by Jim Gorant
Hector had moved out on Friday, June 13, 2008, off to a new permanent home in Minnesota, and Cris picked up Jonny the very next day. But the transition back was a little awkward.
Jonny acted like an adult visiting his old grammar school: everything seemed sort of familiar but it was different and strange at the same time. Jonny himself was different. When Cohen took him on his walks Jonny was no longer interested in the same things and didn’t seem to recognize his old stomping grounds.
Cohen remained patient and fell back on the old routine. Within a short time, it all came back. Jonny once again roamed his half of the house during the day. He slept in the sun spot with Lilly and chased her around the backyard. He snored in the evening as he napped and he even, once or twice, ran up the steps at the little school.
Bond reestablished, Cohen got back to work. He and Jonny resumed their training and within a few months the former caveman passed his American Temperament Test Society exam and then nailed the Canine Good Citizen certificate. It had taken many months, but Cohen was proven right. He’d seen that Jonny was a good dog with grand potential who simply needed direction. Now the little pooch had the paperwork to prove he was as good as any dog out there.
In the aftermath Cris sought a new goal for Jonny, but nothing came immediately to mind. Life went on. One late summer day, Cris and Jen took the dogs to the park along with Uba, another of the Vick dogs who lived in San Francisco. As Jonny walked down the sidewalk he watched Lilly and Jen in front of him. It was August and the heat bore down on them, so no one had much energy. They were headed for the park where they could at least take some refuge in the shade and possibly even go for a quick if illegal dip in the pond.
As always, there was a lot going on in the park, including some sort of event for kids. Jonny seemed curious and interested, so Cohen ventured closer. Jonny seemed intent on finding out more, so Cohen got closer and closer. Soon the children spotted Jonny and came over to check him out. Before Cohen knew what was happening a dozen kids were all around Jonny. They came at him from all sides, thrusting their little hands forward, petting him, rubbing him, bumping up against him. Cohen didn’t know what to do, but then he saw something he’d never seen before.
Jonny absolutely lit up. Cohen had read about pit bulls’ affinity for children, but because he didn’t have kids he’d never witnessed it. Now he had.
Jonny was at once very calm and happy but also totally excited. Cris showed the kids how to play with Jonny, how to pet him, and where he liked to be scratched. Jonny romped with them all afternoon. Suddenly the heat no longer had the best of him.
Cohen was inspired. He’d thought about doing therapy work before. He’d trained Lilly for it and even had her certified, but Lilly had physical limitations-arthritis and a back so bad that she’d undergone multiple surgeries-so it was painful for her make the rounds. After watching her struggle while completing the testing, Cris had never actually taken her out to do the work.
But Jonny was fine, and he seemed to love kids. There must be a way to harness that, Cohen thought. He did some research and found a program called Paws for Tales. It was a reading program for children run through Peninsula Humane Society and SPCA. It was designed to get kids into the library and reading, but also to allow kids who lacked confidence in their reading abilities to practice out loud in front of one of the most receptive and nonjudgmental audiences they’d ever find. Cris contacted the program’s administrators and found out how Jonny could get involved.
They told him Jonny would need to pass the American Temperament Test and have a Canine Good Citizen certification. Well, check and check. Then he would need to be a certified therapy dog. Cohen and Jonny got to work on that immediately.
Part of the challenge was getting Jonny to react properly to a book. If a child was holding a book in the air while reading, Jonny was supposed to stare at the kid as if he were hanging on every word. If the child held the book on the floor, Jonny should stare at the pages, almost as if he was following along or checking out the pictures.
It took another three months of intense effort-hand-fed dinners, morning and evening training sessions, and a clever innovation, a pen stuffed with food that was laid in the book to teach Jonny to focus on the spot. But Jonny got there. Cris took him in for a demonstration and evaluation by the program administrators. Jonny passed.
Finally, on November 18, 2008, less than two years after he was saved from an almost certain end at the hands of Bad Newz Kennels and slightly more than one year after he was spared from what seemed a second death sentence at the hands of the government, Jonny Justice walked into the San Mateo Public Library and lay down on a blanket in a cavernous conference room in the back of the building.
