Gaits of Heaven

example, bursting into song to make sure I kept breathing had been dandy during practice sessions, but what was I supposed to do as I stood just outside the ring? Make a spectacle of myself by loudly caroling an off-key “Happy Birthday” or “Amazing Grace”? Or sing to myself under my breath when I was too terrified to have a breath to sing under? So, the first half of the column was based on experience, and only the second half was derived largely from my imagination. After all, a draft was a draft. I’d eventually do a few reality-based revisions.
    Caprice, I might mention, had roused herself at what was for her the early hour of nine o’clock. She’d eaten a nutritious breakfast of fruit and yogurt, taken Lady for a walk, and cleaned her room before going to see her therapist. After her therapy hour, she was going to Rita’s office to help Rita with her computer. As I hope I’ve suggested, Rita was a brilliant therapist—despite never having trained a dog. Rita’s present dog, Willie, a Scottish terrier, was no one’s idea of a promising candidate for competition obedience, but Rita had refused to take him to Canine Good Citizen classes or basic pet obedience. He walked politely on leash because he’d known how when she’d adopted him. He was house-trained. I had made notable progress in teaching him to quit yapping during her absence and to stop flying at my ankles. Rita was fully satisfied with him, as she’d been with her previous dog, Groucho, an amiable dachshund who, by virtue of walking pleasantly on leash and never using the indoors for outdoor purposes, was as educated as Rita expected a dog to be. Rita always argued that she spent her professional life helping people to change and that the last thing she wanted to do when she got home was to start again with her dog. I, on the other hand, said that anyone setting up in the therapy business should be required to have spent a minimum of two preparatory years training a dog; a clinician who lacked the prerequisite was merely practicing, whereas someone who’d learned first on a dog might actually be able to do human therapy. Rita excepted. But when it came to computers, she exemplified yet another radical difference between dog trainers and shrinks: dog trainers, who are fully accustomed to exchanging clear, unambiguous messages with intelligent beings different from themselves, easily transfer their skills and attitudes toward computers, whereas a lot of shrinks get irritated at computers on the grounds that computers fail to have deep feelings, never appreciate the complex nuances of anyone’s life history, and are aggravatingly reminiscent of unsatisfactory parents. Leah had tried to convince Rita that just as dogs were companion animals, computers were companion machines, but instead of buying the argument, Rita had hired Leah to help her. Leah, who was endlessly patient with dogs, hated the job and did it only out of pity for Rita. Leah was, however, working all day, so the pressing task of transferring Rita’s files from her computer to a CD that she could bring home, and deleting the sensitive material from her computer, had fallen to Caprice. Rita had taken Kevin’s warning seriously. She’d be right there as Caprice copied and deleted, and there’d be no need to open files, so there was no concern about access to anyone’s secrets.
    So, while Caprice was presumably at Rita’s office, when I’d finished my work, I gathered together the rally obedience signs I’d printed out from the Web, selected the ones I wanted, packed some dog treats, and made a shopping list. I intended to take Rowdy to the big park behind the Fresh pond Mall and to buy food for dinner on the way home. By my malamute standards, the day was even better than the previous one—sixty degrees and overcast—so Rowdy would be safe in the car with the windows lowered and a padlock on his crate.
    Sammy was at work with Steve. Before leaving, I needed to make sure that the dogs left at home would be comfortable. I gave Kimi a turn in the fenced yard, then India and Lady. While they were still wandering around, I picked up the pooper-scooper and was engaged in what Leah calls “the unaesthetic task” when India suddenly began to growl. The German shepherd dog is, of course, supposed to be a watchdog. Fortunately, India recognized the background noise of our neighborhood as just that and never sounded pointless alarms. Indeed, her watchdog vocalizations often