A Question of Manhood

by Robin Reardon

  “Have you had him checked out by a vet to make sure he isn’t in some kind of pain, or if he has a neurological condition?”

  “Oh, his vet is very well aware of the problem, believe me. He hasn’t suggested any medical causes.”

  “I see. Well, certainly you’re welcome to bring him on Saturday. I’d just suggest you leave him in the car at first, since we already know he’s aggressive around other dogs, and we’ll try to set things up the best we can.”

  “Oh, good. Thank you so much!”

  We stood there, he and I, watching as she walked away. Almost under his breath, JJ said, “I had a feeling this would happen.”

  “What?”

  “I knew people would start bringing their dogs during the week, not just on Saturdays. I told your father I expected it, but he said he was willing to take the risk. But if they start bringing in aggressive dogs…” His voice trailed off.

  “She didn’t bring him in.”

  “No, but someone else will. I’ll finish this tank and then let your father know she was here, and that she’ll probably be back on Saturday.”

  So I was saved from making an idiot of myself and asking JJ a question I shouldn’t. I was pretty sure I knew the answer, anyway.

  And he was right about the dogs. Later that same day someone I knew—my friend Mr. Treadwell—showed up. JJ and I were restocking dog collars. “Hello, Paul,” he opened. “Hope the summer’s going well for you.” He turned toward JJ. “Are you JJ?”

  Mr. Treadwell had brought in his English sheepdog because she was chewing all the fur off of one flank. Again, JJ suggested a trip to the vet first.

  “Oh, I did that. The vet says if Ophelia were allergic to something, it wouldn’t be just the one spot. We tried antihistamines, anyway, but they didn’t help. And he couldn’t find any other cause for it.” He looked down at the dog and then back up to JJ. “We tried topical ointments. When that failed, my vet recommended sedatives, but I’m reluctant to do that. Do you have any ideas?”

  JJ glanced toward the office, probably wondering what Dad would say about this. I spoke up. “I’ll just go let Dad know you’re working with a customer.”

  It was obvious Dad would have to make a decision about this—phenomenon, this situation, whatever it was turning into. When I got back with Dad, JJ had already taken the leash off Ophelia’s collar and had put it on her neck like he’d done with every dog.

  “She’s obsessing,” he said to Mr. Treadwell. “A dog needs to know who’s in charge, and if no one seems to be, she’ll take that role on whether she wants it or not. So she thinks she needs to control things, but she doesn’t know how. She might think this activity she’s doing, this chewing, is all she can control, or she might be using it to keep her mind off of all the stuff she doesn’t understand. How often do you walk her?”

  “I try to walk her every afternoon. I have to be in school early during the year, and I don’t want to change the routine in the summer when I’m not in classes.”

  Dad and I just stood there. Neither of us knew what to say, that was for sure. JJ looked like he was hunting for the right words, but he didn’t look like he didn’t know what to say.

  Finally, “This is a big dog, a herding dog. She needs activity, and she needs direction. If you can’t walk her consistently at the start of her day, perhaps you could find someone else who could. She needs to have a way to spend her energy in the morning, and then she needs to know someone is in charge, so that her mind can relax. Then you should walk her as well, so she recognizes you as a leader. And then on weekends, or during the week if you can, it would be best for her if you could find someplace where she could run around in an open area. That could be at the end of the day, but she still needs to be walked in the morning. And she needs to be walked in a way that lets her know who the boss is.” He handed the leash to Mr. Treadwell. “Can you show me what you do?”

  Ophelia was sitting there, gnawing at the sore spot just like Mr. Treadwell had said. He took the leash and started to pull on it. “Come on, girl,” he said. She looked at him, and for a second it looked like she was going to ignore him, but she stood and began to move. Her head hung down, and she just kind of loped along after him. He did a circle and came back to JJ.

  JJ asked, “Is that sort of how it goes?”

  “Sometimes she pulls me. It varies.”

  JJ nodded and reached for the leash. “May I?” First he moved the loop up under her ears, then he waited for her to start chewing. He yanked slightly and said, “Hey.” Waited. More chewing, another yank. Once more, and then she didn’t go back to chewing. She sat there and looked up at JJ.

