an expression verging on adoration, and cock his big blocky head as if to ask whether she required anything else of him, anything at all.
Max; his first grandchild, Hannah; and Calvin
COURTESY OF THE EDELMAN FAMILY
He became a different dog with Hannah, the tiny toddler who brought giggles into the house, a curly-headed girl with a sparkling personality, the first of two children Steve had with second wife Janet. With Hannah, Calvin took on the role of patient, accommodating, ever-ready playmate. His tail would wave so hard his whole backside would swing from side to side as he and the girl (and later her brother, Andy) played hide-and-seek, or chase-the-dog, or whatever other games kids and dogs devise that make perfect sense to them and no one else.
It was the same later when Rich married a vibrant young woman named Sue, who had three children—“She came fully furnished,” Max announced with a grin to friends—and Calvin had more little people to nurture and play with.
With Max, Calvin was a serious, skilled jobholder who relished the chance to show his mettle. The moment the working harness came out, Calvin jumped to his feet, quivering with anticipation, eager to hit the streets and do the work he was so sure of, so good at, for a man he knew appreciated and trusted him. Calvin became the ideal partner, just as the trainers had predicted, for a man of structure and routines, rules and standards.
Still, somewhere along the way, the dog—apparently concluding that Max needed a little more humor and unpredictability in his life—developed the habit of stealing Max’s socks as the man was dressing. Nearly every morning, the big dog inched stealthily, silent as a fox stalking his prey, to where Max had laid out the day’s clothing. When Max was preoccupied with zippers or buttons, the dog made his move, pouncing in from the side and making off through the house with his plunder.
Max, the man of habit and sequence who had never before left a task unfulfilled, would interrupt whatever he was doing and take off through the house, roaring, because that’s what Calvin wanted.
Realizing that they no longer had to live directly on a bus line because Calvin could guide Max wherever necessary, including to a bus stop a few blocks away for trips downtown or across town, Barbara and Max bought a small two-bedroom house on a quiet street in Lyndhurst. Rich and Steve built a deck so Calvin and Max could sit in the shade of the enormous maple tree, and they had a fence installed around the huge backyard so Calvin could romp or relax on the grass.
It was a new neighborhood for man and dog, but they explored in ever larger squares, walking at least four miles every morning, and soon these streets grew as familiar as those of the old neighborhood. Sometimes, as they snaked their way through the side streets and cul-de-sacs, Max fell deep into thought, and the moment would arrive when he realized he had no idea where they were.
“Okay, Calvin, let’s go home.”
The dog would turn in the direction of home, not certain exactly how to get there, and eventually they would reach a street that Max recognized—because of the traffic sounds or the surface of the sidewalk or the familiar scent of the neighborhood bakery—and from which home could be found.
“We got home in a very unusual way, but we got here,” Max would announce merrily to Barbara when he and Calvin eventually burst through the door.
With Calvin at his side, there was no chance of Max remaining closed into himself and remote when he was out and about. Neighbors saw the deep-chocolate dog and began conversations. Shopkeepers recognized them as they made their daily rounds, and would introduce themselves and call out to Max and Calvin as they passed.
Calvin was serving as what the experts term a “social lubricant”—a charming dog escorting Max, attracting attention and conversation of the sort that Max, on his own, would not have had. With Calvin, he was constructing a broader, richer life that became wider with each passing month.
Every Tuesday the two of them left home right after daybreak, headed for the bus stop, and traveled downtown to the Cleveland Library for the Blind. For the next several hours Max performed volunteer work, mostly quality control of books on tape. People in and around the library stopped to watch as the two of them passed, the trim man with the brisk pace and the handsome dog, focused, noble, always at the man’s left side. After a while, those people approached, filled with questions:
“What does Calvin do while you’re working?”
“I keep him on a long leash for his own safety, so if someone opens the door he cannot bolt out, but he can still wander around the room I’m in, and, if he gets tired of being next to me, he can go off in a corner and lie down if he wants to.”
“How do you know when it’s time to take him out for a potty break?”
“I keep Calvin on the same schedule for meals and water that he had at the training school where I got him, and this ensures that his elimination breaks are needed at the same time every day and every night, and I make sure, no matter what, to get him outside at these times.”
“Does he ever get to play?”
“Yes, he does. All work and no play would make Calvin a very dull boy. He knows when the harness is on he is my guide, as he has been trained. But when we are at home and he knows it’s time to relax, he can chase balls in the yard or snuggle with my wife on the couch.”
Max had discovered what he regarded as an astonishing level of ignorance about how guide dogs function with their people, and he relished every chance to inform others. He was always firm in explaining that Calvin was not a pet but a brilliantly trained working animal with significant responsibilities as part of a well-oiled duo operating in tandem.
“It is a partnership. I, lacking in sight, contribute the power of reason, and Calvin, lacking the power of reason, contributes the sense of sight.”
Calvin, an adventuresome sort, was fond of any outing, but he especially liked these Tuesdays downtown at the library. He had nosed out every hot-dog vendor in the vicinity, and at lunchtime he took Max directly to one of them—always getting his own little nub of meat for his trouble. Sometimes, if he was feeling particularly lucky or convincing, he tried to entice Max to visit a second vendor.
Max developed a greater willingness to speak about the Holocaust and about being blind, which resulted in a growing flurry
of invitations from elementary schools, high schools, and colleges, Calvin always lying calmly a few feet away, seeming to enjoy the sound of Max’s voice and the attention the man was getting. One group of fourth graders was so enthusiastic about the Max and Calvin Show, as they called it, that they organized a fund-raiser, collected $100, and donated it to a guide-dog school.
How much of this Max could have, and would have, agreed to had he not had Calvin to get him to his destinations and to be a warm presence against his darkness is impossible to know. But things were very different now than they had been in the pre-Calvin days. Max, in his seventies, was increasingly being seen as a teacher, developing a patient style and an ease with talking about some of the awful moments of his past that he had previously preferred to leave undisturbed.
Max and Calvin became regulars at a monthly program called Face to Face, in which busloads of Cleveland-area high school students were transported to a synagogue for lectures about the Holocaust. He received and accepted an invitation from a group of Holocaust survivors in New York to speak at a commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation.
One morning, after Calvin had been with him for several years, Max was having a bagel at one of his regular spots, the dog, as always, curled at his feet. When the proprietor stopped by the table, talk shifted to the local elections.
“You should consider running for the Lyndhurst council, Max,” the man said. “You’re retired, you have the time, and you would do the job as well or better than others.”
“Who will vote for me?” Max said with a laugh. “I am not well known in the city.”
“You must be kidding!” the man responded. “You walk with your Calvin all over the city. People may not know you by name, but they all know who you are. Print campaign literature with pictures of you and Calvin, and people will say, ‘Look, here’s the man with the guide dog. Let’s vote for him.’ They’ll probably vote for Calvin, but you’ll still win.”
Trusting Calvin Page 14
