Dancing Dogs

by Jon Katz

  She took a deep breath and went back to rummaging through the boxes. She plucked out a Yankees neck scarf, something she and Frank had gotten on one of those giveaway days at the new stadium. She tied the scarf around Owen’s neck and walked into the kitchen, where she heard the familiar play-by-play coming from the living room.

  She filled a bowl with water and set it down on the floor.

  “Hey, honey,” she yelled, “I’m home.”

  “Hey, babe,” Frank called back. “I’ll be out in a minute. Eighth inning. Chamberlain is holding the Blue Jays down. I just want to wait for Rivera.”

  Lisabeth smiled. Frank was not a religious man, but if he worshiped, it would be at the Church of Mariano Rivera, the Yankees’ great closer. Or maybe Derek Jeter, their shortstop and team captain. Lisabeth recognized their talent, but couldn’t help wishing both of them would get out of her life.

  She got another bowl, and took out the bag of dog food that she’d kept after Casey died. Owen gulped it down greedily.

  Frank issued battle reports from time to time. Rivera gave up two hits. One more and the game would be tied. He needed a strikeout. “Come on, Mariano!” Frank shouted from the living room.

  Lisabeth was still trembling. She tried to shake it off. I’m a grown woman. I’m not a child. I’m not a coward.

  She leaned down and took Owen’s leash off. The dog circled the kitchen twice and then made a beeline straight through the doorway and into the living room.

  Lisabeth opened the refrigerator and pulled out a Bud Light. She might need it.

  She heard a groan, and the announcer shout that Rivera had given up a walk. The bases were now loaded. He needed a strikeout or a double play. Shit, she thought. He’ll be in a bad mood.

  Then she heard it.

  “What the fuck is this? Who are you? Christ, I thought we went over this!” In the kitchen, Lisabeth closed her eyes and held her breath.

  Do your job, Owen.

  The dog had ridden in the car with his head in her lap the whole way. She couldn’t give him up now. Lord, she should have just called Frank, told him they were coming, given him some warning. She didn’t have to ask, but she could have just told him.

  She looked at the clock. Several minutes had gone by. Something was wrong. On the TV, the announcer made a comment about the hitter needing a new bat. A commercial came on.

  What was happening? Why hadn’t he called for her? Why wasn’t there more shouting? Her cell beeped: Jeannie. She ignored it.

  Holding her beer in her shaky hands, she walked quietly through the hallway and turned the corner. The game was back on now, and Mariano Rivera was winding up.

  “Got ’em!” shouted the announcer. “Rivera does it again. Strikes out two in a row to end the game. The Yankees win! Thanks to Mariano Rivera and a late-inning home run by Derek Jeter!” The roar of the crowd filled the room, and Lisabeth’s eyes went to the sofa.

  Her jaw dropped. Frank was sitting on the left side of the couch, holding a bottle of Bud Light. Owen was sitting beside him, his Yankee scarf showing the interlocking insignia, the two of them watching the game. Frank had his hand on the scarf as if it were some kind of lucky charm.

  “So,” he said, “you went ahead and did it?” He was glowering at her, but his look softened when he turned to Owen, who was staring straight ahead at the TV as if there were a steak inside of it.

  “They won,” said Frank, his hand scratching Owen’s ears. It looked like they did this every night. Owen seemed to relax, sniffing Frank’s hand. Jeez, Lisabeth thought, they even sort of look alike.

  “Where did he come from?” Frank asked, a question more than an accusation.

  “North Carolina,” she said tentatively, almost in a whisper.

  There was a long pause as Frank regarded the beagle, who looked right back at him.

  “He hopped up onto the sofa, and Rivera got a strikeout, just like that,” Frank said. “Then he looked at the set again, and Rivera got another strikeout. Till then, I thought the game was over.”

  Owen yawned, then curled up in a ball right next to Frank, and promptly fell asleep.

  “What’s his name?” he asked.

  “Jeter,” she said. “I named him Jeter.”

  Frank smiled, then laughed, ruffling Jeter’s ears.

  “Jeter. That’s a good name for a dog,” he said. “A scrapper. A winner.”