  He let the leash fall and moved away a little, and then called her. She got up and went to him immediately. Then he took the leash, and she walked behind him just like it was what she’d wanted to do all along. Her head was up, proud, and he walked her quickly to the front, then back and forth. Still walking, he signaled to Mr. Treadwell to come up. JJ handed the leash to the teacher, corrected his hold, and guided him on how to walk.

  I watched intently. What had I done wrong with Mozart? JJ had said “relaxed and assertive.” Certainly he was both those things. And Ophelia responded to it. She looked great. She looked happy, even once Mr. Treadwell had the leash again, because he’d picked up on what JJ was doing. He was beaming.

  JJ said, “Okay, now stop, and see if she sits.” She didn’t. “Gently and quickly, squeeze your fingers on her back, just above the tail, push down a little, and let go.” She sat. “Now wait to see if she chews. If she does, you give a gentle yank and make some quiet but sudden noise.”

  It was working. Everything worked. Everything JJ tried with that dog worked, just like everything else I’d seen him do had worked. Dogs, fish tanks, spiders—it didn’t matter. He was charmed. And now Mr. Treadwell had fallen victim to his charms.

  Mr. Treadwell and Ophelia both looked very happy when they left, a new collar for Ophelia already on her. Dad asked JJ and me to come into the office. The first thing he said was to me.

  “Thanks for coming to get me, Paul. That was the right thing to do.” Coulda knocked me over with a cat toy. “We need to decide how we’re going to handle this situation, because it’s sure to arise again. JJ, I know you predicted this. Dalmatian this morning, sheepdog this afternoon, and tomorrow it could be a Doberman with a mean streak that takes a bite out of somebody. We can’t have that, and not everyone will be as thoughtful as Mrs. Denneghy, who knew better than to bring her dog in. Any ideas?”

  “You could change your policy,” I suggested. “Not let any dogs in at all.”

  Dad shook his head. “I really don’t want to do that.”

  We all stood there in silence until JJ said, “We can insist that people bring the dogs for help only on Saturday. If someone like this fellow comes during the week, and if I think I can help, then I tell them briefly what I’ll do and suggest they come back during the Saturday workshop. Kind of a triage.”

  “Doesn’t solve the problem of the Doberman,” I pointed out.

  Dad was thinking and talking at the same time. “No, but if someone brings in a dog that looks dangerous…JJ, you’d be able to tell that pretty quickly, right? So you could ask the customer and the dog to step outside with you for an assessment. Maybe you can’t really help, anyway; maybe the dog is too far gone. But you could do the triage you mentioned, away from the door. Maybe you should just go outside with anyone who brings in a dog that needs help. What do you think?”

  “It’s probably the best approach,” JJ said. “We can see how it goes and make changes if we have to.”

  “Check in with me at lunch and at the end of the day, and give me a rundown of any dogs people brought in.”

  We all nodded, but I still had my doubts that this was going to work. For sure I wasn’t getting near that imaginary Doberman. I decided not to ask what would happen on the days when JJ wasn’t at work; I didn’t want to get shot down again.

  Friday another
customer brought a dog in. It was a little yippy thing, a Pekinese maybe, and JJ took the owner outside. I went out, too, just to hear what he said, curious to see if it would be any different from what he might have said about Lulu. But I got distracted by Jack.

  Jack was this homeless guy who moved around from storefront to storefront, finding shady spots in the summer and warm spots in the winter, and sometimes he hung out at the far corner here, near the trees on the edge, probably hoping no one would see him. Anytime Dad saw him, he chased him off. But I didn’t quite have what it took to do that, so I just tried to pretend he wasn’t there, which made it difficult to listen to JJ. But Jack was listening. He looked like he was fascinated.

  When Dad got home that night, a couple of hours after I did, Mom had done some weird redecorating in the kitchen. She had strung up about four of those doggie packs she’d made during the week. She was nearly giggling when Dad came in and saw them.

