“What happened to Tuesday?”
“Candy bar,” Tom said, holding out his hand for payment.
“Not yet, man. Not yet. He’s still got a long way to go.”
At first, Tuesday did most of his training in the pool, but after a few days he was trotting around the prison yard at Tom’s heel, just as he had trotted beside his first raiser. The only problem was that whenever anything was thrown into the pool, Tuesday jumped in after it. The Labrador retrievers would step in to fetch, only to find Tuesday leaping past them, splashing water everywhere in his enthusiasm to reach the object first. The men who had been calling him pansy were now yelling at Tom, “Hey, man, control your dog!”
“He’s not out of control,” Tom replied with a smile. “That’s just his pool. Maybe your dog shouldn’t be so timid.”
And that’s how, with the help of a weathered-but-tender trainer, the pansy became King of the Pool, the prison yard alpha and ultimate fetcher of other dogs’ toys.
“Once we broke the ice with the pool and we already had the bond between us, Tuesday would do anything. It was so simple to train him. It was actually no work at all.”
That’s right, bonded. And why not? “I bonded with every dog I’ve had,” Tom said.
He was heartbroken when his first dog graduated, but he held himself in check, not wanting to make a scene in front of the guys. He trained his second dog, a guide dog, for sixteen months, and he broke down in tears when the dog left him. The other prisoners made fun of him, at least until they reached the point where they could cry themselves, but Tom didn’t care. It was the first time he’d cried in twenty years, and it felt . . . human.
Tuesday was one of the hardest to leave, because he was such a loving dog. He was needy, but he was always there for you. That was important, because Tom hadn’t adopted Tuesday on a whim. He needed a distraction, because five months after lying under Steve Buscemi’s bunk with Tuesday he was eligible for parole. According to Tom, the months before a parole hearing were by far the worst time in a prisoner’s life. Prison is monotony, a mind-numbing, soul-crushing nothing with freedom as the only reward. Most guys had an end date. Tom didn’t. He was a lifer. He had parole, and with parole, there was no promise. And that’s hard. Especially when, as Tom believed, making parole was the luck of the draw.
“I’ve seen guys going in there who just beat up a corrections officer and make parole,” he said. “Other guys go in with recommendations and certificates from every program and not make parole.” It’s not about you. That’s what the prisoners say. It about whether the parole board was made happy last night.
So prisoners up for parole nervously walked their cells. And worried. And started arguments because they were on edge. And worried that the arguments were undermining their cause. And started more arguments, because they couldn’t let the last ones go. They tried to get their thoughts in order, both on paper and in their head, even though they didn’t believe it would do any good, but the feeling of helplessness, of being nothing more than a number you can’t even know, kept getting in the way. That behavior isn’t just counterproductive—it can eat through your life, as I can attest from my long years of isolation and obsession in the depths of my wounds. Thinking and rethinking without the ability to act, and dwelling on your isolation in a faceless system, leads quickly to frustration, anger, and despair. Prisoners up for parole describe the last couple of months as agony—and the short, impersonal parole hearing as a letdown, no matter the result.
With Tuesday, though, Tom didn’t just adopt a distraction. He adopted the perfect companion. When their owner gets nervous, most dogs mimic them, getting nervous themselves. Not Tuesday. He has the ability to act as ballast, to balance the relationship by going in the opposite direction. When Tom got nervous, Tuesday became calm. As Tom grew distracted by the hearing, Tuesday focused. He knew Tom needed him, and I suspect his desire to help, as much as the swimming pool, provided the push back into training. Tuesday was determined to succeed, in other words, not for himself, but for his friend.
He focused on his commands. He pulled less on the leash. He ignored the swimming pool, loping along instead at Tom’s side. He jumped on the cot as the date approached and the nights grew long, and more and more often Tom let him stay. When Tuesday put his head on Tom’s lap in the television room, Tom knew it was no longer just because the poor lonely dog wanted companionship; it was because he wanted Tom to know he had a friend.
