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Chapter 1
First,
Everybody Leaves You
“Hey!
Is my husband here?” demands an ancient woman in a wheelchair
as I'm searching for the activity coordinator who will orient
me as the first animal-assisted therapist in the Golden View Nursing
Home. I’ve signed in,
draped matching purple photo IDs around Hannah’s neck and my own, and
skirted two patients parked near the receptionist’s window because my
dog is already making a fool of me.
I take her aside for a little chat about her behavior, but
Hannah’s obedience training has apparently been deleted and she’s
got enough pull on the leash to dislocate my arm.
Now she thinks she’s going to climb into this patient’s lap.
“Hannah,
dammit, quit that!” I
hiss, not the exactly correct command, but I’m getting a little
rattled.
No
matter. The old woman
hasn’t noticed. She’s
scrunched her eyes beneath her forehead, a low-slung storm cloud, to
better peer into the distance behind me.
I hoist Hannah back and say I’ll go find out about the missing
husband. But the old woman
cuts me off, flipping her wrist dismissively in front of her own face.
“Oh no.
He’s dead,” she answers herself nonchalantly.
Recovering the fact seems to cheer her.
“What’that you’ve got there?”
I’m
pleased by the question, of course.
This is what we’re here for, my trusty trained dog and I.
I square my shoulders and answer proudly.
“This is Hannah. She’s
a Labrador retriever. This
color is called chocolate. Would
you like to pat her?”
As she
considers, the cheer disappears. “I
don’t know. Dogs are
complicated.”
“You
don’t need to take care of her. You
can just pat her if you like.”
“Is it
a boy dog or a girl dog?”
“She’s
a girl.”
“Oh.
The boys are even more complicated.”
I
am undeterred. “Men can be like that, can’t they? But this one’s a girl.
Much easier. Would
you like to pat her?”
A pause,
then a negative head shake. “Still
too complicated. He’s
dead, you know, my husband. Sooner
or later they leave you. First
thing you know, everybody leaves you.”
Another dismissive wave in front of her own face, and she will
not speak again.
This job
is not going to be as easy as I thought.
I’m not ready after all. Hannah’s
not ready either. Who cares
what tests we’ve passed? Training
for this already appears as helpful as classes for fish on how to ride a
bicycle. I remind myself
that just yesterday Hannah and I hiked an unfamiliar section of forest
where mounds of fallen leaves were so deep as to obscure the trail, if
there even was a trail. I’d had
no choice but to follow my instincts…and my dog.
The first day I
met her, it’s a good thing I didn’t know I’d ever have to follow
Hannah anywhere because I’d have panicked.
An eggbeater on a trampoline might have been less in motion.
I wanted a good look at the ten-month-old chocolate Labrador
retriever we were adopting, but Hannah’s greeting involved bouncing
four paws off my torso while administering an exuberant French kiss. I squatted to aim a calming hand at her collar only to be
knocked the rest of the way over and given a face, neck, and ear bath.
“You don’t get out much, do you girl?” I gasped, a canny
observation of the exquisitely obvious.
Our
feisty fourteen-year-old cockapoo had died.
We’d loved Peaches and, against advice, kept him although we
were constantly warning people—or apologizing to them—about his
snapping. My closest friend
has had Labs for years and my family had grown attached to old black
Shadow and pup Betty, watching Shadow’s muzzle gray and her gait
falter by arthritis until the summer they had to put her down.
But through years of trail hiking with Barbara and our dogs,
I’d seen the reliability of the Labs’ friendliness, their eagerness
to please, the sweetness of their tolerance.
My
husband, Alan, and I contacted the coordinator of a regional Lab rescue
organization, a woman who takes in endangered or stray Labs, giving them
medical care and remedial loving until she can find a family who is a
good match. Hannah needed a
home and attention; we wanted a young, people-loving, female Lab.
“I have the perfect dog for you,” Carol said when she called.
“This
is an exceptional puppy without an aggressive bone in her body and equally
without an ounce of training,” she enthused through the phone.
“She’s spent an inordinate amount of time alone, muzzled so
she won’t cry and get the young woman who owns her evicted from a
no-pets apartment. She’s
finally realized that much as she wants to keep Hannah, she just
doesn’t have the time or the place to meet a Lab’s needs.
She was going to donate her for training as a Seeing Eye dog, but
she’s called Lab Rescue instead because she thinks Hannah would be
happiest if she can run and swim and play with other dogs and people,
have a home like yours, if you get my drift.
You’re perfect for her. And
she’s perfect for you.” Carol
definitely hadn’t said anything like this when we’d discussed other
dogs, all of which had had some problem that gave me pause.