  “Irene, this is great. We’ll have them for the workshop tomorrow. Paul, I want you to go to the grocer’s before you go to the store and get bottles of water, or something we can put water into, like JJ had. Make sure you get some that will fit into these pockets. We could give workshop customers the water bottles to go with the packs they buy!”

  “On my bike?”

  Mom said, “Take my car, dear. I have enough materials to keep me sewing all day.”

  Dad chimed in. “You can drive your mother’s car home at lunch and bike back to work. Irene, what do you think your production speed will be, now that you’ve done a few?”

  “Oh, goodness. Maybe five a week? How many do you think you’ll sell?”

  They talked supply and demand for a while, and I contemplated how I was turning into JJ’s helper again. But there was a bonus. My mom looked happier than I’d seen her since Chris was home.

  Saturday was overcast, threatening rain, but Dad decided to do the workshop, anyway. JJ had the parking lot all partitioned off before I got there with the water bottles.

  “Your father said for you to go inside when you got here. I think he wants to be out here again, to make sure things go all right.”

  “Shit.” It was out before I knew I’d said it.

  “What? Is there a problem?”

  Not one I really wanted to admit to JJ. “No. Everything’s peachy.” I went to find Dad, who was doing a last-minute examination of dog supplies. I spoke before he could. “Dad, I was hoping to watch from outside this time.”

  “I need you in here, Paul. And I need to be out there in case anything happens. Liability. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it has to be.”

  All I could do was grit my teeth and walk away. But I spent as much time as I could at the front of the store, watching JJ. So I saw what happened when Mrs. Denneghy’s Dalmatian and some other customer’s English bulldog got into it. JJ had been walking the Dalmatian around the inner square, and several people were watching—most of them having left their dogs in their cars—from outside the outer perimeter, and it was going pretty well. Maybe JJ had wanted to challenge the Dalmatian or something, because it didn’t look like he’d asked the bulldog owner to take her dog to her car or into the store. Dad was standing next to her, and he looked nervous.

  “That bulldog is trouble.” The voice startled me, and I turned to see Dave, the war vet, standing next to me, watching.

  I was tempted to tell him to get back to his register. But for now, I just replied, “So is the Dalmatian.”

  “This should be interesting.”

  As he said that, the Dalmatian was coming closer to the bulldog, and damn if that little tank on paws didn’t lunge. Bulldogs are really strong, and this one pulled the lady holding his leash, which was attached to a regular buckled collar, right along with him. So there they were, the bulldog’s underbite firmly attached to the Dalmatian’s hind leg, the Dalmatian wheeling around, not sure whether it should put more energy into biting or trying to escape, and Mrs. Denneghy screaming, not knowing what to do.

  I didn’t really think; I just ran outside. By the time I got to the dogs, Dad had grabbed the bulldog’s leash and was trying to pull him away, but it wasn’t having much effect, and JJ was trying to get the Dalmatian to hold still. He saw me approach.

  “Paul! Quick, get me a rawhide chew and then take this leash and hold it.”

  No time to be scared or irritated. I did what he said. JJ bent over the bulldog, jabbed the chew into the side of its mouth until the jaws separated, grabbed the back of its neck, and yanked it down to the ground on its side. The Dalmatian yelped and pulled away, and I was stuck trying to keep it from running anyplace. I grabbed the collar and held on, letting the dog pull me away from that bulldog and not wanting to tug too hard on the choke chain.

  You know how they say when you think you’re about to die your life flashes before your eyes in a split second? Well, I was scared, but even though I didn’t expect to die that day my mind flashed a scene in that same microsecond. When Chris had told us the story about being driven along this dirt road and seeing farmers’ tools but no farmers and they knew something was really wrong, he’d said the spookiest part of being in a situation like that was that no one really knew what to do. You had no guidance, so all anyone could do was look to the ranking officer and pray like hell that he had a good head on his shoulders. I realized with a bit of a shock that I didn’t feel quite like that. Maybe I didn’t know what to do, but JJ did. I wanted him to do more of it soon, though; the Dalmatian was lunging and jumping around, trying to get away.

  Mrs. Denneghy came running over to me and was about to wrap her arms around her dog.

  “No!” JJ nearly shouted from where he was straining to hold the canine tank down. “Let him calm down. He might bite even you right now.” She froze, this frantic look on her face.

