Gaits of Heaven

run a long obituary for his wife, but there hadn’t been one before, and there was none in today’s paper. After lunch, I would’ve walked both dogs, but it was still raining. Walking Rowdy in wet weather is quick and easy because he considers water to be a threat to his survival: he takes two steps out the door, relieves himself, turns around, and comes back in. Instead of arguing with him, I left him in the dry house and walked Kimi. When we returned, I decided to listen to the CD that Eumie had sent. Imagery was nothing new in obedience handling. I owned a couple of old tapes and had been to a workshop about envisioning yourself standing tall with your dog in perfect heel position at your side. With my last golden retriever, the imagery had been simple to use: Vinnie was such an outstanding obedience dog that with her glued to my left side, I couldn’t help standing tall and proud. Then I got Rowdy, who was my first malamute. Let’s settle for saying that he introduced a major discrepancy between my mental picture of ideal performance and malamute actuality: it just isn’t useful to see pictures in your head of Velcro heeling if your dog is zooming over the baby gates and out of the ring, is it? It’s worse than useless. And worse than demoralizing. It’s clinically delusional. So, I quit imagining things and learned to train dogs who weren’t golden retrievers.
    The new CD was nothing like the old tapes, which were all about maximizing potential and achieving the perfect performance. When I’d listened to the introductory section of Eumie’s gift, I decided that it would be safe for me to continue. For one thing, the woman on the CD didn’t speak in the voice of my late mother, which is to say, in the internal voice that was principally responsible for my ring nerves, the maternal whisper in my ear that corrected me for handler errors before I’d even had a chance to make them. In her day and, especially, from her perspective, dog training was mainly about catching the dog doing something wrong and making an unambiguous correction. When I was first training Rowdy with food, an instructor pointed out to me that I was hunching my shoulders and bending over him when I slipped bits of meat and cheese into his mouth, and I immediately knew that I was making a futile effort to block my mother’s view. In contrast, the woman on the CD didn’t seem to care whether I won or lost, or even whether I played the game well or badly. As I heard her, she wanted me to treat myself as I treated my dogs: with patience and kindness, and, incredibly, with the goal of having fun. My mother, I might remark, took a dim view of fun. I quote: “ Fun ? Anyone can have fun!"
    So, following the instructions, I chose a quiet, comfortable place, namely, our bed, and stretched out on my back and listened. Because the imagery exercises weren’t specifically about showing dogs, the woman neglected to instruct me to have Rowdy and Kimi next to me, but I knew she’d approve. We, that is, Rowdy, Kimi, the woman, and I, began by taking deep breaths and then progressed to relaxing our bodies from head to toe. After that, we imagined ourselves in a secure, beloved place. We addressed our anxiety by breathing into it and breathing it out. And so it went. In saying that we did these exercises, I don’t mean to suggest that Rowdy and Kimi had anything remotely like ring nerves or that they complied with the woman’s suggestions. In fact, their true contribution was to share with me their calm, steady breathing, their loving presence, and their relaxed self-confidence. When she called us back to the real world, I felt hopeful about showing my dogs. And I shed a few tears for Eumie, who had wanted to help.
    “Things can be corny and therapeutic at the same time, guys,” I told the dogs. “I’m in no position to sneer. I feel better now. That’s all that matters.”
    When we got back downstairs, not just one but two squirrels were gorging themselves at one of Steve’s feeders, and not the black squirrels that I persisted in seeing as exotic and charming, but plain gray ones. Damn it! Steve deserved ivory-billed woodpeckers! Or failing that, Baltimore orioles. If there were any in Cambridge? If they visited feeders? Or cardinals, robins, nuthatches, downy woodpeckers, chickadees, anything but these thieving rodents. I rapped on the window. And was ignored. Out of love for Steve, I went to my computer, did a search, and printed out