Gaits of Heaven

will be wrecked if you try to shampoo it yourself and thus requires professional cleaning, with an extra charge for the removal of pet stains. Sammy, of course, found himself in a situation somewhat different from that one. Once he’d realized that he was on the verge of bringing up what he’d wolfed down, he’d eyed our guest room and said to himself, This won’t do at all! Nothing here but a cheap area rug that can go through the washing machine! So, he’d shoved his muzzle and the cookie bag out into the hallway, where he’d spied our newly refinished hardwood floor, which was perfect for his purposes, since it couldn’t be scrubbed with hot water and assuredly couldn’t be bleached.
    I made Caprice do her share of the work, and a disgusting share it was, I’m sure. When we’d finished, she washed her hands and face, put on a second and even larger T-shirt over the first, and joined Steve and me in the kitchen. To my relief, Sammy was his perky self again. Steve had even allowed him to sip water. Steve had made fresh coffee, caffeinated for himself and decaf for me. Caprice accepted a cup of decaf, and we sat around the table.
    “Sammy is going to be fine,” Steve told her. “All he did was overeat. But the consequences could’ve been serious.” He patiently described chocolate toxicity, gastric dilatation and volvulus syndrome, and the hazards of ingesting foreign objects. For him, he was remarkably succinct. “And if there’d been medication in the same place as the food... I don’t have to tell you about that.”
    “There wasn’t,” Caprice said.
    “From now on,” Steve said, “prescription medications belong strictly out of the reach of dogs. Not in your purse or your backpack that you leave lying around. Food belongs in the kitchen.”
    “I understand,” she said.
    “You understood before. This time, from now on, you follow the rules. Part of my job is dealing with the results of carelessness. And that’s what we don’t want here. No matter how careful you are, dogs are going to get into things. All we’re trying to do is minimize the chances of those episodes. Now, about the food. You might’ve noticed that in this house, we eat nutritious food. And that’s what we feed our animals. Treats are treats. And most of them are nutritious, too. You’ve seen the book that Holly and I wrote. No More Fat Dogs. The reason we wrote it is that most dogs in this country are fat. They’re overfed and underexercised. Now, if you want to eat junk and overeat junk, that’s your business, but I don’t want it happening here.”
    To my amazement, Caprice hadn’t burst into tears when Steve had mentioned overeating. When he’d said the word fat, I’d felt blood rush to my face. Caprice hadn’t reddened. She’d just kept watching Steve’s kind face.
    He continued. “Prescription drugs. If you’ve got medication prescribed for you, take it the way you were told to take it. You got anything else? Anything prescribed for Ted? Or your mother?”
    “Yes,” she said. “Over there, at Ted’s, that was the house rule. Share your meds. But all I have is Ambien and Sonata. And some Valium. And a little... I think it’s Xanax.“
    “Anything prescribed for you?”
    Caprice looked almost shocked at the notion of taking pills that weren’t meant for someone else. “No. Nothing. My therapist is a psychologist. Missy Zinn. She doesn’t prescribe.” After a little pause she added, as if Missy were guilty of an oversight, “And she hasn’t sent me to anyone.”
    I finally spoke. “Does Missy Zinn know about the pills you’re taking?”
    Caprice lowered her eyes and shook her head. “I didn’t want her to be angry with my mother. It was just something we always did. Shared.” I saw no sign that Caprice made any connection between the just something we did and her mother’s death. “With Dr. Zinn, I did a little work on my feeling needy. The divorce. The divorce was hard. Everyone was angry at everyone else. And hurt. Monty blamed Ted, and Johanna hated my mother.”
    Here, I cannot resist drawing attention to the verb to work as used by therapists and their clients. Work , as I understand it, means putting out a lot of effort and then having something to show for it: a ditch that’s been dug, a book that’s been written, a class of first-graders who’ve learned to read, a cat who’s been cured of a urinary tract infection, or a dog who’s learned to heel so accurately and