The day arrived. The guards knocked. Tom gave Tuesday a last hug, stroked him under his chin, and went to meet his fate. He turned back to see Tuesday sitting in the jail cell, staring after him with those gentle, intelligent eyes, and he returned hours later to find Tuesday in the exact same place. When he received his parole notice, Tom broke down. He hugged Tuesday, who was of course at his side, and thanked him for his service. Even after almost thirty years inside, he was not a broken man, like so many other prisoners. He was not angry, at the system or himself. “The only way the prison system could win,” Tom said, “was to get me to hate, and being around the dogs and everything, the hate was totally out of the picture.” When Tom walked out the door and found his wife waiting for him, he had no problem giving her a hug, because he had been working on relationships for years. He was that rarity in the modern prison system: a totally free man.
Today, Tom owns his own business training dogs with his wife. He focuses on troubled dogs that others have given up on, especially pit bulls. He understands that everybody deserves a second chance, and with love and patience almost every animal can succeed. After all, he turned his life around. He spent a decade giving back to society by training service and explosives-detection dogs, and that, he said, “got my mind right and focused on the positives.” When he walked out of prison, he knew he could succeed. He had a perfect 7-0 record, after all, and he had turned around Tuesday, the saddest dog in the yard.
And Tuesday?
He went back to ECAD. Alone. Again.
CHAPTER 3
THE LOST BOYS
Love is never lost. If not reciprocated,
it will flow back and soften and purify the heart.
—WASHINGTON IRVING
The ECAD office and training center aren’t a showpiece. A low-lying building with a blue tin roof, it is almost ostentatious in its lack of decoration or architectural features. Inside, it is just as practical, composed primarily of a large open work space with a bare concrete floor. There are two long folding tables placed end to end in the center of the room (the brown particleboard kind you see in church dining halls), a circular yellow path outlined on the floor, and five or six green wooden platforms. Mostly, though, the room seems empty. Even the cinder block walls are spartan, painted pale gray and covered with checklists and behavioral diagrams. There are three modest, well-used offices along the right wall, and a steel door in the back that leads to a living area used by clients during their two-week training period. The windows on the left offer views of three enclosed outdoor play areas, two with those tiny plastic slides designed for two-year-olds and usually found in suburban basements. For an organization that survives on donations, in other words, ECAD doesn’t waste much time or money catering to the rich and powerful.
Even the dogs don’t live in luxury. When not being trained or exercised in the play areas, they are kept at the back of the large room in the kind of large kennels sold at the local pet store. The only training equipment, besides the yellow line on the floor, are the six green wooden boxes. They are used to teach the dogs to get up and down, and they are where the dogs sit attentively, with their handlers beside them, when taking a break. The rest of the training is done with the ordinary objects in the room: doorknobs, light switches, window blinds, chairs—things the future service dogs will encounter in their working lives.
The special thing about ECAD is the staff. This is a group of people, from Lu Picard down, who believe in their work. It’s not just about the dogs, Lu always says. That was her old job,
training puppies for wealthy families. ECAD is about the clients. Everything is done to provide the disabled with better lives.
It’s hard to argue with that mission when you talk to a mother whose seven-year-old son has been falling down steps at school since having his brain tumor removed. “I just want him to be able to play like other kids,” she says.
Or the young man in a wheelchair, able only to move his right arm. He did his own research and found ECAD when he was twelve, but his mother wasn’t supportive. After three months, the boy gave the dog back, saying he couldn’t handle the responsibility alone. Seven years later, he asked for another chance. He had finished high school. He was putting himself through college. He was going to succeed. A dog was the last tool he wanted before moving out on his own.
Or the mother whose son was struck by a hit-and-run driver at age twelve. The brain damage left him barely able to speak and, for four years, unable to walk. You can hear six years of exhaustion and anguish in her voice when she says, “He loves to read. He wants to walk to the library by himself. He’s eighteen. It’s only a few blocks away, but he has to walk past the place where the car hit him, and I can’t do it. He gets so mad at me, but I just can’t. This dog . . . it will give him his freedom. I think it will help me let him go.”
