Gaits of Heaven

expression would inform me that if I insisted on throwing my toys on the ground, I shouldn’t expect him to pick up after me. Sammy, however, flew after balls and brought them back with the enthusiasm of a golden retriever. Rowdy worked for treats; his attitude was that if it wasn’t edible, it wasn’t really reinforcement, was it? When I told Rowdy and Kimi what good dogs they were, they might as well have come out and said, Oh, is that what you think? How nice for you. Now where’s the liver? Sammy simply ate up Good boy. So, which breed was Ted? What motivated him? And what kind of reinforcement did he want?
    I went to the computer and read up on Ted’s book and on his theories about trauma. As I’d heard, he had a broad definition of trauma, and in his view, trauma led to addiction, by which he meant almost any kind of dependency. Trauma required healing, and addiction required recovery, mainly by means of twelve-step programs. In evaluating what Ted had to say, I searched for examples in my own life. Naturally, I started out and ended up thinking about dogs: alpha and omega. The death of every dog I’d ever owned had, in Ted’s view, been traumatic. My losses had certainly felt traumatic. How had I responded to each such “ordinary trauma,” as Ted phrased it? By getting another dog. Was I hooked on dog love? Oh, yes. Indeed, my interpretation of the Serenity Prayer was a measure of the strength of my addiction: the serenity to accept behaviors I couldn’t change, the courage to change those I could, and the wisdom to know the difference was just what every dog trainer needed.
    So, having prepared myself, I called Ted Green. “I want to apologize for losing my temper,” I said. “And I feel terrible about saying what I did in front of Wyeth. If you still want my help with Dolfo, I’d like to give it another try.“
    “Something was going on with you,” Ted said gently. “Your reaction felt overdetermined. Out of proportion to the situation, so to speak.”
    “Yes,” I agreed.
    “So, what’s with you?”
    “I guess you don’t know. I, uh, I had a head injury a couple of years ago... a little less than that.” I was using the truth to tell a lie, so to speak. Losing my temper had nothing to do with head trauma. “And just afterward, I had a major emotional shock.” True. To my horror, Steve had married Anita Fairley, whose name I certainly wasn’t going to mention to Ted, who was, as I’d just learned, her therapist. “Anyway, as I was mulling over the way I overreacted at your house, I was thinking about grounding. And containment. In other words, grounding myself in present realities and containing my reactions to triggers. Setting boundaries. And I knew I’d let myself get sucked into the past. And so on. So, I had to call you.”
    “I understand,” he said.
    “I thought you would.”
    Ted said that he had a cancellation at five o’clock, and we agreed that I’d visit then.
    In my defense, I have to point out that my mendacity and, worse, my trivialization of life-shattering trauma was in a good cause, namely, Dolfo. What’s more, sustaining a whopping whack on the head and then finding out about Steve and Anita hadn’t exactly been fun, and in struggling to recover, I honestly had found it useful to ground myself in the here and now and so on. That is, beneath my palaver about true events, there actually lay some truth.
     

CHAPTER 30
     
    At quarter of five, equipped with baby gates, leashes, and treats, I was ready to set off for Ted Green’s when Caprice decided to accompany me. “I left my winter clothes,” she said. “They’re in a cedar closet. I forgot about them when Leah and I were there. I want all my possessions out of that house, and I don’t want to have to go back alone. But if I’ll be in the way, I can go another time.”
    “No, it’s fine.”
    As I was backing out of the driveway, I was again delayed, this time by Kevin Dennehy, who greeted us and made what sounded like an offhand inquiry about where we were going.
    “To Ted Green’s,” I said. “I’m having another go at helping with the dog, and Caprice is picking up the last of her belongings. We’ll be—”
    “Hey, Caprice,” he said. “I gotta have a word with Holly. Personal matter.”
    Kevin opened the driver’s side door of my car, and we walked back toward the house.
    "Personal matter?” I asked.
    “Personal safety,” he said. “I didn’t know you were still going over