Finally, she poked her head in and whispered to Lu Picard, “Are those puppies?” There were young golden retrievers, little miniatures of Tuesday and his littermates, in the kennels at the back of the room.
Lu nodded. “Would you like to see them?”
Kim walked to the kennels and, without a word, lay down with the puppies. She stayed on the floor for an hour, by herself, crying and holding onto the dogs.
“I’m ready,” she finally said.
I had similar psychological problems, but my experience at ECAD was markedly different. Even on my way, on the commuter train, I was flying. There were three other wounded veterans in the program, and we would be living together in small quarters at the back of the training facility while we developed a relationship with our dogs. That usually would have scared the hell out of me. After all, I had never met these people, and in many ways we couldn’t have been more different. Army Sgt. Mary Dague, a young woman from Montana, had lost both her arms above the elbow to an IED. Army Spc. (Ret.) Andrew Hanson, a quiet soldier from Minnesota, had lost his legs to an IED. Army Staff Sgt. (Ret.) Ricky Boone, a gregarious African American from Yonkers, was a spinal (someone with a debilitating spinal cord condition) with PTSD, a mohawk, and two arm braces to help him walk.
And yet, as soon as I met them, I felt more comfortable with these strangers than I had with anyone in a long, long time. Maybe it was the proximity of the dogs. Maybe it was the camaraderie of combat. Maybe it was the election, about which we passionately disagreed (Mary and Andrew on one side, Ricky and I on the other). Maybe it was just hope. And change.
I stayed up until 4:00 a.m. that night, long after the others had gone to bed, watching election coverage. Nobody was saying anything of value, but I couldn’t sleep. Tomorrow, whoever won, George Bush, the primary architect of and cheerleader for the debacle in Iraq, would be on his way out. The long nightmare, for the country and myself, would be over. And I would meet my dog.
Hope and change indeed.
If only it were that simple.
PART III
TUESDAY
AND LUIS
CHAPTER 9
THE FIRST CHOICE
But after the fires and the wrath,
But after searching and pain,
His Mercy opens us a path
To live with ourselves again.
—RUDYARD KIPLING,
“THE CHOICE”
These weren’t ordinary dogs. That was clear the moment Tuesday and the other ECAD dogs walked into the room. Their coats were radiant; their eyes were bright; their posture was perfect, like contestants at a kennel club. When they came through the door, everything seemed to stop: the noise, the chatter, time itself. I had been thinking about this moment for six months, dreaming about the dog that would change my life, but this was more than I had anticipated. A door opened, a dog walked in with a teenager at its side, and I couldn’t take my eyes off it. There was nothing hurried or unsure about this dog. It made everything seem easy. A second later, another dog walked in exactly the same way. Then another. And another. I sat at the table in the middle of ECAD’s main room with the other veterans, the instruction sheet we had been studying still in my hand, and watched in awe as the dogs walked calmly around us and then, with a two-word command, “Jump on,” stepped onto their green boxes. When they sat down, nobody said a word.
There were four golden retrievers, one black lab, and one yellow lab. They were wearing vests and enormous instruction harnesses, but they didn’t seem to notice. They sat casually on their boxes, waiting for their next command, as if this parade around strangers was the most ordinary thing in the world. They had walked out for training at the same hour every day for the last three months, and for them today was really no different. But for Ricky, Andrew, Mary, and me, the world stopped when those dogs entered the room. It was like seeing your bride walking down the aisle on your wedding day. The moment stretches out, and part of you wants it to last forever so that you can admire every detail of the woman who will be your partner for life. Part of you wants to run down the aisle and throw your arms around her and say, “Let’s forget all this. Let’s get out of here right now, just you and me.”
The yellow lab had been trained for Mary. Since she had lost her arms above the elbows, Mary needed a docile dog that would follow voice commands and didn’t need to be controlled with pressure on the leash. Remy was a shy female, small and sweet. She had been trained to work on a leash attached to Mary’s belt, and she had been drilled hard on retrieval skills. Remy clearly wanted a partner, and she and Mary bonded instantly. From the moment they were introduced, that dog was at Mary’s side, looking toward her with loving eyes.
