by Susan Conant
“Eumie, those things take time to kick in. They aren’t going to do a thing for you tonight.”
“Depakote,” Eumie says. “Is that slow, too? I’m a little volatile. Maybe that’s—”
“Have you asked Dr. Youngman about sleep? Addressing the, uh, sense of volatility is one thing, but you need something for sleep.”
“What are you taking?”
With heartfelt affection, Ted says, “Good old Valium.”
“Valium! I’d almost forgotten about it. Can I have some?”
Wordlessly, Ted shakes three yellow tablets into the palm of his hand, gives one to Eumie, and dry swallows the other two. After closing the cabinet doors on what are almost like twin wine cellars, Ted and Eumie companionably brush their teeth and enter the bedroom, where Dolfo occupies the center of the king-size bed. Like Dolfo, the comforter is multicolored and expensive. The resemblance is no accident. Eumie chose the comforter to match the dog’s coat. At the sight of Ted and Eumie, Dolfo beats his peculiar tail, leaps to his feet, bounds off the bed, sniffs a corner of it, and, with a goofy smile on his face, lifts his leg, and empties his full bladder on the comforter.
Ted and Eumie exchange little smiles and shakes of the head. Eumie reaches for a spray bottle of odor-neutralizing enzyme solution that sits ready on the top of her dresser, sprays the drenched corner of the bed, returns the bottle to the dresser, and settles herself in bed. Ted is already under the covers. Dolfo jumps onto the comforter, turns around twice, and lies down between Ted and Eumie, who turn out their lights and wait for their medications to act. Dolfo, however, falls immediately to sleep. Or so I imagine.
CHAPTER 5
At three o’clock on Friday afternoon, I managed to find a parking space only a half block from the address Eumie Brainard-Green had given me that morning when we’d set the time for our meeting. I’d spent the day indoors working on a reminiscence of my late mother for the official publication of the American Kennel Club, the AKC Gazette, which was planning an issue focused on the golden retriever. Both of my parents bred and showed our goldens, but my mother was a grande dame of the breed. My father, I thought, would be pleased with what I’d written about Marissa, and I’d tried to avoid saying anything that would distress his second wife, Gabrielle, whom he’d married only a few years earlier. As I’d taken pains not to mention in the article, my mother was a hypercompetent martinet who set high standards for her dogs and for me, and who vigilantly monitored our performance with the intention of correcting deviations from perfection. In contrast, Gabrielle was warm and easygoing. I not only adored her but felt grateful to her for marrying the most impossible person I’ve ever met, thereby relieving me of the burden of worrying about him all alone.
Anyway, I’d squandered a beautiful spring day by spending it indoors, and as I took care not to trip on the uneven brick sidewalk, I mulled over my goals for the meeting with the Greens and Dolfo, the principal goal being to do whatever we did outside in the sun and fresh air. In the universal manner of overconfident fools, I assumed that my experience and expertise would carry me through; except to pack a tote bag with a collar, a four-foot leash, a clicker, and six different kinds of dog-delicious food treats, I’d made no preparations. If the animal-loving forces that govern the universe had wanted to reward me for my efforts to improve the lot of the creatures who had helped Homo sapiens to evolve, I’d have lost my footing on the rough sidewalk and taken the kind of hard fall that might have warned me of the consequence of pride.
As it was, I walked smoothly and confidently past a parking area paved with cobblestones to the steep flight of steps that led up to the Greens’ house, which was a big, rambling brown-shingled place with a rose-covered fence, bright flowers, and a charming veranda. The fence, the steps, the porch, the shutters, and the other trim were neatly painted in cream. Arrayed on the veranda were wicker chairs and end tables, and from the beams hung baskets of flowering plants and ivy that were being tended by a well-muscled, dark-haired young man in a T-shirt printed with words that I’d just read on a van parked on the street: Year After Year: Perennial Care for Perennials. The front door had a shiny brass knocker and matching doorbell. Mounted on the frame was a little brass cylinder that I recognized as a mezuzah, a container for a tiny scroll, a fixture of traditional Jewish households. A Jewish friend had explained to me that the mezuzah was a reminder of God’s presence and commandments. Had I known what I was in for, I’d have paid attention to the mezuzah and found comfort in the knowledge that if my own efforts failed, I could turn to a truly High Power for help with Dolfo and the Greens. In fact, after giving the mezuzah no more than a glance, I rang the bell and, as I waited, made unproductive use of my brain by wondering why Year After Year was taking care of the lobelia, nasturtiums, and other annuals in the baskets. The answer should have been obvious: because the company was paid generously. Had I put my mind to work, I’d have focused on the row of shoes and rain boots to the right of the doormat. What’s more, when Eumie opened the door, I’d have taken in the rows of shoes and sandals in the foyer, realized their significance, and wondered how any sane person could exist in a shoeless house with an unhousebroken dog. That answer, too, should have been obvious: chez Green, sanity had nothing to do with anything.
