You didn’t ask me to go over the barrier.
“Exactly,” she said. “You see? You can’t train a dog to do something if you don’t know what you want him to do. When you recalled Finch, you didn’t know what you wanted. How can I tell? Because you said one thing to him and expected something else, just like I did. If I had known what I wanted from you I would have asked for it. But I didn’t know until you were already past the barrier. Now I know what I want. Come back here. You’ve taught me what I want.”
Dutifully, he led Finch back to her side.
“Thank you,” she said, bowing a little.
You’re welcome, he signed, bowing in return. He was having a hard time keeping the grin off his face.
“Who was the teacher in that exchange?”
He pointed at her.
“Oh really?”
Oh. I taught you.
“So who was the teacher?”
I was.
“Right. What do you say when someone goes out of their way to teach you something?”
Thank you?
“Exactly. Why did you praise Finch before?”
Because he taught me something?
“Are you asking me or telling me?”
Telling. Because he taught me something.
“Exactly.”
When his mother dropped her theatrical stance and smiled he wasn’t sure where his tears came from. He didn’t feel sad—in fact, he was laughing—but his vision suddenly blurred up. Tears of shock, he supposed, at discovering he’d spent his entire life on the kennel and yet still misunderstood something so elementary. And the force of her personality could be overwhelming. He turned away and passed a sleeve over his face before something even more embarrassing could happen.
She watched for a moment. “Oh Edgar,” she said. “I don’t mean to be hard on you. I’m just trying to make a point. Remember what I said about not being able to explain what people pay us for? I wasn’t being coy. One of the things you need to learn is that training is almost never about words. I could try to explain these things, but the words wouldn’t mean much. It’s like what just happened here: I told you the words for this idea right when we started, but that didn’t mean you understood them. But maybe now you see why someone would pay for a ‘trained’ dog instead of a pup?”
He thought about this, then nodded.
“Especially another trainer?”
He nodded again.
“So why don’t you take this fabulous teacher named Finch back over the barrier and stay him, and let’s try again.”
This time she had him stand across the mow beside Finch with a short lead attached to his collar, and she performed the recall. Edgar ran alongside Finch and made sure he jumped the barrier—he only needed one correction in three trials. Then they switched and she ran alongside him for three more trials, while Edgar did the recall.
He thanked Finch each time for teaching him something. In return, the dog’s eyes glinted, and he tried to put his feet on Edgar’s chest and lick his face. Quite happily, Edgar let him.
DOCTOR PAPINEAU CAME for dinner several nights later.
“Here it is,” he announced, as he walked in. He was accompanied by a blast of cold air and a white bakery box, held aloft like a prize. A longtime widower, Doctor Papineau patronized the cafés and bakeries between Park Falls and Ashland. He held strong opinions on who served the best of his favorite foods, from eggs over easy to strawberry cheesecake.
“Lemon meringue,” he declared. “I bought it by hand.” This joke was part of the tradition as well. “I told Betsy down at the Mellen Bakery to set aside the best she had. She did, too—she’s got a little crush on me, I think, ever since I heroically removed her cat’s kidney stones.”
Edgar’s mother lifted the box from Papineau’s hand. “Well, she’ll have to get in line behind the waitresses down in Park Falls,” she said, smiling. “Cold enough for you, Page?”
“Nope,” he said cheerfully. “I’d like to see it colder than this.”
“Oh, really?” she said. “Why’s that?”
“Because, when I’m soaking in the Florida sun I like to read the newspaper and check the weather here. If I don’t see solid minus signs, I feel cheated.”
“Ah yes. The annual migration.”
“Ah yes. I enjoy it more every year.”
They spent dinner talking about the kennel. Edgar’s mother had taken one of the older dogs to see Doctor Papineau that week and he had diagnosed hypothyroid. They talked about the medication. Then he inquired about how she and Edgar were holding up, commenting obliquely on how tired they looked. Trudy put him off. Things had been hard, she said, but they were under control. They had a schedule worked out.