At 4:00 P.M. the doors swung open and a few kids came in, trailed by a parent. They sat in a little circle on the floor and one by one they moved onto Jonny’s blanket and read a short book-Biscuit’s New Trick or The Heart of the Jungle-their cracking voices swallowed by the silence of the giant room.
Jonny sat and listened as if he’d never done anything else in his life, as if he’d been bred for the job.
38
CATALINA RETURNED FROM HER trip to Croatia on August 23, 2008, a Thursday. The night before, she had been unable to sleep. She didn’t know what was keeping her awake, but as she tossed in bed Jasmine’s well-being was on her mind. Eventually, Catalina got up and walked across the hotel room to the window. Looking up into the sky she saw a star so huge and so bright that she woke her husband to come look at it. It was unlike anything she’d seen, and she wondered if it was a planet or if she was witnessing some sort of astrological event. She wondered if it was Jasmine lighting up the way home for her.
The next afternoon her family arrived safely at her in-laws’ house, and she took a minute to check in with Karen Reese, the vice president of Recycled Love. “How is Jasmine?” she asked when she heard Karen’s voice come on the line. There was a pause, a momentary hesitation, a shift in tone.
“Catalina,” Karen said with unwavering calm, “Jasmine is gone.”
Catalina didn’t understand. It didn’t register. “Gone?” she said. “Where did she go?”
Seconds ticked by. Catalina heard her children playing in the next room, her husband talking to his parents in Croatian. She waited. Karen’s voice came through the receiver again. “Catalina, Jasmine is gone.”
On Monday, August 19, Catalina’s friend Robert had arisen in her house and set about caring for his two dogs and Jasmine. He fed them, he gave them water, he let them out in the yard. Jasmine had been holding up. She didn’t seem happy but she was surviving, getting by, as she always did.
In the afternoon, Robert decided to take the dogs for a walk in a nearby park that Jasmine liked. As they made their way around, one of Robert’s dogs started to yelp and limp. Robert moved in to investigate. The dog had stepped on some broken glass. Robert brushed it off but there were a few little embedded pieces. As he tried to work them free the dog continued to whine and bark, nipping at his hands a little and trying to pull its leg away. Engrossed in the task and struggling against the dog, Robert blocked out everything else around him. The other leashes slipped from his hand.
Within a few minutes he was able to clear the last shards of glass from the dog’s foot. He looked up. His other dog was standing right next to him and Jasmine was not far off, either. She had continued slowly sniffing her way along the path, and now stood maybe twenty feet away.
Catching Jasmine when she was not tethered to anything could still be a chore for anyone who was not Catalina. For all the progress Jasmine had made, for all the manners and training she’d acquired, that one quirk remained. A lingering fear instilled in her from her past life that continued to dictate her future.
Robert tried to very calmly walk toward her, hoping he could get close enough to grab the leash before Jasmine even noticed she’d been set free. He’d hardly made it two steps when Jasmine turned to look at him. She held her head low, tu
cked between her shoulders. He froze.
He bent down to one knee and called her, the cheeriness in his voice masking the anxiety rising within him. “Jasmine. Come ’ere, Jasmine. Come on.” Jasmine turned her head and looked across the expanse of the park. One side of it was bordered by a farm, where tall stalks of late summer corn waved in the breeze.
She looked back at Robert and appeared for all the world to be considering her options. She couldn’t know that Catalina was only four days away. She only knew that the afternoons on the deck with Desmond were gone. The walks and the massages were gone. The singing was gone. The love was gone.
Jasmine turned away from Robert and headed for the cornfield at a trot. Robert immediately turned and ran back to his car. He put his dogs inside and sprinted for the field, calling Jasmine’s name. As he moved along the outer edge of the corn he came upon a kid, an eleven-or twelve-year-old boy riding his bike. The boy agreed to help and the two of them walked through the field calling for Jasmine. From time to time they would get a glimpse of her, a flash of brown running through the stalks, or hear the jingle of her leash and collar, but they could never find her. They could never get their hands on her.
