Gaits of Heaven

I feel compelled to defend myself against the potential psychiatric insinuation that I was suffering from delusions of omnipotence. I intended to become a Higher Power only with respect to Cants familiaris: I never imagined that I had created the world or had the power to change it except in one limited sphere, which was, is, and ever shall be the behavior of dogs. Even so, such chutzpah! The word was a favorite of Ted Green’s. In his devotion to Yiddish expressions, he pronounced the ch with a deep gurgling in his throat. Shikse that I am, I settle for a WASP’s h. Still, no matter what your ethnic origin, you’d readily admit that when it comes to dogs, I have a lot of nerve. Chutzpah', nerve, gall, moxie, as opposed to the ancient Greek hubris, pronounced “Hugh Briss,” as if it were a normal first name followed by the term for a Jewish circumcision ritual. Anyway, chutzpah can be bad or good, whereas in ancient Greece, hubris referred to considering yourself on a par with the gods, an act of arrogance that invariably led to divine retribution. In this story, fairly or unfairly, the person who suffered the ultimate fatal fate was not she who set herself up as God’s gift to horrible-acting dogs. Rather, it was Eumie Brainard-Green.
    To begin: I first met Ted, Eumie, and Dolfo at 6:15 on the evening of Thursday, May 26, in front of the Cambridge Armory, where the Cambridge Dog Training Club holds its classes. The armory is a low, unprepossessing brick building on Concord Avenue near the Fresh Pond rotary and the LaundroMutt self-service dog wash. The club’s classes take place in the big hall that occupies most of the armory’s interior, a space big enough for the club to run three classes simultaneously and blessedly free of those damned supporting columns that handlers are always smashing into when they’re zeroing in on their dogs rather than on the risk of bruises and concussions. From my viewpoint, another advantage of the armory is its proximity to my house, which is the barn-red one at 256 Concord Avenue, on the corner of Appleton Street. My husband and I, together with two of our five dogs, were making our way along the sidewalk by the little fenced playground that abuts the armory grounds, and both dogs, Rowdy and Sammy, father and son, the two most breathtakingly beautiful male Alaskan malamutes ever to set big white snowshoe paw on the lucky planet Earth... Sorry. I seem to have drifted Arcticward.
    Anyway, as Steve, Rowdy, Sammy, and I approached the armory, I got my first glimpse of Ted, Eumie, and Dolfo, and without even knowing who they were, I knew they were rank beginners, and I knew they were trouble. The club’s current beginners’ class had started on the first Thursday in May, and this trio wasn’t enrolled. Ted Green, whose name I didn’t yet know, was a tall, slim man dressed in crisply creased dark-navy jeans, a cotton pullover in the shade of periwinkle that L.L.Bean considers unsuitable for men and offers only in women’s sizes, and leather loafers rather than Cambridge-ubiquitous Birkenstock sandals or the sensible dog-training footwear that most of us wear, namely, running shoes that give good traction. His black hair was so short that if it hadn’t been for the presence of the woman and the dog, I might have overlooked his age—midfifties, at a guess—and assumed that he was at the armory for a National Guard or army recruiting event rather than for dog training. The woman, in contrast, had lots of hair that had been skillfully tinted in shades of light brown and blond. The effect of the colorist’s art was expensively naturalistic or even hypernatural; art imitated nature with no intention of fooling anyone. She wore unflatteringly cropped khaki pants, a blouse in a sickly shade of yellow-green, and dainty leather sandals that revealed pedicured feet with bright pink toenails.
    I soon had the opportunity to observe details such as the woman’s nail polish, as well as the man’s receding chin and the reflection of the yellow-green blouse on the woman’s face, because having sized up the situation, I handed Rowdy’s leash to my husband, Steve, and dashed ahead to offer my help. The armory, I should explain, has a front lawn with a concrete walk that leads to the doors. The fencing on either side of the walk turns it into a sort of chute, capering about in which was one of the most peculiar-looking animals I had ever seen. His size was ordinary: I guessed his