Edgar’s mother embroidered their success a bit. While it was true that things were slowly returning to normal, it also wasn’t unusual for her to be in the barn until nine o’clock, with another hour spent over paperwork at the kitchen table. Edgar worked evenings as well, pulling out dogs for grooming and training. He’d negotiated for two hours with them each night; Trudy said there had to be time for schoolwork, and if he was efficient, an hour and a half would be plenty for training. Saturdays were the exception—they slept as late as they wanted and ran errands in town. But even then, if Edgar happened to wake first, he’d sneak out to the barn and start the chores, hoping that, just once, his mother would open her eyes and realize there was nothing to do. Often, before he’d worked even twenty minutes, the barn doors would open and she would walk in, puffy-eyed, weary, and looking thinner every week. On top of it all, there was the cough she’d developed. It doubled her over sometimes.
“You two are doing an amazing job,” Doctor Papineau said. “I can’t believe how fast you’ve got back on your feet. I remember what it was like when Rose died. I wasn’t fit for anything for months.” He looked thoughtful. “I’m just wondering if you can keep up the pace.”
“Why couldn’t we?” his mother said. “It won’t be long before the weather turns, and things get so much easier when we can train outdoors. Then school lets out for the summer. That’s going to make a big difference.”
“And a couple of months later, it’ll start up again,” Papineau said. He knew where the plates and silverware were and he had dished out slices of pie—he liked to serve the desserts he brought.
“Well, what else can we do?” his mother said, looking cross. “There’s only the two of us here. Maybe we’ll have to skip a litter in the fall. That would make things tight, but I’ve been going over our finances and we could make ends meet. I’m sorry if that means your share is going to be a little smaller, but it’s the best we can do for now.”
Papineau waved her comment aside with his fork.
“What I’m wondering is, have you considered that maybe the real solution involves three people?”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning there’s a Sawtelle boy in town who knows this kennel inside and out.”
“Claude is hardly a boy,” his mother said. “And you know how things ended between him and Gar.”
“Water under the bridge, isn’t it? He’s been helping me out at the office, Trudy, and I have to tell you that he still has a gift. I remember what he was like twenty years ago.”
“And we both know how he learned all that. You don’t get good at ministering to torn-up dogs unless you’re around them a lot.”
“Okay, okay. I didn’t come here to debate Claude’s past. The thing is, where is the slack in your schedule, Trudy? There’s no room for anything to go wrong, and eventually something always does. Look at the last year. How many things that happened could you have planned for? I’m not talking about Gar, I mean in the kennel. Your barn was hit by a tornado. Did you plan for that? I seem to recall at least one nursing mother last year with mastitis, and we both know how much time bottle-feeding takes. Have you planned for that?”
“All right, Page, here’s a question: suppose we hired someone to help out. How would I pay them? The
money isn’t there. We make ends meet. We pay our bills. We have a little savings. Period. That truck isn’t going to last much longer and when it’s time to buy a new one I don’t want to be firing hired help to do it. I won’t even start down that road.”
“It was just an idea, Trudy,” Doctor Papineau said. “I’m trying to help.”
“It was a bad idea,” she said. “Is that why you’re here? To protect your investment?”
It finally began to dawn on Edgar what the references to Doctor Papineau’s “share” meant. He signed a question at his mother, but she shook her head angrily and stood and stalked around the table. She ended up standing by the counter where Doctor Papineau had left the pie tin, and in a single swift motion pitched it into the trash.
“I may not have been born here, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know how this place operates after twenty years. Twenty years, let me remind you, during which Claude was most definitely not here.”
