Rachel Alexander 05 - The Wrong Dog

the time just thinking about it.”
    “Did you get her from one of the schools that provide service dogs for people with disabilities?”
    “No, that’s the interesting thing. I’d never heard of seizure-alert dogs. Besides, the schools usually can provide only seizure-response dogs. I mean, that was the whole point of the cloning, wasn’t it? To reproduce an ability that can’t be taught, that’s inborn. But I just wanted a pet. I was lonely. When I wasn’t at work, I was staying in more than most people because when I went out, there was always the danger of a seizure, anywhere, at any time, with no notice at all. I thought that if I had a pet dog, I’d feel safer and better just having her with me, or knowing she was waiting for me at home.”
    “But what about at work? Weren’t you in danger of having seizures there?” I was wondering how she held a job, especially a teaching job.
    “Yes, but the amazing thing is, it’s happened only once. And that time, it wasn’t in front of my class. I think it’s because I’m so happy teaching. I love the kids and I love the work. I feel so useful and appreciated. Of course, that’s hardly scientific.”
    “But it’s your experience.”
    “It is.”
    “Go back to the puppy.”
    “Oh, I couldn’t get a puppy. I was gone too much of the day. I got in touch with a bull terrier rescue organization, because I knew I wanted a bully, I always had, ever since I can remember. And three months later, I got Blanche. She was two years old when I adopted her.”
    “Did she alert right away?”
    “No. Well, yes, but I wasn’t aware that anything unusual was happening. I didn’t get what she was doing. It wasn’t until the third time that I understood. That’s when I realized that having Blanche was going to change my life entirely.”
    She put her fingers to her lips, as if she was thinking about what to say next.
    “I didn’t realize quite how depressed I’d been, not until it was nearly over. Once I understood what she was doing and that it would give me the freedom to come and go almost like an ordinary person, I let myself see how limited my life had been before Blanche.”
    Sophie’s face had changed as she talked about Blanche. She’d even brushed her bangs away and was holding her head up higher. I heard the tape recorder stop and asked Sophie if she’d wait a moment while I turned the tape over.
    “It’s just for me,” I told her, “so I won’t forget any detail.”
    She nodded. People will say astonishing things to virtual strangers, but some clam up if you’re recording them. Not Sophie. She was so into the story by now that I’m not sure she gave any thought to the fact that I was taping.
    “Once I knew that when a seizure was coming, Blanche would let me know and I could take a pill and often ward it off, I became so euphoric, there was no stopping me. I decided I deserved the one other thing I craved besides a dog. A garden. I thought life would be perfect if only I could plant things, and if Blanche could be out of doors whenever she wanted to, even if I wasn’t feeling so well.
    “It took me nine weeks to find the new apartment, almost as long as it took to locate Blanche. It’s just a block and a half from here.” Sophie smiled proudly. “We have a small bedroom with a weird little bathroom off it, a tiny kitchen—but big enough for us—and a living room, everything facing the garden. It’s perfect for us, exactly what we need. The garden is actually bigger than the apartment, with an ivy-covered brick wall in the back. Oh, it’s just beautiful. I knew I wanted it the moment I saw it.
    “And then the agent said no dogs.
    “But by then I’d had Blanche registered as a service dog with the Department of Health and it’s not legal to deny an apartment to someone with a disability because they use a service dog, so after a couple of tense days, they told me, yes, I could move in, the apartment was mine.”
    A smooth fox terrier was trying to get involved in Dash and Bianca’s folie à deux, but they wouldn’t give her the time of day. They were too busy digging to China, as my father used to say when my sister, Lili, and I would dig at the beach. I’d have to fill in the hole before I left, but they were having much too much fun for me to stop them then.
    “So,” I said to Sophie, “when the week passed, you walked over to Horatio and Washington and met Loma?”
    I knew that part of the Village well. It was the cusp