  Jeter opened his eyes and looked at him, his tail thumping against the couch.

  “I’ll get you some biscuits,” he said, “every time we hit a home run or win.”

  Jeter lifted his head at the word “biscuits.”

  Frank scratched Jeter’s head, behind his right ear. “We can watch the games together,” he said.

  He took the battered old Yankee cap off his head and put it on Jeter, who licked the brim, his long ears sticking out beneath the hat. He smiled at Lisabeth.

  “Nice dog,” he said.

  Instinct Test

  PATRICIA WISHED SHE WEREN’T DRIVING A SILVER INFINITI, MUCH as she loved the sound system and smooth ride. This thought occurred to her as she drove past the peeling sign for Gooseberry Field Farm, down the long dirt driveway, past a long, rickety wood-and-wire fence, and the large herd of peacefully grazing sheep beyond. As she pulled into the grassy parking area behind the sprawling farmhouse, she kicked herself for not borrowing her sister’s ancient Honda sedan. She saw a battered old Ford Ranger, two or three Toyota Tacomas, a couple of Jeeps, and two giant Chevy Suburbans, the flagship vehicle of the dog show, trial, and rescue crowd. They could squeeze four or five crates into those giant Suburbans, plus coolers filled with turkey necks, special foods, and bags of hot dogs, meatballs, liver bits, and other favored training treats, not to mention balls, ropes, and dog beds. Most of these vehicles had tents for shade, as well as lawn chairs and portable fencing. As she’d guessed, there were no other Infinitis, nor BMWs, Mercedes Benzes, or Cadillacs either.

  A pediatrician, Patricia had given up her practice some years ago. Now her usual turf was the sidelines at her kids’ soccer and lacrosse games, backyard barbecues, school plays, the local swim club with its vast pool, monthly book clubs in beautiful houses, or, sometimes, dinner at a French or Italian restaurant in town. Farms were not much in her repertoire.

  She had heard about Gooseberry from her friend Donna at the agility and obedience classes she’d recently started attending with her border collie, Dave. Donna had driven her troubled Australian shepherd, Shasta, out to Gooseberry for some sheepherding lessons, but she’d barely made it to the farmhouse, she told Patricia, before Fran Gangi, the farm’s owner, had come roaring across the fields in her ATV and started berating her about “useless and pretty dogs,” and boomers in their Volvos and BMWs.

  Donna had immediately turned her Mercedes around and gone home. “The woman is crazy,” she said. “And rude.”

  If Patricia hadn’t loved Dave so much, she wouldn’t have even bothered to come out to Gooseberry, and she wouldn’t be sitting here hoping this strange woman would approve of her car. She had no apologies to make for her money or her automobile. She had earned both.

  PATRICIA HAD BEEN MARRIED to her husband, Paul, for twenty-five years, and they could count the number of times they had seriously fought. But ever since Dave arrived, they hadn’t stopped fighting. Something told her it wasn’t only about the dog.

  Dave had been with Patricia for two months, acquired from Northern Massachusetts Border Collie Rescue. He’d been found tied up in an old barn twenty miles west of Worcester, beaten and emaciated and blind in one eye. The farmer was fined, and the dog was taken away.

  For sure, Dave was not like the golden they’d gotten for the girls when they were young. Honey chased balls, ate, and slept, and they could not remember that sweet creature causing a second’s trouble. Sure, she wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but the girls had adored her, and she had been a huge part of their childhoods. They were all devastated when she died, just as their you
ngest was going off to college. Patricia always associated Honey with the kids. But Dave was her dog.

  Paul couldn’t comprehend why they needed a crazy border collie in their life right now, especially one that was closer to a wild animal than a dog, and who, clearly, didn’t belong in suburban Massachusetts with no work to do. It wasn’t fair to the dog or to them, he said. Somebody or something, he insisted, was going to get hurt.

  Patricia had been thinking about Paul’s remarks on the twenty-five-mile drive out to Gooseberry.