Edgar’s mother was forty-one years old at that moment. He knew she could mask her feelings perfectly when she wanted to because there were dogs who misbehaved expressly to get a reaction, not caring whether it was pleasure or anger. Oftentimes it wasn’t until much later that he understood a dog had gotten under her skin. She was certainly capable of that same self-control during a dinner conversation, and yet there she stood, giving herself over to her anger, almost reveling in it. The dark circles under her eyes had disappeared; her shoulders had dropped into a relaxed readiness, her posture suddenly sinuous and limber, like a dancer or a lioness. She looked as if she might as easily spring onto the table as curl up to sleep. Partly calculated, he supposed, to look as far from helpless as possible, wholly in control of their fate, but partly also a surrender to her own willfulness. He thought he ought to be scared by such a magisterial fit of temper, but in truth, he’d never felt safer in his life.
Doctor Papineau, however, was entirely daunted. He tipped his chair back onto its rear legs and held his hands out. “Whoa,” he said. “Your decision. I’m not suggesting you do anything that doesn’t feel right. But think about this: eventually, something will go wrong. What are you going to do then? That’s all I’m saying. What are you going to do then?”
“YES,” TRUDY SAID, after Doctor Papineau had left. “He has a stake in the kennel. Ten percent.”
Are there others? Edgar asked.
“No. Years ago, when we were strapped for money, Page helped us out. Back then, it was impossible to get a loan, so he paid us five thousand dollars in exchange for a share in the kennel. He has obligations, though.”
That’s why you never pay him for vet work.
“Right.”
What about Claude?
“Claude sold your father his share in the kennel when your grandfather died.”
Edgar had more questions, but suddenly his mother looked exhausted, and there would be plenty of chances to ask in the morning.
TIME AND AGAIN EDGAR REREAD the letters from Brooks. They were like a puzzle to be solved. Brooks was given to proclamations and dire warnings. Pitched arguments were made for or against the importance of gait, hocks, flanks, the function of the tail; the optimum angle of the pasterns, how much this might vary between the Fortunate Fields lines and the Sawtelle dogs; whether one could ever discriminate between willingness to work and more general intelligence; whether body sensitivity was learned or inherited. The arguments often ascended into theory. Brooks sounded like a man dragging John Sawtelle into the age of science.
“I have the advantage of knowing,” he wrote, “that long after I am gone my work will provide a foundation upon which future generations of dogs, breeders, and trainers may build. Skill and talent alone are not enough. If these are bound up in you and you alone, and not in data and precisely recorded procedures, what will your efforts amount to? A few dogs—a few successes—then nothing. Only the briefest flash of light in the darkness.”
There had been some setback in 1935, though Edgar couldn’t tell what it was—some illness had flashed through the kennel, perhaps, or some spectacular training failure. In any case, it was serious enough for Brooks to shift from debate to encouragement. “There is nothing to do now but take stock of your accomplishments,” he wrote. “Now your records must serve you instead of the dogs. Study them. Look at how many of your dogs have succeeded in the world. Your records are a history of your accomplishments, John. They will show you why you undertook this work in the first place.”
Edgar had never seen his father capriciously select a dog for breeding, but in those early days, there was nothing yet to call a Sawtelle Dog—just John Sawtelle’s dogs. What drove Brooks mad was Edgar’s grandfather’s habit of spotting a dog on the street and deciding it carried some essential quality. The replies from New Jersey sometimes rose to a shriek: “How many times have we argued about this, John? Each time you do this, you introduce more variability into your bloodlines than you will ever profit by. Why do you place your trust in chance?”
Edgar arranged the letters from Brooks in chronological order. The last of them seemed to close the argument forever.
December 16, 1944
Morristown, New Jersey
John,
You may be the most stubborn man I’ve ever met. Let me rebut your points one last time, though I fear no one will ever change your mind on this. At least we are in agreement that by careful documentation of phenotype, one can increase or decrease the preponderance of a quality if one measures it objectively and reinforces it for many generations through selective breeding. The poorest farmer knows this can be done, and benefits from it: he chooses Herefords, Holsteins, or Guernseys depending on his needs. He has definite opinions on whether a Percheron or a Belgian should stand in the traces.
