Dancing Dogs (17 page)

Often the mice came upstairs. If Lucky waited quietly in
the morning, after Pete and Sally left, he could hear their clicking and scratching in the floorboards on the far side of the kitchen.

When that happened, he was ready. He put his head low to the ground, and remained still.

Today, he watched the floorboards, and in a few minutes, he saw a tiny nose protrude through a small hole and sniff around. He understood mice well, even if the cat didn’t. They never seemed to notice him if he remained still.

The mouse crept farther out, and then darted toward the area of the kitchen where the food was stored and where there were often crumbs. Lucky waited for him to get halfway across, and then charged. The mouse froze, then panicked, turning back and racing out through its hole. Lucky sniffed and barked and puffed himself up. More good work; well done.

Now, it was Listening Time. He returned to the crate.

Lucky raised his ears and closed his eyes. He lifted his nose to check for additional smells, some from the yard or farther, beyond the house. He heard mice moving in the basement—four of them, a family, skittering from one end of the dark space to the other, searching for food. He left them alone. He heard bees in a hive, in the eaves of the roof, and birds chirping in a nest in the big maple in the backyard.

He heard, then smelled, a dog walking with a human in front of the house. He ran to the front door and barked. The dog moved away. More good work.

He saw Sasha flit down into the basement and he heard the family of mice skitter through the spaces in the floor, hurrying to get outside the house.

He heard a snake slithering in the backyard, burrowing into the ground. The snake paused, then lunged at something
and caught it. Lucky did not know what it was. He barked, and there was silence. He heard a mole digging near the garden.

He heard pigeons and songbirds talking to one another, flying overhead, landing in trees, building nests, feeding their young. He listened to their stories—of wind, flight, worms and other food, hawks and greedy crows.

From far off, he heard a dog, sending out a signal, barking insistently. Lucky was aware of every other dog in the area, and they were aware of him. He knew their barks and yips and whines and smells. The dogs of the neighborhood shared images, stories, and histories with one another. Pete and Sally and most other people would not have believed the things that Lucky knew and they didn’t. Trapped in their own limited consciousness, people couldn’t picture time spent in any way but theirs, nor imagine any language but their own. Yet Lucky talked to other dogs all the time, in his and their own way.

Lucky padded over to the sofa, put his paws up to the windowsill, and howled briefly. Instantly he heard a bark, got a story back, his head flooded with images. A retriever down the road had mated with a cocker spaniel from another neighborhood. It had been an accident—the retriever had gotten out and been drawn to a particular smell, and he found the spaniel in her backyard and hopped the fence. The humans were beside themselves.

Lucky relayed his driving off of the squirrel, and Sasha’s cowardice in the face of mice.

The new rescue dog in the split-level at the end of the block reported confusion and astonishment over the behavior of the people who lived in the house. They gave him food, treats, toys, and invited him into bed. He didn’t know how to
respond. Lucky’s advice was to look the humans in the eye, to act very excited when they came home, and to look mournful when they left.

People were busy, he said, and they gave many different commands in many different words. Something that upset them one day did not upset them another. It was the dog’s job to be consistent, even when the people were not.

A Lab some distance away cautioned that while there was love between humans and dogs, there was also a kind of war. Everything that dogs loved to do—mating, fighting, eating dead things, rolling in dirt, foraging, marking their territory, digging in gardens—was forbidden by humans. The humans believed they were taking care of the dogs, but the dogs never quite grasped why they couldn’t do the things that came naturally to them.

It was a trade-off, Lucky cautioned. You got food and shelter and attention, but you gave up much of your natural life as a dog. Most of time, it was a good deal. He counseled the new dog to accept this, not fight it.

