Comet's Tale

by Steven Wolf

  When she wasn’t working, Comet continued her duties of therapist, encouraging me to get up, to walk, to get out of the house, and to meet wonderful people. She was no longer just a greyhound; she was a working dog, a service dog. Maybe not yet perfect but clearly able and willing to get there. Every night, as darkness settled and the heavens sparked alive, I found myself marveling at the long-tailed Comet that circled around my chair, even as she slumbered nearby. Thank you, Comet.

  12

  OCTOBER–DECEMBER 2001—ARIZONA

  With the grocery cart training under our belts, it was time for Comet’s ultimate challenge: pulling me in a wheelchair through Sky Harbor airport. Considering her initial reaction to the concourse, I was bracing myself for an interesting time. The drive to Phoenix was a challenge all its own. The only way to get there from Sedona was via I-17, a steep, narrow highway that descended nearly three thousand feet in about eighty miles. I’m not an overly religious man, but before we began the winding mountain pass, I would pull over to the shoulder, get out of the SUV with Comet, and murmur a brief prayer. I could scarcely count the number of accidents we had witnessed on this road. Making matters worse, I-17 was the only major north-south route in the whole state of Arizona, so every southbound tractor-trailer rig was forced to squeeze down it.

  Our first two return trips to the airport were practice runs where Comet and I simply walked around the concourse together. During these visits, Comet gleefully absorbed new information, a rapt student intrigued by the controlled chaos all around her. Before long she was making her way through the terminal as casually and anonymously as an employee, except for the times when she would freeze in midstride, ears perked and eyes pinned on some new discovery, all but shouting, Look at that!

  On our third visit the real work began. I borrowed one of the airport wheelchairs and pushed it to the main concourse, where Comet proceeded to sniff it from bow to stern. Merely getting the thing to the concourse had left me aching and sweaty. I needed to sit down. Ignoring annoyed glances from uniformed aides pushing other wheelchairs toward the gates, I attached the lead to Comet’s harness and collapsed into the seat. One advantage of our grocery store training was that Comet knew how to respond to my commands of “Let’s go,” “Left,” or “Right.” When I looped the leash around my wrist and said, “Let’s go,” she was confused only briefly. She moved forward slowly, slightly jerking at my weight, and then she settled into a comfortable trot, correctly assuming that she was to walk in the same direction as the main traffic flow. I held the leash straight out in front of me, coasting along behind Comet as jauntily as the captain of a new skiff. Hey, this is easy!

  That carefree feeling lasted about thirty seconds, until we sailed past a souvenir shop. Almost in slow motion, a woman floated into my peripheral vision, exiting the shop with luggage in tow and coffee in hand. “Stop! Left!” I yelled, but Comet had already slammed to a halt as the lady stumbled on tiptoes around her. It never dawned on me that I couldn’t properly control the wheelchair’s brake levers with only one hand. That became clear as the chair rammed Comet’s heels and she leaped forward into the startled lady’s legs, causing a domino effect of splattered coffee and sputtered expletives.

  “I’m so sorry! We’re in training—”

  “Piss off!” the woman spat in a British accent before stomping away. A security guard materialized. Comet nuzzled up next to him with a hopeful look on her face—Oh my! A man in uniform!—and her flirtatiousness worked in our favor. The guard suggested we continue our training in a less-populated part of the airport, but he assured us, “That sweet dog is welcome back here anytime.”

  Comet watched as he disappeared into the crowd. “You can put your tongue back in your mouth, Comet. He’s gone.” I pondered my next move while people swirled around us. “I might have to get a body clip to make this a little easier. Plus, if I’m hooked directly to you it’ll be harder for you to drag me into a corner and leave me there while you go looking for Officer Dreamboat.” All big eyes and innocence, Comet acted as if the thought had never entered her head.