I wanted that with my dog. I wanted special moments of togetherness. I wanted instant affection and companionship. But I didn’t want a docile dog like Remy. I’m a headstrong, opinionated, type A personality, and that’s what I was looking for in a dog. I wanted an outgoing leader, one that projected energy and commanded respect. I wanted people to look at my dog and see the embodiment of what I wanted to be: a confident individual destined to succeed.
But more than that, I wanted enthusiasm. I had withdrawn emotionally even before my move to New York. I had withheld my affection even from my family and turned inward on myself. For more than a year, I hadn’t physically touched another living thing. I wanted to throw my arms around a dog, to hold it against my chest and feel my love coming back to me a hundredfold. It was all I could do that first morning to keep from throwing myself on the dogs and hugging them. That’s all any of us wanted—to play and touch and feel that animal connection.
Tuesday wasn’t that dog. Of all the dogs that morning, in fact, he seemed the most reserved. We were only with the dogs for two hours the first day, a half hour with each dog with instruction from Lu in between. Mary was bonded, but the other three of us were free-floating. On the fourth day, after Lu had watched us together, we’d be matched with our dogs. The first day was about getting used to having a leash in our hands and practicing the basic twenty commands.
It may have been the same old training routine, but these dogs were attuned. They sensed something special. They had new trainers, and these trainers were showering them with affection—we couldn’t help it, even if we wanted to—and most of the dogs responded with enthusiasm. By the afternoon, they were nudging us and licking our hands, and when we used my favorite basic command, “Snuggle,” they would rise up excitedly so that we could give them a hug.
Not Tuesday. When I trained with him that afternoon, he wagged his tail and looked happy, but there wasn’t any overflow of emotion. The other dogs had been focused on me, waiting for my commands, but Tuesday glanced around the room and strayed carelessly from my side. He seemed more interested in what the other dogs were doing, especially his alpha brother Blue, with whom he had a friendly sibling rivalry. I couldn’t see it at the time, but I now understand that he was going through the motions that first morning, just doing what he was supposed to do until it was time, once again, to curl up in his crate and ease off to sleep.
After the first day, I had my eye on Tuesday’s other brother, Linus. Tuesday and Blue were energetic, but they seemed more interested in themselves. Linus was the social dog. He trotted beside me with his head up, as if he enjoyed my company and wasn’t worried about anything in the world. His confidence made me feel confident, and his joyful presence made the exercises fun. When we missed the mark, he looked into my face, as if encouraging me to try again. His bouncy energy and eternal optimism made everything seem easy, and after months of darkness that was exactly what I wanted from my service dog: an easier life.
Instead of Linus, though, I was paired with Tuesday for the morning session on the second day. The thing I remember most about him that morning was watching his back waving from side to side as he walked two steps in front of me. He was supposed to walk beside me, but I didn’t mind. What I had taken for carelessness the day before now seemed like eagerness, a desir
e to go places and see the next thing, even if we were only walking in a circle.
We were working on the second set of commands that morning, which included “Shake” and “Kiss.” These are highlight reel accomplishments for a standard pet, but for Tuesday they were easy, so he was still distracted when he put his paw into my hand. When we moved on to the kiss, though, he was forced to focus on my face. And when he did, suddenly, I saw a sincerity in his dark brown eyes I hadn’t suspected. This dog was handsome. He was intelligent. But he was also deep and emotional and hurting at the core. When he sat back on his haunches and bobbed those eyebrows at me, I almost burst out laughing, not just from amusement, but from happiness, too. This wasn’t a machine. This was a dog, and he both ran on and gave off kindness, dedication, and love.
We stared at each other for a few seconds, and I could tell Tuesday was checking me out, assessing the situation. He wasn’t timid. And he wasn’t selfish. Something about the softness in his eyes told me Tuesday craved a relationship, but he was too smart to fawn just because somebody handed me his leash. I didn’t know why he was wary. I didn’t know he was sensitive. And needy. And that he had lost so much confidence in himself, because of his multiple abandonments, that I would have to slowly build back the intelligent, caring dog I glimpsed in those pleading eyes. But I knew that if I wanted his affection, I was going to have to earn it, and when I did, it would be deeper and more meaningful than anything I would ever feel with another dog.