Lucky added that it was important to train people, to condition them to offer treats. He was proud of his own ability, and had already passed the secret on to many dogs who appreciated it. “The Look” took weeks, even months, to perfect. It was a particular juxtaposition of the head and eyes that provoked a strong response in people—one in which they said “awww” or kneeled to the ground or took the dog’s head in their hands and kissed his nose, or sometimes even cried. Lucky was not sure how it worked, but he knew it was a powerful trigger. Once the dog perfected it, he could pretty much do anything he wanted. And the Look often provoked the giving of food or attention.

There was a chorus of agreement. Look lovingly was the
other advice coming in. Love was important. The people seemed to need a lot of it, and they usually responded by giving something back—food, toys, walks. A basset hound said he was always anxious when the people left his house, but not in the way that they thought. He wasn’t afraid to be alone, but they seemed to be starved for the kind of love that they got only from him. What happened to them during the day?

The bichon in the building in the middle of the block reported that he had nosed open the door of the boy who lived in his apartment. The boy kicked him often, and pulled his tail, so the bichon peed on his bed. Since the boy often peed in his bed himself, the people would be confused. The bichon would do it again. He also managed to get hold of one of the strange machines the boy attached to his ears all night, and he chewed it up and left it under the bed. When this happened before, the people seemed to blame the boy somehow, not him.

This prompted a chorus of cautions. Don’t pee on the bed too often, or the people will figure it out. They were bad with smells, but good with some kinds of reasoning.

A Rottweiler-shepherd mix who lived near the park waited every day for the papers to come in through the slot in the front door, so he could tear them up to prevent them from entering the house. One of the games he played with the people in his house was the number of ways they tried to block the door—chairs, wire, boxes, odors that were meant to deter him, even an electric wire that shocked. But he understood the game, and played it well. He was able to handle the shock, chew through the wires, push aside the door, and tear the paper into bits, and he received enormous amounts of attention for this when the people came home—they
yelled at him, grabbed him, shouted at him. It was great fun and he loved the game.

A Labradoodle got into a fight in the dog run and was injured slightly—a tear in the ear. The humans were very upset and began fighting with the people who owned the other dog. Fighting among dogs seemed to anger and frighten them, a difficult thing for all of the dogs to understand. It was one of the ways they communicated with one another, sorted things out in the hierarchy.

A mutt reported triumphantly that he had managed to nip the heels of a man who invaded his front sidewalk every day wearing a red shirt, shorts, and white shoes, running past the house clearly to provoke the dog, who waited for months until a window was open, and then jumped out and pursued his prey. He got him on the leg, and the man shouted and kicked at him. Later, the people he lived with yelled and shouted at him also; and then they built a new fence, although he had no notion of why.

A border collie near Lucky told the strange story of his life, how he was brought from a farm to this small house with nothing to do, so he busied himself by digging holes under the fence and chewing through the latch to keep from going crazy. The people had put a collar on him that shocked him whenever he came near the fence. But he had plans to escape. Other dogs were familiar with the collars and fences, and one said it was sometimes possible to run through the latter. The border collie said he might run through his fence and try to find his old farm.

The dogs grumbled and gossiped with one another, sharing stories and news of their lives, of families and weather, of food and garbage, of the neighborhood and of their struggles to acclimate themselves to the intensifying
needs of humans. The old-timers told stories of difficult and violent times. The Labs told tales of meals and food, and the border collies chattered on about work they needed to do, and things they needed to explore. The mutts and rescue dogs talked of their time in the shelters and of their new lives in new places.

But they always got back to the humans, the people who shaped and controlled their lives, on whom they were so dependent. The strange ways they communicated, their impatience, the ways to reach them and get food and attention from them.

People had difficulty leaving dogs behind. Their lives away from the dogs must be empty and boring. Lucky felt bad about the people being alone all day.

Some of the dogs had different notions about this. It was tiring to be at home all day, there was so much to do: cats to monitor, birds and mice to listen for, people to chase away from the house, sirens and engine sounds to bark at, and other dogs to listen for and talk to. It was a relief at night when the people came home. Only then was it possible to sit around and sleep.