  But where would I find a body clip? I realized I was wearing one already, around my waist. “Okay, Comet. I’m going to wrap my belt around my chest so that if you pull hard, it won’t hurt me too much.” I put my jacket on over my makeshift harness to minimize any further humiliation for Comet. She watched me attach her leash to the belt buckle, her head tilted in a question mark. But it only took one pull for her to figure out that I wouldn’t be ejected from the chair even though I was not gripping the leash in my hand.

  In short order we were cruising the concourses at a fairly rapid clip. We flew past passengers watching from moving walkways, their delighted faces a blur as I tried to control this forty-five-mile-per-hour missile. “Slow down, Comet!” Between warnings, I helped Comet navigate turns by partially braking only one wheel, and I cleared our path by yelling, “Beep, beep!” to scatter any groups of people who stood in our way. Now that Comet knew the chair would not bump her from behind, she cornered and braked like a Lamborghini. It was so much fun that not even Her Highness had time to be self-conscious.

  The only real problems we encountered were Comet’s sudden one-wheeled, ninety-degree turns toward crying babies. She uncannily detected the faintest cries while sailing through the white noise. As far as I knew, Comet had never been around a baby before. On our other outings I had noticed perked ears and a pulled leash in the direction of baby sounds, but I had always guided her away. Roaming without such close control, Comet seemed compelled to identify the cause of the high-pitched wails.

  The first time it happened I was taken by surprise, barely able to stay seated while forcing the airborne wheel back to ground in a tile-screeching slam. Riding sheep at a junior rodeo was safer. When we arrived at the source, Comet pulled so hard forward on the braked chair and my harness that she nearly broke my desperate grip on the armrests. I begged apologies through the throbbing pain, hoping I could prevent a maternal meltdown, only to be baffled when the smiling mother asked if her baby could touch Comet’s fur. Still, for safety reasons (my own), I decided that Comet would only be allowed to seek out crying babies if I gave my permission. After a couple of braked stops that yanked her backward like a roped steer, Comet agreed to the new limitations.

  All in all, I’d be lying if I said that training Comet to pull my wheelchair was difficult. Even when she was simply standing still in the concourse, Comet absorbed knowledge from the pulsing pool of human interaction. By our fifth airport training session, she was shuttling me through Sky Harbor like a rickshaw driver through the streets of old Saigon.

  Working so intensely with Comet made me wonder all over again at the seemingly contrary traits that coexisted within this dog. She grasped my needs quickly, almost intuitively, and readily accepted my instruction. She acknowledged my alpha role in our relationship and clearly took pride in helping me. Yet she was also stubbornly independent and didn’t hesitate to let me know when I was asking her to do something she deemed beneath her station. For instance, when I tried to train her to shake hands, she found the task overwhelmingly stupid and simply sat and ignored me. And unless we were at the lake, my tossed tennis balls were met with an expression that seemed to say, You poor, deluded man. I would no sooner fetch a ball from dry land than I would hunt quail for dinner. What would be the point?

  My friends in the rescue groups often recited a familiar list of the greyhound breed’s attributes: “Quizzical, shy, sensitive, gentle, superior intelligence, surprising independence, athletic, quiet, and lovingly loyal.” But these words fell short of describing the experience of living with Comet. Something else had to help explain why, throughout history, greyhounds had occupied a unique spot in the hearts and imaginations of human beings. Homer wrote that the only creature to recognize Odysseus upon his return was his greyhound Argos, who then “passed into the darkness of death, now that he had seen his master once more after twenty years.” Frederick the Great was bu
ried with his greyhound pack. In eleventh-century England, a person could be tried for murder if he killed a grey, even accidentally. Greyhounds traveled with explorers, accompanied generals, and adorned the suites of royalty.