That’s not what Eumie said when she greeted me, of course. And greeted is an understatement. Just as she’d done with Ron, she squealed, threw her arms around me, and welcomed me as if I were a beloved old friend she hadn’t seen for years. “Holly, come in!” Gesturing to the footwear on the floor, she said softly, as if confiding a secret, “This is a shoeless house. You don’t mind, do you.” It was a statement or perhaps an order or even a commandment. “We have socks and slippers you can use.”
Reminding myself to watch before I stepped, I eased off my running shoes and said, “I’m wearing socks. I’ll be fine.” Actually, if it hadn’t been for Dolfo, I’d have been delighted. The phenomenon of shoeless houses fascinated me, mainly because everything about the concept was not just foreign to the way I lived but entirely incompatible with it. I’d been in two shoeless houses before this, and both times, I’d tried to imagine explaining to my husband, my friends, and my relatives that henceforth they were to remove their shoes at the door and walk around in slippers or stocking feet. That’s about as far as I’d gone with the notion, since it was clear that my husband, my father, and Kevin Dennehy would have been unable to comprehend what I was saying; they just plain wouldn’t have understood. The same went for the dogs, who didn’t wear shoes, of course, but who’d somehow have been mystified by the ban anyway.
“Ted is dying to see you,” said Eumie, who was wearing loose, flowing white garments, white slippers, and large silver earrings. On her left wrist were six silver bangle bracelets. I wondered whether the peasant-priestess garments and the artisanal silver represented an effort to adapt to Cambridge, which favors natural fibers, ethnic or handcrafted accessories, and shoes too hideous to deform the feet. As on the previous evening, Eumie’s hair was, however, artfully blond and her makeup copious and colorful. “We both feel awful that we’ve waited so long to get help for Dolfo,” she said. “It’s not like us. We are not help-rejecting types.”
By now, we were in the front hall, which was redolent of freshly applied Simple Solution, an enzyme product that neutralizes dog urine. Although Dolfo was not in sight, his presence was visible on the chewed rails of the graceful staircase and on the gnawed fringe of an otherwise lovely Persian rug.
“I thought we might work outdoors,” I suggested, not only because I wanted to enjoy the spring day but because Eumie and Ted might expect me to clean up after Dolfo if—when—he messed in the house. As Eumie had just said, she was not a help-rejecting type. Visible through the archway to the dining room was a barefoot woman energetically polishing a banquet-size table. Another woman, this one wearing slippers, was dusting a menorah that sat on a buffet. Glancing at them, I asked, “Your housekeepers?”
“They’re from
Maid for You. They’re just tiding us over. We really prefer to have people who become part of the family. Ted should be free in a few minutes. Where on earth is Dolfo?”
Eumie set off on a Dolfo hunt with me trailing behind. We passed through a large living room, an even larger family room with massive leather furniture and a wall of glass doors, and a kitchen that was all cherry, granite, and stainless steel. All three sinks were piled with dirty dishes, and there were crumbs scattered on the hardwood floor. “Dolfo! Dolfo!” Eumie kept squealing. From behind a door in a corridor off the kitchen came the sounds of scratching and retching. Eumie opened the door to reveal a pink-tiled powder room and the clownish dog, who greeted us by dropping the bar of soap in his mouth into the puddle of soapy saliva at his feet. Bubbles dripped from his mouth and his tongue, which was the correct size for an Irish wolfhound, perhaps, and, being far too long to fit in Dolfo’s mouth, was doomed perpetually to loll from his mouth. Neither his tongue nor the taste of soap appeared to bother him at all. On the contrary, he wagged his silly tail and, catching my eye, gave what I thought was a smile of happy recognition.