Likewise, we apply the scientific principles of heredity toward the perfection of a breed, so that instead of only one dog out of two litters being suitable for service, 90 percent make the grade. How are we doing this? By defining and measuring those qualities that make a good working dog. And this is where we differ. You feel less need to choose specific traits a priori, believing instead that excellent traits will simply emerge if the finest individuals, taken as a whole, are brought into the line.
Let us employ the metaphor of salt. We can’t see the salt in a glass of water, but we can taste it. Combining two slightly salty glasses and reducing them gives us a saltier result. Done enough, the invisible becomes visible: salt crystals. We may not have set out to create salt crystals, but now we have them. This is analogous to what you propose. You have cleverly arranged to work with strong brine. You don’t know what you will find if you continue to distill it, only that “this tastes ever so slightly saltier than that.” And so, by the seat of your pants, you choose one cross over another.
At Fortunate Fields, on the other hand, we not only know we are trying to produce salt crystals, we know the desired size, shape, and color of those crystals and we have carefully documented the salinity of the sire and dam of every litter, as well as their offspring.
Yet I have seen your records and you are nearly as rigorous as Fortunate Fields. I confess, our rigor and precision wearies me at times. I don’t claim our process is easy. Quite the opposite—if this were easy it would have been done long ago. But I do claim that it is the only way to obtain reliable results.
In the end, the difference between you and me comes down to the difference between the artist and the factory man. The artist does not know what he wants, but looks for good paint, good brushes, and good canvas. He trusts that talent will produce a desirable result. Sadly, for most people, it does not. The factory man says, what can I make that I can rely on? It may not be the ideal, but I must be able to tell my customers that each time they buy, they will receive the same product. The factory man values predictability above “mere” excellence for good reason—would you frequent a bakery where one cake in ten was inspired, but the other nine inedible?
I realize this portrays you as the romantic figure and
me as the plodder. Perhaps you think that diminishes me. I do not. Change the analogy from bread to medicine, and you will feel the same urgency I do. You might be willing to gamble on the odd cake, but if your infant is sick, you will choose the medicine with predictable results every time. I sacrifice brilliance to make a good medicine available to mankind.
No one can say if you are that person who, given good paint, good brushes, and a fine canvas, can produce something better than the factory man. That is, and has always been, beyond the realm of science. You do have the attitude of the dreamer about you. For that reason, I haven’t the heart to argue anymore about this—it is a hopeless task. And for a simple factory man like me, an effort must be abandoned once its hopelessness is exposed. Only the artist perseveres in such circumstances.
However, I’ll leave you with a question. Suppose, guided only by intuition, you capture the greatness you seek. Never mind that you cannot define “greatness” scientifically. What makes you think you will even recognize it when it appears? Some believe that gross animal behavior may be reducible to a set of simple, indivisible traits and that only the multiplicity of ways in which those traits combine creates the illusion of complexity. Suppose you stumble across one small change with dozens of ramifications in the gross behavior of the animal? How will you know what you’ve done? How will you ever achieve it again?
The painter who creates one masterpiece, never to produce another, is well known. If you have a success, it will most likely be singular. Can you be satisfied with that, John?
Almondine
T O HER, THE SCENT AND THE MEMORY OF HIM WERE ONE. WHERE it lay strongest, the distant past came to her as if that morning: Taking a dead sparrow from her jaws, before she knew to hide such things. Guiding her to the floor, bending her knee until the arthritis made it stick, his palm hotsided on her ribs to measure her breaths and know where the pain began. And to comfort her. That had been the week before he went away.
He was gone, she knew this, but something of him clung to the baseboards. At times the floor quivered under his footstep. She stood then and nosed into the kitchen and the bathroom and the bedroom—especially the closet—her intention to press her ruff against his hand, run it along his thigh, feel the heat of his body through the fabric.
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle Page 20