  Research and personal observation led me to conclude that greyhounds were unusual because of the way the breed evolved. Greys are generally acknowledged to be one of the original canine breeds from which all domestic dogs descended. Today’s greyhound is one short evolutionary step removed from its Asian wolf ancestors, who were first domesticated about forty thousand years ago. Greyhounds must not be far behind on the domestication time line. One of the earliest depictions of a greyhoundlike animal is a carving in an Egyptian crypt from 2751 BCE that shows a pack of greys bringing down a deer. The carving illustrates two primary greyhound characteristics, teamwork and intelligence, that have been valued by humans for millennia. Over the ages these originally primal traits have been encouraged through breeding, and it is the teamwork aspect that might account for the greyhound’s unique mix of independence, cleverness, and cooperation.

  For thousands of years prior to being tamed, greyhounds lived in packs that required them to pool their respective skills. While they have always been known primarily for their speed and sight, greys were also blessed with exceptional senses of hearing and smell. As with any group, abilities varied from one member to the next, and they learned while in the wild to employ each individual’s skill to the pack’s advantage. When hunting, a greyhound pack learned to use this coordination on the fly, spontaneously adjusting pursuit strategies in the middle of a chase. The need to adjust during a hunt promoted individual resourcefulness as well as collaboration, which may partly account for the breed’s strong independent streak today.

  At the same time, aggression was subdued in the wild for the benefit of the group. It wasn’t an efficient hunt if you were fighting with one another. Prior to domesticated coursing, greyhounds grew as a peaceful family, using their speed, sight, and intelligence rather than ferocity in order to catch their food. Since becoming domesticated, the breed has enjoyed a long history of working with humans to chase and capture both large and small game for eating, everything from deer to rabbits. Of course, their eventual rank as royal animals altered their status from hunters to coursing athletes, but the attributes of intelligent cooperation and lack of aggression originated in those ancient genes.

  Today’s rescued racers also grow up in a pack, a large birth litter that is slowly culled into the groups of dogs that are housed together at the track, where they are then separately caged. From that point on, unless the dog is a winner or a breeder, it is isolated from both the wild and the normal outside world. The retired grey’s socialization problems arise from lack of worldly exposure, not from an innate fear of or hostility toward humans. Since it is humans who assume the alpha role among the group of kenneled dogs, rescued greyhounds accept people in leadership roles more readily than do many other breeds. This, coupled with their lack of aggression, makes them one of the gentlest breeds in existence.

  Greyhounds are designed to conserve energy until it is absolutely needed. This is one reason they don’t often bark, and it’s also why one or two tail wags is more than enough of a greeting. These dogs observe the world from a quiet place. I’m convinced that this slower, calmer pace is the main reason greyhounds are so sharply attuned to events going on around them and to their human companions. That would explain why they are able to learn so quickly and intuitively, as Comet seemed to do with me.

  While Comet exhibited most of the traits one would expect of a retired racer, there was something unusual about her demeanor. She seemed to exude a dignified wisdom that whispered, I understand. When she laid her head on my chest during a particularly bad day, it wasn’t out of distress. When she watched over me for unbearably long periods of time between bathroom breaks, it wasn’t because she felt sorry for me. Comet really did know what I was going through. And she accepted that there might not be anything she could do about it. Her actions weren’t sympathy. They were empathy—compassion, responsiveness, and identification, all served up with only the slightest pinch of pity.

  I never had the feeling that Comet was a person in a dog’s body or that she wanted to be human. She was quite comfortable in her own skin, satisfied with being a greyhound. Comet and I were not the same species, but we were equals on this journey together, and we shared a mutual respect that went far deeper than the word rescue could convey.

  I PLANNED TO fly with Comet to Omaha in early November without help from Freddie. Unfortunately, the process of adjusting to new medication while withdrawing from some of the antidepressant, antineuropathy drugs was beating the living daylights out of me. I had the energy of a rag doll. After a few phone conversations with me that must have been only semicoherent, my wife arrived to help Comet and me navigate our first airplane trip.

  Comet was used to Sky Harbor by now and didn’t register that anything different from our usual tour of the concourse was about to take place. After we assured the ticketing agents and security staff that she was a service animal and her presence on the plane was protected by the ADA, Freddie, Comet, and I made our way to the gate.