The last ten minutes of the training session were like walking on air. Tuesday and I were totally botching the commands, but that didn’t bother me. We were a team, and Tuesday was a partner I could grow with. Every time we bumped into each other because I told Tuesday “Heel” (stand on my left) when I meant “Side” (stand on my right), I laughed with childlike glee. Tuesday wasn’t perfect, but he was a dog I could respect.
“I’m choosing Tuesday,” I told Lu at the end of the session.
“Not yet, Luis,” Lu laughed. “It’s only the second day. You have Linus this afternoon.”
“No, I’m working with Tuesday this afternoon. He’s the one.”
“We’ll see,” she said.
But she didn’t stop me when, after our lesson on cues and commands, I went directly to Tuesday. That’s how I know I made the right choice. Each dog is different, a bundle of personality and behavioral quirks no training can totally shape, and therefore each dog is best suited to a particular client. Training a dog isn’t worth much, really, if you don’t have the insight to match them with the right owner. Lu was a master at matching, and she never would have allowed me to work exclusively with Tuesday if she didn’t know we were a good fit. There was too much—an entire life for both me and Tuesday—at stake.
From that moment, Tuesday and I were inseparable. We worked on drills together for the rest of the afternoon, and when the session was over I spent ten minutes grooming him while he lay with his head on my lap. Afterward, we walked together to the living area behind the training room, our first social interaction. I spent most of the afternoon on the couch resting my back or cooking dinner in the small kitchen, and Tuesday stayed at my side. He seemed to have realized, without being told, that he was with me now, and he followed me with an enthusiastic sense of duty I recognized from my days in the Army.
When we went to my bedroom that night, I expected Tuesday to sleep on the floor. Instead, he followed me into bed. Instinctively, I wrapped an arm around him and pulled him close. There really wasn’t much choice. We were a 215-pound man and an 80-pound dog sharing a twin bed, so the only thing we could do was spoon. But even if we’d been on a king-size bed, I would have wrapped my arm around Tuesday, because it felt good to have him there beside me.
“Easy, Tuesday,” I whispered as he squirmed, pushing against me with his back, trying to hog the bed. “Easy, boy.” I could tell this wasn’t the first time he’d slept with someone, but it had been a long time, and he was restless and unsure.
It had been a long time for both us. It had been longer than I cared to remember since anything besides a bottle of rum had lain with me in bed. But I wasn’t hesitant. I knew this was right. I felt safer already with Tuesday beside me, as if the present were closer and the past further away. So I held him, listening to his soft breathing and the sound of his heart until, with my head pushed awkwardly between a pillow and the wall by Tuesday’s big shoulders, I fell asleep.
CHAPTER 10
COMPANY
It is better to be in chains with friends
than to be in a garden with strangers.
—PERSIAN PROVERB
It felt good to be at ECAD with Ricky, Andrew, and Mary, far better than it ever felt in my small Brooklyn apartment. These were fellow soldiers. My people. My blood. They understood what I had gone through overseas and in the VA bureaucracy, and they had suffered life-changing injuries, too. Amputations, spinals, PTSD: we were all brothers at ECAD, even Mary, who, I suppose, was technically a sister.
I had always, even during my worst periods, felt most comfortable around combat veterans, and my few attempts at social interaction since moving to New York had always involved them. For New Year’s Eve 2007, the Wounded Warrior Project invited its members to a front-row seat (courtesy of the NYPD) to watch the apple drop in Times Square. I had always wanted to do that, so I asked and was given a pass to attend. As the date approached, though, the event starting eating away at my mind. I was so worried about the crowd, and the logistics, that I started drinking the day before to alleviate the stress. Not December 31, but the morning of December 30. I had been so hammered for so long by the time the police arrived to escort us to Times Square that the whole evening was like a city at sea, shimmering on a floating horizon you’re never quite sure is real.