That’s why Lu Picard and the staff at ECAD work so hard. That’s why they train the dogs so precisely, beginning on the third day of their lives, and nurture them so carefully. That’s why they take less money to do more work, and endure frustrations and setbacks without complaints (or only a few). I don’t think it’s a sacrifice, any more than my life as a soldier was a sacrifice. We believe in what we do and we love it. What’s monetary enrichment compared to personal accomplishment? What’s a new car compared to the knowledge that you’ve bettered someone’s life?
That’s why Tuesday was a problem. Because their work was so important, the dogs at ECAD had to be the best. How can you give that young man in the wheelchair a dog that might ignore him? How can you give a brain-damaged child, who shuffles slowly and weakly when she walks, a dog that might pull her into the street?
Tuesday wasn’t a bad dog. He just wasn’t attentive to commands, and he sometimes refused to follow the two most basic: side and heel, the commands telling a dog to walk on your right or left side. In Lu’s opinion, he was immature. I think he was wounded from losing Tom, as only a sensitive dog like Tuesday could be.
I know that ECAD dogs, when trained in the usual way, don’t miss being bonded. How would they, as Lu argues, when they’ve never experienced a consistent relationship with a human being? Do you miss speaking Portuguese? Or seeing the sunset over the North Pole?
But what happens when a dog, especially an intuitive and emotional dog like Tuesday, experiences a strong human bond not once but twice, only to lose it both times? How does he feel then?
Lu saw the pitfalls. But she also saw the potential in Tuesday. He was warm and beautiful. He was mild-mannered. He was smart and sensitive and impossible not to love. And, Lu suspected with her fifteen years of intuition, she had the perfect trainer to reach him: Brendan.
It has long been known that training a service dog can be beneficial for the trainer as well as the dog. In fact, Green Chimneys Farms, one of Lu Picard’s support organizations and a pioneer in the field since the 1940s, began training service dogs primarily as therapy for emotionally troubled children. For the past thirteen years, ECAD has performed that therapeutic role at Children’s Village, a residential school for troubled teens in Dobbs Ferry, New York, about an hour north of New York City. Working at ECAD is a voluntary program for the students, so it is surprising, at first, that so many of the teenagers seem withdrawn, aggressive, or dismissive toward their work. But remember, these are some of the most troubled kids in the New York State foster care system. Like Tuesday, most have been passed through multiple caregivers and learned that hardening your heart—even to dogs—is the only way to survive.
Brendan’s story is typical. Born in an impoverished area of Brooklyn, he bounced between a series of foster parents and his mother’s house, never staying longer than a few months. He had always been quiet, but now he withdrew from the world around him. He stopped listening to his foster parents; he stopped trying to make friends. He was vulnerable, but even worse, he was large. He was always the huge new boy in a rough school. But he wasn’t a fighter. This made him a target for hard boys and others trying to prove themselves. He got picked on and he got beaten up. He wanted nothing more than to go home to his mother, but she had younger children now. He never stayed for long.
Eventually, Brendan took to the streets. He stayed out as long as he wanted, whenever he wanted, and never worried about the consequences. No punishment could touch him, because he didn’t care. He was angry, but more than that, he was hurt, and he was only a kid, so what did he know? All he wanted was his mother, and she wasn’t going to take him back. So he fought. And argued. And stared at the wall and shrugged when they suspended him from school.
A social worker recommended Children’s Village. The State of New York agreed. It was the ideal place for a lonely young boy, but the transition wasn’t easy. He hated his old life, but he hated his new life even more. He wouldn’t talk to anyone, even the other kids in his cottage. He wandered to class in a daze and ate his meals without enthusiasm. He was a young teenager, and he missed the city. He missed the action on the streets. He missed the hope, no matter how small, that his mother would take him back. Most of all, he missed his rottweiler, Bear, the only constant in his life. No matter what happened or where he lived, the dog had always been waiting.
Brendan knew dog training was an option at Children’s Village. He heard the dogs were special. Golden retrievers that could turn on lights and open doors? He was intrigued, but he didn’t admit that to anyone. He was too withdrawn; he didn’t open himself up like that. Besides, it was probably a con, because everything in life turned out to be a con, just another way for adults to get what they wanted. But after the dogs performed for his class one day, he couldn’t resist. It was no con. The dogs really could turn on lights with their noses, open doors, and walk right beside their trainers, who were kids from Children’s Village just like him, except that with the dogs beside them, those kids weren’t quite like him anymore.
