A Big Little Life

discourages any dog in mid-charge but does no permanent damage. Passing Big Dog, we kept the pepper spray ready, an index finger resting on the discharge button. The rottweiler had not been tethered to anything. He was so big that he could have gotten over the balcony railing with ease and dropped seven feet tothe lawn without injury. He didn’t seem to realize with what little effort he could break free.
    Morning after morning, Trixie led us past Big Dog without giving him a single glance. She kept her head high and did not hurry to get beyond his domain. In fact, she adopted a more leisurely pace during that half block. For two months, she showed no concern, though Gerda and I were grinding our teeth until we were a block beyond Big Dog.
    One day, in July, Trixie had enough. Gerda was walking her that morning, and Big Dog flew into a great frenzy, throwing himself at the railing with reckless abandon, barking and snarling as if he would chew his way through the wooden pales. Abruptly, Ms. Trixie turned toward the enormous creature for the first time, and she started across the lawn toward the balcony.
    Alarmed, Gerda tried to pull her back, but Trixie was too strong—and too determined—to be restrained. As far as Trix was concerned, this was Waterloo, and the bully was going down as surely as Napoleon did. Approaching the balcony, she began to bark, using every decibel of her surprisingly loud voice. At first, Big Dog answered her, but when he tried to shout her into silence, she cranked up the volume to match his.
    By the time Trixie halted directly below Big Dog, barking up at him, Gerda wondered if, following the inevitable attack, she would be able to leave the hospital by Christmas. Trix gave Big Dog a thorough what-for and…after a minute, he stopped throwing himself at therailing. He grew still and quiet, and then he decided he ought to lie down and relax. When she was quite sure she had made her point with the rottweiler, Trixie fell silent, led Gerda to the sidewalk once more, and continued their morning walk.
    Big Dog never again barked at us. Every morning, he remained lying on the balcony floor, watching as Trixie strolled past with either Gerda or me. Trix had never been worried about him because she had known that he was all bluster and no bite. Having read his character clearly, she put him in his place only when he became too annoying for her to continue to ignore him.
    With her refined nose, Trixie could identify which humans and dogs were trouble—and which were not.
     
    WHEN TRIXIE SPOKE, we learned to listen.
    She sometimes went months without issuing a single sound louder than a sigh or a curious little grumble of discontent, which didn’t even qualify as a growl. You might think, therefore, that on those rare occasions when she barked, we would at once be concerned and would want to know what motivated her to speak.
    Instead, we became so accustomed to her silence, we reacted to a bark as if it were aberrant behavior that we must gently discourage lest we set her on a slippery slope from quiet companion to barking basket case. Cut us some slack: We are, after all, just human beings.
    One Saturday, Gerda and I were working in our adjacentoffices, she on bookkeeping, I on a novel with an approaching deadline. As quitting hour drew near, we agreed on pizza for dinner. Thin-crust DiGiorno pizza has been such a significant part of our lives that we may at any moment pass some biological tipping point and begin to exude the aromas of cheese and pepperoni from our pores. Gerda went to the kitchen to preheat the oven, then returned to her office to finish her data entries.
    About fifteen minutes later, having approached my desk without making a sound, Trixie let out a single tremendous bark. I shot from my chair as if it were a cannon and I were a clown.
    Gravity brought me down again. Because I feared losing the tone of a paragraph that I hoped to finish before dinner, I responded to Trixie with the command I had used only once before, “Quiet.”
    She padded away. From Gerda’s office came a window-rattling bark. I heard Gerda say, “Quiet, Miss Trixie. You scared me.”
    Returning to my work space with sneak-thief stealth, the golden one launched me from my chair again with two furious barks. She gave me a look of extreme disapproval. Her raised ears, flared nostrils, and body language indicated she had important and urgent news to convey.
    Feeling as if I were Lassie’s dad, trying to