I visited a veteran in the hospital with the Wounded Warrior Project. I remember that for sure, but I can’t remember how he was wounded. I saw the first half of the Bruce Springsteen concert, with disastrous results. I attended a Mets baseball game or possibly two, again with the Wounded Warrior Project, again plastered on booze so I could deal with the crowd. Please forgive my imprecision. I realize I should know how many Mets games I’ve been to, but there are large chunks of my life, especially in the year before meeting Tuesday, that I seem to have lost.
I remember other events with crystalline clarity: the burned-out suicide car in Sinjar, the call to prayer at the Al-Waleed mosque, the taste of the apple tobacco I smoked with my Iraqi friend Maher. I hear the sound of the Syrian tracer rounds in my sleep, but I can’t remember the date my grandmother died. My brother, my sister, and I spent time every week at her house growing up, and she was my childhood hero. By sheer force of will, as a young widow, she got her son (my papá) and daughter (my aunt) out of Cuba in the madness after Castro took over. She worked for decades as a nurse before returning to school for a master’s degree in education at age fifty-five and then working for the U.S. Department of Education. Cut off from my relatives still on the island, Granny was a big part of my history. She told me stories; she taught me our family traditions; she showed me, by example, how to build a life on hard work, without bitterness but also without forgetting the tragedies in your past. She died during my second tour in Iraq, in May 2005. I missed the funeral and the gathering in honor of her life, and now I can’t even remember the day Granny died, and it makes me so angry, so very angry at myself.
But things were different at ECAD. This wasn’t a forced outing. I didn’t tell myself, Hey, you sorry sack, get yourself up and out of this stinking apartment and prove you’re still a man, like I did for New Year’s Eve or the Mets games. I told myself, Be strong. This is it. This is your life.
In the days leading up to ECAD, I must have put the bottle down untouched a hundred times, steeling myself for the unknown. But when I met the other veterans, my apprehension vanished because I recognized them. No arms, no legs, a pair of braces, and wary eyes. These soldiers were hurting. They needed help. It was my duty as a
n officer to display leadership and self-control. Suddenly, I was Captain Montalván again, a soldier in the company of soldiers, and it felt good. Very good. I took the responsibility so seriously that by the second morning I was licking my classmate, Staff Sgt. (Ret.) Ricky Boone, on his mohawked black head.
I was pretending to be a dog, by the way. That was part of our training—ordering each other around like dogs so that we could learn the feel of issuing commands. Ricky put me through my paces, and when he finally ordered “Up,” the command for the dog to place its front paws on the object in front of it, I thought, What the heck, do what a dog would do, and licked a big stripe right across his head.
That started it. Ricky was five-feet-four—all right, Ricky, I know you’re reading; five-feet-four and a half—and shaped like a beefed-up bowling ball. He’d been a bail bondsman and an infantryman; he dreamed of being a bounty hunter; there was no way he was letting me get away with that foolishness. So he did what any hardened foot soldier would do—he laughed out loud, then plotted his revenge. Ricky had a mohawk and a weakness for gold jewelry (and a lovely wife named Tammy, who tolerated them both, if you can believe it), and he’d snap into a hilarious Mr. T act before belting me down to size.
“I pity the fool, Luis, and that fool is you!”
It was easy, amazingly easy, for all of us to get along. But for the first few days, that familiarity was little more than a cover for our nervousness. We were all here to start rebuilding shattered lives, and we were well aware of the consequences of failure. It didn’t start to feel natural until we were matched with our dogs. With Tuesday at my side—and after my insistence on training with him on the second day, we were rarely apart—things started to slow down. That’s the best way I can describe the calm that came over my life. My mind had been racing for years, dragging my worn-out body with it, but Tuesday kept me firmly in the moment, since I was always touching him, talking to him, fidgeting with his collar or leash. The training was physically demanding, especially in my compromised state, and I spent a lot of time on the sofa near the kitchen resting my back. Tuesday always sat beside me, watching the room with an almost lethargic interest or lounging across my lap. By the second day, I developed the habit of touching him whenever I spoke. Even then, it wasn’t a conscious movement. There was a trigger in my brain that, since coming home from Iraq, caused me to tense up when my mouth opened, and touching Tuesday released it somehow.
Until Tuesday: A Wounded Warrior and the Golden Retriever Who Saved Him Page 10