It had been hours and Robert began to worry about his own dogs, locked up in the car. He thanked the boy for his help then drove back to Catalina’s. He dropped his dogs and tracked down a friend who agreed to meet him back at the farm. The two walked the grounds and the surrounding area, calling, searching. They went home only after it was too dark to see.
The next day the police found Jasmine’s body on Liberty Road. After examining the scene, they surmised that she’d been struck by a car and killed instantly.
Catalina didn’t sleep that night. She didn’t really cry, either. She didn’t do anything. It was as if she’d simply shut down inside. She felt as though she needed to be strong for everyone else. On the phone, Karen had been so distraught that Catalina ended up comforting her. From what she’d been told Robert was beside himself, and she was heading over there first thing in the morning to see him. After that she would still have to tell her kids and field calls from people at the rescue. She would have to tell all of them that it was no one’s fault, and that it could have happened to anyone, which she truly believed. The problem was that she’d also have to say everything was all right and that she would be okay, but she wasn’t at all sure that was true.
When she finally got to Robert, he was inconsolable. He couldn’t even speak. He simply cried and cried and Catalina did what she could to make him feel better. The kids took it with more aplomb. “Jasmine had to leave us,” Catalina told them. “She had to go to heaven.” The family had lost two other dogs over the years, so the children were familiar with the concept. They were old enough to understand the idea and young enough not to question it.
And so she moved from minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day, taking calls, answering e-mails, sorting through her feelings without ever truly feeling them. A week went by, ten days. The maelstrom passed. The phone stopped and the e-mails stopped and the world moved on. Then it was just Catalina, alone in the house.
A local artist, inspired by Jasmine’s story, had painted a picture of her, and it had been given to Catalina as a gift. Catalina hung it on the wall in her daughter’s room. Then she and her daughter painted butterflies and hung them around the outside of the painting. It was their little memorial to Jasmine.
Desmond played in the yard with Rogue, but he seemed a little lost. He lay on the deck alone. Catalina too moved around the house in something of a daze. As much as she gave to Jasmine, she had always felt that she’d gotten more in return and she’d never felt that more powerfully than now. She loved her children more than anything, and she felt like Jasmine was her third child, but because of her limitations she was different. She needed more and that somehow made their relationship even deeper.
When Jasmine was there her life had purpose and meaning. She wanted to have purpose again.
She took to getting up very early, maybe 5:00 A.M. She liked it when the house was semi-dark and quiet. She could feel Jasmine during those times, or at least the remnants of her, the indelible impressions she’d left behind that became visible in the slanting light, like fingerprints on a glass table.
One morning the sky was gray and it was raining so hard that the sound of the drops hitting the roof filled the house. Out of nowhere Catalina heard a bird singing. The sound was so bright and clear she felt as if the bird were singing directly to her. As she listened the song reminded her of the one she used to sing: On the day that Jasmine was born / The angels sang a beautiful song…
She hadn’t thought about the song in weeks and calling it up now made her smile, made her remember how much Jasmine loved it and how happy it made her. Suddenly she became convinced that the bird was Jasmine. Just as the star in the sky over Croatia had been Jasmine reaching out to her, Jasmine was now singing to Catalina. The roles were reversed; Jasmine now offered a song to pull Catalina through the haze of her trauma.
Catalina decided to go to San Francisco to see some old friends. She’d begun to deal with her grief in bits and pieces, but she knew it would take months, even years to fully confront the pain inside her. The process really began that weekend, though, and before she left for home Catalina found herself at a tattoo parlor. She had one tattoo already, a butterfly she’d gotten after her grandmother died.
At that time that she’d felt that as long as she was alive, as long as she inhabited this body, her grandmother would be with her, literally tattooed onto her. She felt the same way about Jasmine. So she sat in the chair and winced as the artist etched into her skin the image of a bird about to take flight. The bird was looking up and its eyes burrowed into whoever viewed it, just like Jasmine’s used to do. The tattoo was the bird that had sung to her that sad morning. The bird that was Jasmine.