  Dave didn’t grasp the concept of eliminating outside. He would jump on tables, counters, and sofas. He was obsessive about things like mail coming through slots, or curtains blowing in the wind. He howled when he heard diesel engines, circled underneath airplanes, chased light reflecting through glass and off glasses and doorknobs. He jumped through windows, dumped all over the house, chewed up table legs, placemats, briefcases, shoes, computer wires. He dug under fences, or squeezed through them, and he tried to herd everything that moved, from trucks to police cars to children.

  Whenever Dave heard a siren, he would tear right through a screen window or door and give chase, trying to steer the thing back toward the house. He’d almost caused a few accidents, scared a score of kids to death, and nearly triggered a half dozen lawsuit threats—none of which had materialized—from neighbors trying to protect their gardens, lawns, kids, or cats.

  The last straw had been when Dave jumped right through the plate-glass window in the living room onto the lawn and took off after a sheltie that was running alongside a neighborhood jogger. Dave went to work, circling and nipping, herding both the dog and the jogger onto the front lawn before Patricia could get out there and grab him. By that time, he had nipped at the jogger’s hand when he tried to push him back. And that night, still cranked, he had also nipped Paul’s ankle. Harming two people in one day, one of them her husband; this was something new. The jogger said he would call the police if he ever even saw Dave again. Paul said enough was enough.

  She couldn’t really say he was wrong, but she also couldn’t let the dog go, not without trying everything. And everybody (apart from Donna) said that Fran Gangi was the best hope for crazy working dogs at the end of their tether, damaged and aggressive border collies being her specialty. People brought her dogs from all over the country, and she was legendary for “flipping” them around, changing even the most extreme behaviors. And she was also known for hating most of the people who brought them.

  NOW, IN THE REAR SEAT of Patricia’s Infiniti, Dave was going mad at the sight of the sheep, barking, whining, bouncing off the windows that Patricia hurriedly closed most of the way. There were drool and scratch marks all over the Infiniti’s leather interior.

  Patricia had never seen Dave quite this excited. She had no crate to put him in. He hated crates, and she couldn’t bear to stuff him into one.

  She should have closed the window all the way, but Dave loved to stick his head out, and she loved to see his happy face in her rearview mirror. It was tough for her to say no to Dave, and she knew it. She hadn’t had this problem with her children.

  “Dave, calm down, take it easy,” she hissed. “You’re going to give a bad impression or go right through the window. Knock it off.”

  Patricia wondered what on earth she was thinking talking to a crazy dog who had never paid the slightest bit of attention to anything she said, unless it was “Frisbee” or “ball.”

  Patricia had to admit she felt a little silly. A doctor, a mother, a member of the town school board, and here she was driving out into the country. For what? So a messed-up border collie could meet some sheep and pass a herding test to qualify for herding lessons?

  The odd thing, she knew, was that in spite of everything, she loved him to death from the second she laid eyes on him in the shelter, where he tore out of the crate and into her lap with a look that said, Please get me outta here.

  So she had to do something. She couldn’t remember too many times in her life when she had asked for help, but here she was at Gooseberry Field Farm.

  “Come on out,” Fran had offered on the phone. She told her that, with border collies, you had to find work for them. “Lots of people get border collies who shouldn’t have them,” she said. “A lot of these dogs live in the suburbs with people in fancy houses and nice cars,” she added ominously.

  “I signed him up for an agility class,” Patricia told her, to show she was serious.

  “Is he running through those hoops in agility?”

  “Yes, he is.”

  “Well, that will make him crazy if he isn’t already.”

  Dave had peed in Paul’s closet that morning, and Paul had stepped in it rushing to get dressed before a car came to pick him up and take him on the first leg of his trip to Shanghai.

  “If this trainer thing doesn’t work, then the dog needs to be gone when I get back,” he said. “I’m sorry, honey. He’s just not the right dog for us. Somebody’s going to get sued or hurt, or the house is going to get wrecked. We both have to live here, and a dog is something we both ought to feel comfortable with.”

  All true, she thought. And fair. She hadn’t even bothered to argue.

  SHE SAW SOME of the other people showing up for the herding test. Sneakers and jeans, sweats, belt pouches, and long leads. She did not belong here, that was for sure.