So I went
to pick up this dog for whom we were so perfect, who was so perfect for
us.
Ah yes.
Perfect with one small exception:
Hannah absolutely hated to be left home alone as I discovered
when I went to the post office the next morning, a fifteen-minute trip
which cost me one black dress shoe.
The Puppy Retaliation-For-Being-Alone Diet for the first month
included but was not limited to: one silk tree (expensive), numerous house plants (African
violets in bloom preferred), my reading glasses, one bottle of Oil of
Olay (made her coat nice and shiny), one Chapstick (made her
lips…etc.), one framed picture of my daughter (who’d apparently
annoyed Hannah by returning to college), twenty-four foil-packaged
FiberBars (produced enough gas to power a small city), two double
batches of brownies left to cool on the kitchen counter by some slow
learner, one Birkenstock sandal, and a roll of toilet paper (assumed
necessary after the brownies incident).
The financial damage in the first week or so approached the cost
of purchasing a Westminster Best of Show dog, and I thought we’d been
tricked into adopting the devil’s protégée.
Plus, people staggered under the onslaught of her greeting; I was
afraid she’d eventually overtax the local ambulance system.
In retrospect the
obvious question flashes in neon: why
on earth didn’t we crate her? I
have no excuse for such stupidity except that we were overly eager to
make her happy and were also convinced that once she began getting
exercise (the first owner had had no place to run her, and she was about
ten pounds overweight as a result) she’d settle down.
We were correct in that assumption.
Sort of.
We began
serious training. Hannah
was brilliant in obedience school, one of two dogs who passed Level II
and the American Kennel Club (AKC) Canine Good Citizen Test out of nine
who’d been in that intermediate class.
People still staggered under the onslaught of her greeting, but
she’d sit nicely afterward. And
her distaste for solitude continued unabated; even now, leave her alone
and she’s not above chowing down a roll of paper towels or amusing
herself by removing all the little appointment cards and notes stuck to
the refrigerator. Her coup
de grace was eating the first obedience diploma she earned,
displayed there like the children’s report cards used to be.
And she seemed to enjoy the Christmas lights she took down for
us, although unfortunately she didn’t wait until the season was over.
Meanwhile,
I was falling in love. I
found myself saying things like, “I’ll be back, Sweetheart, I
promise,” ad nauseum every time I had to leave the house however
briefly. When I started
taking her with me—not because she’d still be upset at being
separated but because now I
would—I knew it was all over. I
have no idea how the first owner found the strength to give her up.
It was an extraordinarily unselfish thing to do.
I thanked and blessed her daily from the storehouse of gratitude
Hannah’s presence created in me.
And I never forgot her first notion, that Hannah, this beautiful
animal of long-tongued kisses and earnest work to please, would be an
ideal service dog, because she was absolutely right.
I’d been the recipient of such a gift that sharing her, giving
service with her, seemed the right thing to do.
Most dog
owners’ faces soften with pleasure—with love—when they’re asked
about their animals. They
think their dogs are unique in temperament, intelligence, perception.
So I’ll probably sound like other dog people when I claim that Hannah is
remarkably suited to being a therapy dog, but it's the truth.
For one, I’ve never heard her growl.
She approaches all creatures from insect to human with interest,
affection, and trust. As
open-hearted and consistent as Labs generally are, Hannah has one extra
trait making her an extraordinary dog for this work:
a sense of humor. She
cavorts with an eye to the audience, then stands back and absorbs their
laughter like applause, her waving tail a flag of self-satisfaction.
As Hannah starred
in ongoing advanced obedience classes with Alan, I applied to Therapy
Dogs International (TDI), an organization that certifies teams to work
in institutions like hospitals, nursing homes, special schools, and
prisons, places where we know people benefit from direct animal
involvement. First, the dog
must pass the American Kennel Club (AKC ) intermediate obedience test
and be approved by a vet, then be tested by a TDI animal evaluator on
obedience skills again as well as the ability to work around medical
equipment and to tolerate clumsy patting, restraining hugs, startling
noises, and sudden movements. (The
Delta Society has extremely similar requirements—along with a lengthy
training manual and video on which the handler is tested.
Both organizations provide insurance for the handlers of the
animals they evaluate and accept, as well as photo IDs, special collars,
and tags.)
Hannah had already earned
the AKC obedience title before we applied.
Given her innately affectionate nature, it didn’t take much
more work before she trotted through the TDI certification test, and I
thought we were ready. I
might have been a bit delusional, but that’s what I thought.
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