Eumie was furious. “Those damn cleaners! They shut him in here like an—”
“Animal,” I finished. “He doesn’t seem to have swallowed much of the soap.” Blocking his exit, I said, “Eumie, if you’ll get a couple of paper towels, I’ll swab his mouth out, and he’ll be fine.”
Before I had malamutes, I might mention, I was a straightforward person. Now, thanks to Rowdy and especially thanks to Kimi, I’m manipulative and opportunistic. During Eumie’s brief absence, which I’d engineered, I reached into my tote bag, got a thin collar and a short leash, and had Dolfo dressed for the day by the time she returned.
“Dolfo’s school clothes,” I told her. “Ninety-nine percent of housebreaking is preventing accidents.”
Ted appeared in time to hear the statement. Dolfo, I might brag, didn’t jump on Ted. Rather, he obligingly looked at my face, and I fed him a treat. Dog training defined: you get the dog to train you to do what he wants when he does what you want. And people training? Oh, my. The next forty-five minutes could have served as a demonstration of how not to do it. We moved into the family room, which was at the back of the house. It had a floor of terra-cotta tile, a fireplace, big, comfortable leather couches and chairs, and a wall of glass doors that opened to a wide deck. Visible through the glass was a yard ten times the size of Steve’s and mine with a new wooden fence, teak benches, and an extraordinary number of large and expensive-looking bird feeders. There were glass-walled copper feeders on poles, hanging globes and elaborately designed suet baskets suspended from tree branches, and two platform feeders mounted on the railing of the deck. The first of my many therapeutic errors was to allow myself to be diverted from the task of housebreaking Dolfo by asking about the feeders, which were being cleaned and filled by a man who wore white coveralls with a company name embroidered on the back: On the Wing.
“Birds are special to us,” Ted said. “Eumie and I deal with trauma in our patients and”—he lowered his mellifluous voice—“in our own lives. The concept of flight as a beautiful adaptation has special significance for us.”
I’d intended to say that Steve was slaving to maintain a couple of feeders that were being raided and ruined by squirrels, but I felt almost ashamed to admit that winged creatures had no great symbolic meaning for my husband, who, in ordinary fashion, wanted to feed birds because he enjoyed watching them.
“Our own trauma histories,” said Eumie, “are probably what accounts for this delay in connecting to Dolfo’s needs, and—”
“Speaking of Dolfo,” I began.
“Oh, we are!” Eumie squealed. “You see, just as birds represent the healthy, adaptive flight from overwhelming experiences, Dolfo represents grounding in the safe sensations and perceptions of the here and now.”
My second major mistake: instead of zooming in on my area of expertise, namely, dog behavior, I got sucked into Ted and Eumie’s anthropomorphic perspective. Simultaneously, I made my third big error, which was to ask a routine question about Dolfo’s history. “Dogs certainly are the ultimate in the here and now,” I agreed in an effort to form an alliance with Dolfo’s owners. “But they have histories, too. Maybe you could outline Dolfo’s for me.”
Eumie smirked at Ted. “Isn’t that cute! She’s doing just what therapists do. Most therapists. Dr. Needleman spent our first two sessions on it. She is not gestalt at all. She’s an analyst. You know, Ted, now that I think about it, Dr. Foote hasn’t delved all that deeply into our individual narratives, has she? She’s more oriented toward our dialoguing, isn’t she?” To me, Eumie said, “That’s our couples therapist. When you’re dealing with two people with our kinds of histories, well—”
I knew exactly who Dr. Foote was. In fact, I’d “seen” Vee Foote, in the expensive sense of the word, after the combination of a head injury and Steve’s marriage to Anita the Fiend had left me…But that’s another story. Rita, who had referred me to Dr. Foote, now considered her greedy and incompetent. I, on the other hand, pitied Vee Foote just as I pitied everyone else afflicted with a pathological fear of dogs, which is to say, a paralyzing fear of life itself.