I have to do that, he thought, despite himself. I gotta be a part of that.
He didn’t thrive in the program. He liked the dogs, but he resented the rigidity of the training. He spent hours without talking, sullenly walking the dogs through their drills, but then, when he was alone with the other kids, he bullied and belittled them. He was a typical Children’s Village student: afraid, resentful, and mistrusting—a bully when he felt bad but deep down, in his heart, a good kid. He was like Tuesday, in a way. He wanted affection, he wanted a task, but he felt abandoned by the person he loved. He was sixteen, but he acted like he was eight, and Lu wanted to wrap her arms around him even when he acted out, because she knew he was sensitive and wounded and needed a hug.
She gave him Tuesday instead, pulling him aside one day and telling him, “I have a special job for you, Brendan, okay?”
“What is it?”
“It’s Tuesday. He’s having trouble heeling. Can you help him?”
Brendan knew this was true. Everybody loved Tuesday, but everyone knew he was lagging behind the other dogs, too.
This is not to say Tuesday was a bad dog. His poor behavior was only a matter of degrees. The ECAD program sent the dogs out every few weekends to spend time as “normal dogs” at the homes of volunteers. One Sunday, Tuesday’s foster mother took him to church. Not to sit in the car, but to sit under the pew and listen, without complaint, to an entire sermon. At communion, he followed his foster mother to the kneeler. Instead of sitting behind her as she expected, Tuesday sat beside her, with his paws on the altar rail. Everyone else had their hands there, so why not? When the priest came with the communion wafers, Tuesday quietly watched him pass, but h
is eyes said, Hey, why didn’t I get a treat? The priest came back, placed his hands on Tuesday’s head and blessed his future work. Tuesday waited quietly for a few seconds, then turned and walked back to his seat, the whole congregation chuckling behind him.
So he was not a poorly behaved dog—not by “normal dog” standards, anyway. In fact, he was probably the best-behaved dog you have ever met. He was just silly sometimes. He would lose his concentration and romp after the other dogs, or taunt his handlers by waving a toy in his mouth instead of handing it to them, or give them a goofy smile when they told him to sit on his box. If they asked him to fetch a sock, sometimes he’d grab two, then run around the room showing them to everyone. He was immature, as Lu put it. He’d stayed a fifteen-pound puppy, even as his body had grown into an eighty-pound dog.
Brendan knew Tuesday’s history. He had seen Tuesday’s behavior. He knew this wasn’t another con by adults. Tuesday really needed special help. When Brendan turned and saw Tuesday watching him with those deep eyes and knotted eyebrows, I think he realized, for the first time, the connection between them.
You’re a little broken, eh, Tuesday? Well, I understand. I’m a little broken, too.
It’s amazing what focus can do. Training dogs is one thing, but to have a dog of your own? To watch him grow day after day, an increment at a time? To be able to say, even to yourself, Tuesday turned on a light switch, and I taught him that? That’s different. That’s taking responsibility and having pride.
Brendan was never frustrated when Tuesday jogged a few feet ahead or pulled on the leash. He never raised his voice when Tuesday botched the distraction test by stopping to eat the dog treats thrown onto the floor in his path. There was no failure for the children at ECAD. Lu didn’t tell them, “Teach that dog to turn on a light switch in three hundred repetitions.” She said, “Let’s see how long it takes Blue to turn on that light.” But the kids knew it usually took three hundred times to flip a light switch, so at five hundred or so most of them grew frustrated. They didn’t understand why the dog wasn’t performing, and they took it personally. Not Brendan. Not anymore. When Tuesday struggled with the multiple retrieve—picking specified objects out of a pile and bringing them back one at a time—Brendan just thought, Tuesday’s a little broken, but he means well. He’ll get there.
Until Tuesday: A Wounded Warrior and the Golden Retriever Who Saved Him Page 4