The past turned over and over in Catalina’s mind. She didn’t want to revisit it. She didn’t want to entertain the “could haves” or the “should haves.” Nothing lives forever. Accidents happen. Life happens. Blame and remorse are not factors in the equation. If not now, if not this way, Jasmine would have died some other way.
Catalina often talked about such things with Karen Reese. They were kindred spirits in this sense-they believed in the purpose and connectedness of things and in the power of their instincts to guide them. Shortly after the gag order on the Vick dogs was lifted, Reese met with a journalist who wanted to write about them. She mentioned that she’d received many calls but that this was the only one she’d returned. The journalist thanked her for choosing him, but Reese interjected, “No, no, I didn’t choose you. You were sent to us; you were sent to us for a reason.”
Likewise Catalina and Karen believed that Jasmine had been sent to them for a purpose. They felt as though Jasmine had a mission in this life and having achieved what she set out to do, she had been freed to move on. Jasmine was off to do something else, somewhere else, while the rest of us were left to follow our own paths.
This is Jasmine’s purpose.
This is the story she tells.
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
THE DOGS
CHESAPEAKE 54902: AUDIE (BAD RAP)
Dutch, the little dog who rode in Nicole Rattay’s lap for large chunks of his cross-country journey, was eventually adopted by Linda Chwistek, the BAD RAP volunteer who helped develop the group’s Canine Good Citizen program (which has more than a hundred successful graduates). Chwistek was looking for a dog with the physique and athleticism to compete in agility competitions, timed races in which dogs run through a series of gates. Dutch had originally gone to another foster, but Chwistek saw him and thought he had potential. She took him in, renamed him Audie, and set to the training, but there were a few obstacles to overcome first.
To begin with, Audie-no surprise-had some behavioral issues. He fit right in with Chwistek’s two other pit bulls, but he circled in his crate, nipped clothes to get attention, and constantly
jumped up on the table or kitchen counter. An experienced trainer, Chwistek could deal with those things, but Audie’s biggest problem was something she couldn’t handle herself; he needed surgery on both knees in his hind legs. In December of 2008 Audie went under the knife, a procedure financed by BAD RAP with the money from the Vick settlement.
While Audie recovered, Chwistek worked on his basic training and he became a star not only around the house but in the small northern California town where he lives. Every morning Chwistek walks her dogs down along the waterfront, where many commuters are heading for the ferry. Audie, shy at first, has become a favorite part of the scene. With Chwistek handing out treats to people, who then fed them to Audie, he came to know a group of regulars, including Bob the newspaper guy. If Audie’s running late, many of his friends will wait for him, as if the daily “hello” from the little pit bull is a part of their morning routine they can not miss. And when Audie sees Bob, he jumps in his lap. Once a week, Chwistek and her husband, Bill, take Audie out to a restaurant, so he can learn to settle down and relax in new and different situations.
In April 2009, Audie had finally recovered from his surgery enough that he could start his agility training. Chwistek worked with him twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening. She also took him to a few competitions so he could see what went on and get used to the atmosphere. The full training program usually takes a little more than a year to complete, and Audie is on track to enter his first competition in the fall of 2010.
CHESAPEAKE 54903: SOX (ANIMAL RESCUE OF TIDEWATER)
During the initial ASPCA evaluations, she was one of the worst of the low-response dogs, to the point where the team openly discussed euthanasia. She could hardly open her eyes and seemed unable to focus even when she did. However, since arriving at the home where she was fostered and then adopted, she’s done incredibly well. Like several of the other Bad Newz dogs, Sox has babesia, a bloodborne parasite that’s common in fighting dogs and can make them very ill. Veterinarians don’t know a lot about babesia because most fighting dogs don’t live long enough for them to study and work with the condition. In retrospect some of the evaluators now believe that on the day they first met Sox she was suffering through a particularly bad spike in her symptoms. In late 2009, she received her certification as a therapy dog.