  “I can’t believe how professional she is,” Freddie said as she held a cup of water for Comet. “She stands right beside you like a personal nurse. I sure hope she still thinks she’s Florence Nightingale inside the plane.” A loudspeaker announced, “People needing assistance may now board,” and the three of us moved to the front of the line.

  Comet didn’t display anxiousness the same way other dogs did. Still, I had learned the slight tells in her confident facade. Going down the gangway to the plane’s entrance, she glanced frequently to the left and right at the walls that prevented escape and then looked back at me to make sure I hadn’t abandoned ship. She stopped short and froze when the flight attendant greeted our arrival with a “Well, aren’t you pretty?” A generous ticketing agent had upgraded our seats, and the attendant continued, “Of course you’re first class.” The woman’s soothing tone reassured Comet, and I could almost feel Comet growing taller as she entered the plane.

  “This dog’s a damn babe magnet,” Freddie remarked as she threw the carry-on into the luggage bin. I’ll admit that I didn’t discourage any of the fawning attention Comet attracted in the first-class cabin. I enthusiastically talked about the virtues of the breed and eagerly responded to the unanimous observation of all three attendants that “greyhounds aren’t usually helper dogs.” Comet stood at attention in the space in front of my bulkhead seat, basking in the affectionate crooning. Meanwhile, Freddie spurned the flight attendant’s repeated offers (to me) of a morning cordial. “He’ll have some coffee and a glass of orange juice without vodka,” she instructed. As the attendant moved down the aisle, Freddie said, “We’re going to have to rethink this idea of you flying by yourself. Look at what’s happening even when I’m here!”

  Comet’s ears jolted straight up as the plane taxied for takeoff. She accommodated the swaying by subtly engaging her four-paw-drive system. “It’s okay, girl,” I said, scratching her upturned ears and the bottom of her chin. Just when I felt Comet’s body relax, the plane’s throttles kicked in, causing her to slam backward into my knees. Her startled dog eyes blinked up at me—What the heck was that? We were halfway to Omaha before Comet finally flopped onto the blanket we had brought for her.

  Comet and I traveled back and forth to Nebraska by ourselves twice that fall to get recertified for the fentanyl patch. I couldn’t really tell how well the drug was working. So many places in my spine, legs, and feet were burning and cramping that it was no longer possible to figure out what was causing the pain, and I had started getting anxiety attacks whenever I was hit with unpleasant news. Amid this alarming decline, the highlight of my autumn became the plane rides with Comet. Curbside luggage service, along with expedited ticketing and security checks owing to my disabled status, made it easy to bring her along. All I needed was a carry
-on with a blanket, a bottle of water, and a dish.

  When our plane landed in Omaha or Phoenix, the flight attendants would open the door to a waiting wheelchair. After one of them pushed me up the walkway, I would decline further help, allowing Comet to take over so that I could revel in racing through the terminal. As we sped along, colorful concessionaire blocks mingled with glimpses of arms, legs, and open mouths in a cubist diorama that could have been stolen from Picasso. The flying scenery left me as giddy as a teenager on his first joyride.

  My body might be failing me, but I still had the capacity to marvel at the sight of Comet pulling that chair. She reminded me of the magnificent Sandhill cranes that migrated through Nebraska, their long necks stretching into the wind and their skinny legs extending out behind them. Instead of a six-foot pair of wings, Comet’s hind muscles propelled us swiftly forward. Her movements seemed as ancient as the cranes’. I couldn’t help but think of all the men, from Odysseus onward, who had thrilled at their greyhounds’ effortless power.

  My third trip alone with Comet took us back to Omaha for Christmas. I was somewhat at peace because all three girls seemed to have arranged their lives in a tidy, responsible order. Jackie was enjoying her junior year at Fremont High. Kylie had received two full scholarship offers from her law schools of choice. Lindsey was on an academic scholarship in the marine biology program at the University of Tampa. Maybe now that they were a little older, they would feel more comfortable around me and we could have a few spirited arguments about life and politics, the way we used to.