  What, it’s okay if he bites me? I looked toward JJ, and he was showing Dad how to keep the bulldog on the ground. Then he came over to me and did the same thing with the Dalmatian—down on its side, just holding it there while it panted and heaved.

  JJ’s voice was quieter now. “Paul, go and hold the bulldog’s leash so it can’t get over here if it manages to get up.”

  So I stood there hanging on, watching Dad put all his weight into fighting that bulldog’s determination to get up and charge again, wondering if it could pull me as easily as it had its owner. The bulldog was still struggling when JJ let the Dalmatian up. He handed the leash to Mrs. Denneghy while he examined the leg.

  “It doesn’t look too bad. I don’t think the bone is broken, but you should get to the vet right away.” He turned to the bulldog owner. “You’ll need to provide proof of rabies vaccination, or they’ll have to quarantine the dog.”

  Mrs. Denneghy kept her limping dog far from the bulldog. She had a few words for the bulldog’s owner, however. “He told you to take that dog away! And look what it’s done!” She was near tears, and I didn’t blame her.

  So I guess JJ had said the bulldog shouldn’t be there after all; maybe that’s why Dad was so close to it, and looking anxious, when the fight started.

  JJ joined Dad at the bulldog with a leash and choke chain in his hand. The dog was much calmer now, really just panting. JJ got the choke collar on him and said, “Mr. Landon, you can let go now.”

  Dad stood and backed away, and JJ stood there alone over the dog, leash relaxed and partly on the ground. The bulldog just lay there, almost like it was relieved it didn’t have to do anything more. Dad decided to talk dog business with the owner. “About the rabies. Is the dog vaccinated?”

  The owner seemed ashamed. “Yes. A few months ago. It’s stamped on the tag there on his collar.”

  We all stood there, watching the dog’s breathing slow for a minute or so, and then JJ yanked up on the leash and the dog stood. He said, “I’m going to walk him around the parking lot to make sure he understands his position and calm him down a little more. Paul, could you come with me and make sure no one approaches with another dog?”

/>   I walked with JJ between me and the canine attack vehicle. It looked calm enough at the moment, and it followed JJ like it had been born to do that. “So the owner ignored your warning?” I asked him.

  He kind of gritted his teeth. “Yes.”

  “Who’ll be in the most trouble, d’you think?”

  “I’m afraid it’ll be your father, for having the clinic in the first place. It’s not fair, and I warned him this might happen. I blame myself, though. I thought I could keep things under control. I should have insisted.”

  “But Mrs. Denneghy won’t press charges or anything, will she?”

  JJ took a deep breath. “I hope not. She understands what happened. But who knows what her friends, her husband, anyone might encourage her to do? At least the bulldog’s had shots, though I’m going to verify that once I’ve walked him around a bit.”

  “Why does that help? Walking?”

  JJ relaxed a little, talking about dogs in general as opposed to problem dogs in particular. “For one thing, it tires them at least a little. But more important, if you can get the dog to follow you, to believe that it should follow you, then it will accept you as the alpha. The leader. From that point on, though, it’s like—well, if you’ll pardon the inappropriate analogy, it’s like riding the tiger. Once you get on you can’t get off. If I do something that makes this bulldog think it sees a chink in my leadership, it will challenge me openly. Putting it onto its side, into a submissive position, was the start. Walking it now, making it follow me, is cementing the deal.”

  “For now.”

  “Yeah.” He laughed, but it sounded unhappy. “For now.”

  We’d made an entire circumference of the lot, and the bulldog’s owner was looking toward us, no doubt expecting JJ to return her dog. But he kept going.

  “When will you give it back?” I asked.

  Silence for about ten human steps, several more of the dog’s waddles. “If I had my way? I wouldn’t. That woman’s personality makes this a dangerous dog, and he’ll probably be the one that suffers. She isn’t prepared to manage a powerful dog with a huge sense of self-importance. A warrior. She doesn’t know how to be the alpha with a dog like this. Maybe not with any dog, but it would be less dangerous with a Chihuahua or a Pekinese.”