Gaits of Heaven

again and were even worse, which is to say better, that time than we’d been the first, and at the finish sign, I held out my arm and had Rowdy rise up in all his wolf-gray-and-white magnificence, his massive paws on my forearm, his face in my face, and I said, “Thank you, Rowdy. I love you with all my heart.”
    Fundamental principle of dog training: end on a note of success. If we kept practicing, we might wreck my recovery by getting good at the new sport. If that happened, we’d be forced to take up a canine activity so unsuitable for malamutes that we’d be kicked out and probably banned for life. Herding came to mind. Confronted with a flock, Rowdy would reduce the sheep to racks of lamb. At least he wouldn’t do it in any sort of sneaky, duplicitous fashion. He didn’t have secrets, and he didn’t ferret out other people’s. If he caught a whiff of a puzzling scent, he acted openly and directly by sticking his nose in its source. I felt overwhelming gratitude to him for restoring me to myself.
    Forty-five minutes later, after shopping for food, I returned home to find a note from Caprice, who was taking Lady for a walk. I was just putting a pound of sliced roast beef, my thank-you gift to all five dogs, in the refrigerator when the phone rang. The caller was Gabrielle, my stepmother, who wanted to talk about Anita.
    “She was here today,” I said. “I didn’t invite her in. We talked in the driveway. She’s still on that kick about undoing wrongs.”
    “Well, she called me.” Whenever Gabrielle began a conversation by saying Well, ... in that particular tone of voice, she made me feel that she was about to confide an observation or insight that would give us both great satisfaction. “We were right," she continued. “Anita has become involved in the recovery movement. She’s been to a place called CHIRP. It sounds like an Audubon sanctuary, doesn’t it? But it’s some kind of spa or luxury mental hospital. Or both. So, someone did put her up to making amends.”
    “There was a hollow ring to it. What she said to me sounded rehearsed. Or maybe memorized. But CHIRP isn’t a mental hospital. It’s... as I understand it, it’s more like a retreat. Or sometimes a detox place. And maybe a spa, too. Healing and recovery.”
    “She’s been in therapy,” Gabrielle announced.
    “Are you sure?”
    “With someone named Ted Green. I want you to ask Rita about him.”
    I sighed and poured out everything. When I’d finished, Gabrielle said, “He sounds worse than anyone deserves.“
    “No. Rita says that a lot of people find him helpful. And I honestly can imagine that he would be very sympathetic. Not that Anita deserves sympathy, if you ask me.”
    “She is a terribly unhappy person,” Gabrielle said.
    “She is a sadistic crook.”
    “If she’s trying to change, she deserves to be encouraged.“
    “When she starts writing you checks, maybe I’ll be convinced,” I said.
    Oddly enough, the call left me feeling unusually mellow, possibly because I’d had the chance to vent my spleen at and about Anita in a single day. I was, however, aware of somehow having contracted a case of contagious sympathy for her. Gabrielle, who always thought of every friend or acquaintance as the equivalent of a family member, persisted in speaking as if Anita were a difficult relative. In a way, Anita was a member of my network, if not of my family, and it suddenly occurred to me that when she spoke about making amends, she just might be serious and genuine.
    But I had my own amends to make. I owed an apology to Ted and Wyeth, and in storming out, I’d deprived Dolfo of help. The approach I’d taken with Ted and Eumie, and then with Ted alone, had done nothing for the poor dog. My major error, as I saw it, had been to impose my viewpoint on the Brainard-Greens instead of discovering theirs and working from within it; I’d accepted their desire to use positive methods, but I’d failed to adapt my positive methods to their framework. From every dog I’d ever trained, indeed, from every dog I’d ever watched, I’d learned the importance of tailoring training to fit the individual animal. Even so simple a matter as what constituted positive reinforcement differed from breed to breed and from individual to individual. For the typical Border collie, the glorious opportunity to retrieve a tennis ball was wildly reinforcing. In contrast, if I tossed a tennis ball for Rowdy, his superior and scornful