  Across the parking area and a couple of hundred yards into the pasture was a square fenced-in area with a half dozen sheep inside, all of them looking nervously at the spot by the gate where the dogs were beginning to appear.

  Patricia got a leash out of the back, clipped it onto Dave’s collar, and he lurched out of the car, barking wildly in the general direction of the sheep, pulling and spinning around.

  “This must be Dave,” said a voice from behind her.

  Patricia turned to find a tall woman with long brown hair sticking out from beneath an Australian-style slouch hat, a long outer coat hanging down nearly to her ankles, covering a heavy pair of boots and a skinny, angular frame. She was carrying a long wooden walking stick with a carved ivory sheep head at the top. Patricia had never seen anything quite like it.

  “Fran Gangi,” she said, offering her hand. “And you are?”

  “Patricia Worthington,” she said. “We talked on the phone.”

  Obviously she knew that, thought Patricia, if she’d figured out who Dave was. She already felt stupid.

  Fran nodded, taking in the Infiniti, and then Dave, who was staring intently at her, and at the greasy pouch hanging off her belt under the coat.

  “I heard you don’t like fancy cars,” said Patricia coolly, but with a smile. It was not in her nature to be deferential, at least not for long. But she didn’t have any idea what else to say.

  “You can’t believe everything you hear,” Fran said, seeming to appreciate Patricia’s directness. She had the sense that Fran didn’t give a shit about what anybody thought of her. Patricia admired that.

  Fran leaned down for a closer look at Dave, who growled, circled, and then lunged toward the sheep. Fran reached into her pocket and held out some greasy, pungent thing. It reeked.

  “Meatball and lamb’s blood,” Fran said.

  Patricia was repelled. “He doesn’t take many treats,” she said. “I’ve tried them all.”

  Fran walked around her and waited, holding the meatball-looking thing in her hand. Dave turned, came over to her, and lunged up. She held the food higher in the air. He circled, barked, and lunged again.

  “Dave!” scolded Patricia. “Bad boy!”

  Fran raised her hand, not to Dave, but to Patricia.

  “Be still, please. He needs communication and support. Not yelling.”

  Patricia could not remember the last time someone told her to be quiet. She opened, then closed, her mouth.

  Dave continued to bark and jump up and down. The other dog people were all turning to watch, and Patricia felt as if a flashing blue light had been attached to her head. T
he people, mostly women, all seemed to know what they were doing; even the dogs knew what was going on. The owners had their forms in hand, their mud boots and windbreakers on, treats in their pouches, travel mugs filled with steaming coffee, numbers strapped to their backs, plastic bags filled with treats.

  After a few minutes that seemed like so many hours, Dave finally sat still, staring at Fran’s hand. She lowered the treat, and he jumped up, so she raised it above her head again.

  “Dave!” Patricia scolded.

  “Sssssssh!” Fran hissed at her.

  More cars were pulling in, more people were getting out and watching. Patricia was beet red; she could feel it, everybody looking at her, her shiny new boots, her flashy car.

  Then Dave seemed to get something, as if it occurred to him that jumping up and down wasn’t going to get him this sweet-smelling thing after all.

  Never taking his eye off Fran and the treat, Dave sat still. Slowly, Fran lowered her hand, an inch at a time, down to him. If he moved even slightly, she’d raised it up again.

  When he had stayed still long enough for her to lower it to his nose, she let him have it. She repeated this procedure several times. By the fourth time, he remained steady, waiting for the treat. Patricia had never seen him so calm.

  “I’ve never been able to get him to do that,” she said.

  “I’m sure,” said Fran.

  “But he did it.”

  Fran nodded. “Never give a dog anything for free. Ever,” she said, zipping up her greasy pouch.

  There were approving murmurs from the women clustered around with their border collies, Aussies, shelties, German shepherds, Rottweilers, and mutts.

  Fran asked Patricia if she knew what a herding-instinct test was, and she said, “Not really.”

  “It tests the dog’s interest in sheep, in working with them. If a border collie can work with sheep, then I can help you. Because border collies will do anything to work, and once you know they want that, then you can begin to communicate with them. Getting them to calm down and pay attention to you is what it’s all about.”