Gaits of Heaven

or love or admire my dogs, men meaning fellow human beings, of course. Mark Twain,” I said to Steve. “Pascal. Frederick the Great, Madame de Sévigné, and a few dozen other people. I’ve seen it attributed to all of them, probably because all of them said it. Or something to that effect. But if you want to quote me, the statement right now is that the more I see of myself, the more I prefer my dogs. Our dogs. All dogs. Any dogs. Even Dolfo was better behaved than I was! I am completely disgusted with myself.”
    That was on Sunday afternoon during our hike, which was not entirely ruined by my self-recriminations, but only because of Steve. He patiently pointed out that it was perfectly all right to stop someone from teasing a dog with food. Among other things, he said, the behavior was dangerous: Dolfo could have bitten Wyeth. Steve also said that it was probably high time that someone spoke bluntly to Ted. My only big mistake, in Steve’s view, was telling the brutal truth in front of Wyeth. I agreed.
    “You were trying to protect everyone,” he said. “Dolfo, Caprice, and Wyeth. There’s nothing wrong with kindness to animals and children.”
    “Oh, my impulses were admirable. But in front of Wyeth! He is so pitiful. And at the same time, he’s so cruel. My temper just snapped.”
    “You lost it,” Steve agreed. “It happens.”
    “It doesn’t happen to you,” I said.
    “It does. Go easy on yourself. Look, Holly, it was a one-shot deal. You don’t go around making scenes all the time. It’s not like you make a habit of it. Let it go.”
    And I did, at least for the moment. Even the weather seemed determined to lift my spirits. The New England climate is notoriously changeable: it typically changes for the worse by making abrupt leaps from freezing to sweltering and back to freezing again. The temperature that afternoon was, for once, seventy degrees. As if to compensate for my uncivilized conduct and my consequent shame and guilt, the dogs were at their best during the hike through the wilds of Dogtown, a large wooded area in Gloucester that Steve and I both liked. Kimi refrained from growling at India, and not once did she crowd Lady or loom over her. Kimi, Rowdy, and Sammy wore their red two-piece Wenaha packs, and Sammy managed not to detach the saddlebags that were Velcro-fastened to the yoke. When we stopped to give water to the dogs, no one tried to steal anyone else’s folding bowl. On wet stretches of the trail, Rowdy kept his head up instead of indulging his revolting appetite for mud. Lady moved with a bounce in her step that showed, we thought, unusual self-confidence. When we got back to the van and were loading in all the dogs, India, whose dignity usually prevented her from begging for treats, paused for a moment to nuzzle my pocket, and I had the pleasure of slipping her a piece of cheddar. We arrived home to find a note from Leah and Caprice to say that they’d gone to a concert at a nearby church and were going to hang out with friends afterward. Our house and our evening were ours.
    Sunday’s hike and the evening with Steve restored my equilibrium. Monday morning started off well. After finishing my usual chores, I took a shower and, contrary to the instructions on the CD that Eumie had given me, listened to the guided imagery while I shampooed my hair and bathed. Just as promised, I ended up feeling strong and relaxed. Better yet, I felt hopeful that showing my dogs could become fun again. That afternoon, I decided, Rowdy and I would go to a park to work on rally obedience. When we got to the park, I’d keep taking deep, smooth breaths in and out, and Rowdy and I would play. The happy thought came to me that the cure for my ring nerves wasn’t so much guided imagery as it was Rowdy, whose performance of the required exercises in obedience had always been maddeningly unpredictable, but who, I now realized, had reliably enjoyed every second in the ring and who was more than willing to allow his joy to replace my fun-killing pride and competitiveness.
    Writers are dreadful opportunists, and malamute-owning writers are the worst. Having experienced renewed optimism about my ring nerves for all of twenty minutes, I sat at the kitchen table with my notebook computer and rapidly drafted a column about the cure that I felt certain was going to work. The first half of the column, I must point out, was about methods that had failed or had made me more anxious than ever. For