“The whole issue of time orientation in therapy is interesting,” said Ted. “I’d be curious to know how Missy Zinn handles it with Caprice…” And he was off. His own individual therapist was a Dr. Tortorello, Eumie’s was named Nixie Needleman, Caprice’s was the aforementioned Missy Zinn, and Wyeth’s was Peter York, who, as I didn’t say, was a young psychologist whom I knew because he was a friend of Rita’s and was about to go into supervision with her. Ted and Eumie shared a psychopharmacologist, Quinn Youngman, whom I knew because Rita was dating him. In addition to the traditional shrinks, there were herbalists, acupuncturists, massage therapists, Reiki healers, hypnotherapists, and experts in guided imagery, and there must have been primary-care physicians and dentists as well.
“Dolfo,” I summarized, “clearly inhabits a richly populated environment. So, all the more need for him to learn the skills required to be a valued member of this, uh, complex support network.” Having staked my claim to the conversational field, I consolidated my position by demonstrating clicker training, which is good old operant conditioning with positive reinforcement for desired behavior. The sound of the clicker gets paired with food and thus becomes a secondary reinforcer that precisely marks behavioral perfection, so to speak. Dolfo did great. By the tenth time I’d “charged the clicker” by clicking and giving a treat, he was watching me with an expression that said, “Ah-hah! Click means that food is coming!” I went on to explain that we’d click and treat when Dolfo produced outdoors.
“You see what Holly’s doing?” Ted asked Eumie. “Instilling hope! Showing that healing is possible.”
Heeling with two es was possible, if a bit advanced for Dolfo and his owners, so my misunderstanding was inevitable. Fortunately, I caught on when Ted said something about recovery, and instead of sounding stupid or ridiculous, I said that we had every reason to feel hopeful. The bird feeder professional having finished his work, we then spent about ten minutes outside in the fenced yard, where Dolfo cooperated by lifting his leg on trees and shrubs, thus giving Ted and Eumie opportunities to click and treat.
If reinforcing desired behavior were sufficient to housebreak a dog, we’d have been all set. As it was, I had to harp on the need to prevent accidents indoors. When we were back in the family room, where I sat on a couch with Dolfo lying at my feet and studying my face, I said, “We have to remember that Dolfo can’t be given the chance to practice the behaviors that we don’t want.”
“Oy vey!” said Ted. “Where to begin? You have to understand that we are a merged family. We have a daughter, Caprice, from Eumie’s previous marriage, and a son, Wyeth, from mine.”
“And Dolfo,” said Eumie, “is the child we have together. We are deeply committed to providing him with unconditional love.”
Oy v
ey! Where to begin? Operant conditioning is about as conditional as you can get.
“You see,” said Ted, “communicating negative emotions can give the child the message that he is globally bad. So, he adapts by splitting off that part of himself. And what began as a whole, unified, healthy organism becomes divided.” He paused dramatically. “Divided against itself.”
“And what are possessions, after all?” Eumie demanded. “Things! Objects!”
“Maybe we can agree,” I ventured, “that soiling outdoors is preferable to soiling indoors.”
On that point, we did agree. Ted again mentioned the dog’s breeder, who claimed that golden Aussie huskapoos housebreak themselves. It said so on her Web site.
“The Web site lied,” I said. “Furthermore, Dolfo has had the chance to practice going in the house. He thinks it’s just fine. The behavior has become a habit, and unless we can break the habit, he’s going to keep on doing it.”
Their faces fell. “You want us to lock him in a cage,” Eumie charged. “That’s what the vet said to do. Dr. Cushing. We need to find someone else.”
“She has an excellent reputation. But there are alternatives to crate training.” I mentioned some: keeping the dog on leash every second, confining him to the little powder room near the kitchen, and so on.
Far from recognizing my advice as emanating from a Higher Power, they continued to regard me with suspicion and took turns explaining that my suggestions translated into making Dolfo feel cut off, rejected, frustrated, and unloved.
To borrow a word of Ted’s, meshugass! Madness! If it hadn’t been for Dolfo, I’d have walked out. But the foolish-looking dog got to me, in part because his background and experience predicted a disaster I just wasn’t seeing, namely, a horrible case of aggression. He’d been bred, I suspected, for nothing but money, sold to people who knew nothing about dogs, and taught nothing about the rules of canine conduct, yet far from becoming a danger, he was sweet, zany, weirdly loveable, and touchingly eager to learn to be a good boy.
