Gaits of Heaven

area between the benches.
    Barbara smiled at me and said, “Dolfo. Oh, my. Dolfo. Well, aesthetic considerations aside, there’s nothing inherently wrong with him. He wants desperately to be a good dog.“
    “Don’t we all,” said George. “Me, for example.”
    Looking at me, Barbara said, “The touching thing about Dolfo is that his lovely temperament has somehow survived, triumphed, really. He loves other dogs. He’s sweet and friendly with everyone. And he’s perfectly trainable.”
    “That’s my impression, too,” I said. “He doesn’t jump on me. He sits for me. Have you had him in a crate?”
    “He’s fine! Give him the least little thing to occupy him, and he’s perfectly happy in his crate. And at my house, where I watch him every second, he’s had only one accident.“
    “ Our house,” said George. “Where we watch him.”
    “There are two problems here.” I pointed to Ted’s house. “Well, more than two. But one is that it would be almost impossible to remove the odor. It’s everywhere. Wherever Dolfo sniffs, there’s a stimulus that prompts him to overmark. It isn’t as if you could completely deodorize a few areas where he’s gone before. You’d have to steam clean everything and spray the whole house with enzymes and air it all out. And the other problem is habit. Housebreaking is so easy if you can prevent the dog from ever going in the house.”
    “Habits,” said Barbara, “are the worst! But with Dolfo, the habit is established here, at Ted and Eumie’s. He doesn’t transfer it to my house as much as you’d think. So, there’s a lot of hope for Dolfo. The problem is Ted.”
    “Barbara, there’s hope for all of us,” said George.
    “Ted is very motivated,” I said.
    “So am I,” said George.
    “He really loves Dolfo.”
    George said, “Barbara, I worship you.”
    “I hate to say this,” I said, “but Ted and Eumie were basically colluding to block any effort to change Dolfo s behavior. Without Eumie, there’s a better chance of making progress than there was when she was alive.”
    Barbara nodded in agreement. “And Ted would pay whatever it took. There must be a decontamination company he could hire, the kinds of people who clean up after industrial accidents, environmental disasters, that sort of thing.”
    I said, “And a dog trainer other than me. Someone who has no connection to the family.”
    “A fresh start,” said George. “Decontamination. Barbara, I’m an environmental disaster, but I’m very motivated.“
    “Look,” I said, “could the two of you possibly talk about what you’re talking about? To each other? I’m a dog trainer. I’m out of my depth.”
    “The squirrels were driving her crazy,” George said. “Barbara, they were. You complained about them all the time. You kept running out yelling at them. You were banging on the windows. They chewed up the window frame when you put that feeder there.”
    Barbara said, “If a living creature bothers me, that doesn’t mean that I want it poisoned. It just means that I wish it would stop bothering me. Ted bothers me. Eumie bothered me. I don’t like to see a dog being ruined. But am I going to poison Ted? Did I sneak into their house and poison Eumie? Of course not!”
    “Eumie wasn’t poisoned,” George said.
    “What do you call an overdose?” Barbara demanded. Her tone was sharp, but she was addressing George. “Maybe his lawyer should be here after all,” she then said to me, “instead of back inside where she can keep an eye on Lieutenant Dennehy.”
    “Barbara, I did not murder Eumie. Squirrels are not human beings.”
    “They are living things.”
    “So are rats. Cockroaches. Fleas. Mosquitos.”
    "Squirrels,” said Barbara, “don’t transmit disease.“
    “Neither do rats.”
    “Yes, they do.”
    “Barbara, the point is that everyone draws the line somewhere. Now, I knew you wouldn’t approve, and that’s why I didn’t tell you, but I did it for you. I love the pleasure you take in feeding birds. I watch you when you’re filling the feeders and keeping your lists of the species you see in our yard, and you’re so beautiful. The squirrels were your enemies. That’s how I saw it. They were like fleas on a dog. Barbara, I know I never should’ve done it. It was stupid, stupid, stupid.”
    “It wasn’t just stupid. It was cruel.”
    “This is none of my business and totally outside my field of expertise,” I said, “so please tell me if I’m