A shepherd down the street barked mournfully, and Lucky tilted his ears to listen. It sounded important. Dogs were individualistic and selfish, he knew, but the shepherd was unusual in that he spoke about other dogs, and seemed to have a larger view of their lives beyond the confines of a single house or yard. He told Lucky and the other dogs that the lives of dogs were changing. They lived their own lives, in their own places, and the old ways of the packs were dying. Dogs no longer took care of themselves, lived in dens, or hunted together. Understanding people was everything. There was great loss in this, he said.

When Lucky heard the old shepherd talk, it stirred things inside of him. It was true, some of what the old dog said. He had never run free outside, or mated, or walked without a leash. He had always lived in an environment with narrow boundaries—the house, the street, the park—but within it, he’d created his own sense of the world. He enjoyed his day, his time with Pete and Sally, and his secret life in the house.

Lucky thought his people must be mistreated during the time they were away, as they seemed so sluggish and sad to him when they returned. The dogs were all mystified that the people they lived with had all kinds of food around, closed up in boxes and cabinets, and they only ate it two or three times a day. And they eliminated in small rooms, out of sight of one another. And they only slept in certain places, and usually only at night. And they had no notion of waiting, and were rarely ever still or at peace.

Just then, a dog a mile away signaled the daily warning. The blue and white truck was coming. The dog was trying to drive it off. These signals went out all day. There were blue and white trucks, blue and red trucks, brown trucks, big noisy trucks that picked up trash and banged metal cans, trucks that howled with lights that flashed.

They all had to be made to go away. They had to keep the houses safe.

Lucky raised his head. He heard the blue and white truck turn onto the street, and then it was quiet. It came almost every day.

He heard the man with the bag get out and begin walking from house to house, bringing things to a box out front, or pushing packets of paper through slots in the front door.

Lucky barked, charged to the door, turned in circles,
made as much noise as he could. Success! The man went away. Every day Lucky accomplished this; in fact, it was his most continuous and important success. He was proud of himself that when he barked and growled, the strange man vanished. The man had never once made it into the house.

But this left Lucky tired, so he returned to his crate, and nodded off to sleep.

As the light began to fail, he realized he was hungry. The other dogs had quieted, going about their own business. He took up his position on the sofa, looking out the window and keeping watch. Sasha appeared on the other side of the room and settled onto one of the chairs.

From far away, he heard the engine of Pete and Sally’s car. He jumped off the sofa, and took up his post by the back door.

Lucky heard barks and signals from all over the neighborhood as the people began returning. There would soon be food. Treats, walks, balls, visits to parks, other dogs, other people.

He heard the car pull into the driveway, next to the garage. He heard the sound of footsteps.

“Oh, Lucky! Poor baby! Alone all day!”

H
ELEN WOULD HAVE LOVED THE ANNUAL SCHOOL FIELD TRIPS TO
the local animal shelter if she could have taken home a puppy—which she had coveted almost every conscious day of her twelve years on earth—but her parents wouldn’t allow it. It was torture to visit dogs and cats that needed homes and know that you wouldn’t be taking one with you. She’d heard every possible excuse for why they couldn’t have a dog: Her mom might have allergies; her dad wasn’t really a dog person; they were busy and away from home too much; their neighbors might object; dogs were too expensive; they dug holes in the garden; they shed fur everywhere; they chewed everything from shoes to table legs; they ate garbage; they rolled in stinky things; they barked; they slobbered; they drooled. Mostly, she thought, her parents just didn’t believe that Helen was responsible enough to take care of a dog.

They were wrong, but Helen doubted she’d ever have a chance to prove it.

Mrs. Wuraftic, her seventh-grade social-sciences teacher, urged the kids off the bus, through the parking lot, and into the shelter’s lobby, where a worker wearing a badge began talking to them about the shelter—who paid for it, where they got the animals, how the adoption process worked. Helen tried to listen but she was distracted by the barking dogs, each of whom seemed to beg to come home with her.