Gaits of Heaven

she took a seat at the table, they stationed themselves on either side of her. The contrast between the young woman and dogs was heartbreaking. Caprice was still in a nightgown and robe, her eyes were puffy, her face blotched, her hair uncombed. Rowdy and Kimi had gleaming coats, and their eyes were clear and focused. Rowdy, I thought, shared my desire to rouse Caprice from her stupor: he knew better than to poke her with his big white paw, but when he settled for offering it to her, I could sense the impulse he was restraining. His slightest movements, the upward motion of his foreleg, the turning of his big head, revealed massive muscle, and the gentle warmth of his dark eyes plainly said that he was eager to share his strength, but Caprice merely took his paw as if it were a disembodied object and then quickly released it. To Kimi, whom she knew, Caprice simply said hello, but Kimi continued to train her intelligent eyes on the young woman as if waiting for a request that Caprice was unable to issue.
    When I’d told Caprice to help herself to food, I let Rowdy and Kimi out in the yard and brought Sammy into the kitchen. Sammy had a hearty appetite, but he wasn’t the horrendous food thief that Rowdy and Kimi were. Sammy, I should mention, was a vessel spilling over with joy. He curved his body around Caprice’s legs and treated her to what really was a smile. He, too, got almost no response. In prescribing for his patients, Quinn Youngman probably had the same sort of experience I was having: when he’d had three drugs fail, he, too, probably tried a fourth. I replaced Sammy with India. Perhaps what Caprice needed was exactly the sense of safety, protection, and order so notably missing at home. India, ever dignified, approached Caprice, studied her, and stood calmly about a yard away. Caprice ignored her.
    Not everyone loves dogs or even likes them. Take Dr. Vee Foote: phobic. But Caprice was not such a person. She did respond to one of our dogs, my fifth drug, the smallest of the dogs, our delicate, trembling little pointer, Lady. Anxiety is not a typical characteristic of the breed. The pointer belongs to the American Kennel Club’s Sporting Group and, as the name suggests, was originally bred to indicate the presence and location of game by pointing. In the field, pointers also retrieve and otherwise perform as all-purpose hunting dogs. Because they should be able to run tirelessly through fields and woods from daybreak to sunset, they are supposed to be strong and athletic. A top-notch pointer from field lines may vibrate with energy in the manner of a Mercedes engine, but in both bench and field lines-—show dogs and hunting dogs—it is undesirable to have a pointer, or any other breed, for that matter, quiver with apprehension in response to life itself. Viewed objectively, Lady was anything but a model of the breed. Exception: in pointers, any color is acceptable. Lady was what’s unappetizingly called “liver and white ticked,” that is, white with brown marks, including “ticks” or spots. As to her other physical features, love demands silence. Fortunately, Steve and I viewed her subjectively, and from our angle, she was a sweetheart. Do dogs feel gratitude? Lady had been left at Steve’s clinic for euthanasia. She always acted as if she knew he had saved her life.
    So, there was Caprice, weighing perhaps two hundred pounds, bleary-eyed and sluggish, newly bereft of her mother, and there was Lady, thin despite good nutrition, shaking like Jell-O, each needy, each hurt. Holding an English muffin in her right hand, Caprice allowed the left to dangle, and Lady took advantage of the unattended hand by placing her head under it and moving slowly forward so that the hand’s owner, Caprice, involuntarily stroked the dog from crown to tail. To my astonishment, Caprice, observing this maneuver, burst into bubbly laughter.
    “We call Lady ‘the self-patting dog,’ ” I said.
    “She is so sweet!”
    “She is the perfect pet. She really is.”
    So, I got the medication right on the fifth try. Still, if I’d been offering one dog after the other as a sort of woofy projective test, a canine Rorschach, I’d have preferred a strong response to one of the big, strong, self-confident dogs. But any positive response was far better than none. There was hope for Caprice after all.
    If I’d been designing a behavioral intervention for Caprice, she’d have spent the rest of the day with Lady. In