Born to Bark Page 9

  The next day, a few hours after Lou and Arnold had left for the airport, I came back. When I opened the door, Wolf bounded forward to sniff my hands and the small suitcase containing a few clothes and personal items. Then, in the manner of golden retrievers, he accepted me as if I had lived with him all of his life, inviting me into his home with his tail wagging.

  The home that I found myself temporarily living in had big windows and was only a short walk away from a strip of parkland that overlooked the water. I grabbed a ball from Wolf’s box of toys and we went out for a bit of a walk and some play. I knew that I should be at work, since this was a Friday and there was no excuse not to be doing my research and writing. I could have easily left Wolf for a few hours, and it would have been sensible to do so since my lab was only about five minutes away. On the other hand, this was also only the second day after my reprieve. I had phoned the lab and confirmed that only routine testing had been scheduled for the day, which I knew that my laboratory assistant, Wayne, could handle. After all, the reason that I was here sharing this great house with this sweet dog was to provide me with a few days of meditation or therapy. At the very least I was here to establish the fact that I was no longer bound to a lifestyle where my main concern was a clock quickly ticking away the short time that I had to live. Since I now had time on my side, I just relaxed and tried to get to know Wolf a little better.

  Around seven or eight years of age, Wolf still had a lot of energy and, being a typical retriever, he loved to chase a ball. I found myself thinking about what Roger Caras, the author and former head of the ASPCA, wrote in one of his books, “Try throwing a ball just once for a dog. It would be like eating only one peanut or potato chip. Try to ignore the importuning of a golden retriever who has brought you his tennis ball, the greatest treasure he possesses.”

  Watching Wolf charge across the grass to catch a ball that I had thrown was a joy. He was not sleek and elegant because he was so large, and rather than bounding around, he sort of galumphed, his ears flapping like the wings of a bird. Looking at him happily retrieving his toy somehow made the sunshine a bit warmer and the day a bit brighter. It was only when the ball became too dirty and soggy to be pleasant to handle that we went back to the house.

  After a light lunch I took a mug of coffee and wandered into the front room and settled onto a large wooden rocking chair while Wolf lay down on a woolen rug at my feet. It brought back memories of the times that I used to sit in my room and talk to my boxer Penny when I was still in college.

  “Well, Wolf, I have a problem that perhaps you can shed some light on,” I began.

  I knew what voice Wolf would answer in since it had come to me as I watched his heavy movements and his way of sometimes running past the ball he wanted to fetch in his enthusiasm. He reminded me of a character named Deputy Dawg in a televised cartoon show that my youngest brother Arthur used to watch in the early 1960s.

  Deputy Dawg was an overweight yellow dog with floppy ears much like Wolf. He was a deputy sheriff with a grandfatherly voice who lived in a fanciful version of the backwoods of southern Mississippi, where bayous abound, and phrases like “dag nabit” and “gosh darn” are commonplace. More concerned with napping than catching bad guys, he was not very bright, but he often got the better of his adversaries due to dumb luck or some far-fetched plan that somehow succeeded, though never the way that Deputy Dawg had anticipated.

  When Deputy Dawg’s voice answered me with, “Well, dag nabit, don’t beat around the bush. Just tell me what your problem is,” I laughed. I had gotten out of the habit of having these conversations with dogs in the years since Penny and I had parted. Nonetheless, though it was silly, it was also comforting. Out of a long forgotten habit, I quickly glanced around to make sure that no one was watching.

  “You know, everything just changed so much when I got the diagnosis—my death sentence. I ended my marriage, and I threw myself totally into my work to the exclusion of everything else.”

  “That’s not true,” said the Deputy Dawg voice. “Your marriage ended a long time ago and you just let it drag on—maybe for the kids or maybe because it was just easier not to take any action. And about your work—you know that your research and your writing are addictions. You need to do it. You live for it. But, gosh darn it, you’ve also used your work as a hiding place—when things got tough at home or in any of your relationships you hid in your work. Your work was always something that you had under complete control so you could be safe there.”

  This oration was a lot longer than any I remembered coming from any other of my dogs’ mouths. Still, it did appear to be a clear summary of the facts. Now that they were lying out in the open, my situation seemed to be quite clear. Wolf was still resting on the rug but had his eyes open just a slit, allowing him to look at me. Apparently, he enjoyed the attention or at least the sound of my voice. As Deputy Dawg he had just put into words a set of truths that I had refused to acknowledge and had ignored or repressed for too long. Nonetheless, I said to the dog, “Really? Aren’t you being a bit harsh in your evaluation of my situation?”

  “Dang it! If you wanted some kind of sympathetic Sigmund Freud, you should have given me a German accent! What I said was true and you know it. Think about it.”

  Suddenly tired, I didn’t want to continue talking, so I moved over to sit on the sofa and a short time later fell asleep. After an hour or so, I awakened to find that Wolf had climbed up beside me and was resting his heavy head on my lap. I shook myself awake and wandered out onto the sunlit rear deck of the house and sat down. Wolf followed and sat looking at me.

  I looked at him and said professorially, “Did you know that the first dog in Sigmund Freud’s life was named Wolf?”

  I asked him, professorially, “Did you know that the first dog in Sigmund Freud’s life was named Wolf? He wasn’t a golden retriever, but a German shepherd. Freud got Wolf as a companion for his daughter Anna, who was still living at home. Anna liked to take walks, especially in the evening, but the streets of Vienna were not considered safe for a woman walking by herself—especially a Jewish woman during that anti-Semitic era. Freud felt that Wolf’s size and his wariness of strangers would help to keep her safe.”

  The Deputy Dawg voice answered, “Dang! I could have been Sigmund Freud’s dog! So now that you’ve had your beauty sleep, have you decided anything?”

  “Well, I will try to make sure that Mossy gives me more access to the kids. I’ve been missing Rebecca and Benn a lot. I’ll see my lawyer next week and find out what can be done.”

  “Yeah, but that don’t solve nothin’. You would be better off living with someone. How about Clare?”

  “No, that’s over.”

  “Okay, then, I’ll give you some advice. Think of it as great wisdom coming from the reincarnation of Dr. Freud’s dog. Don’t get personally involved with another psychologist and certainly not one who you are doing research with. You always get the research and the personal relationship knotted together and when choices have to be made, you always choose the research and get hurt when the relationship goes down the drain.” Wolf rolled over and seemed to be asking for a belly rub. I scratched at his underside and the Deputy Dawg voice continued.

  “Find yourself a nurse, or maybe an elementary school teacher. These are professional, intelligent women who have a caring attitude. They would understand what you are talking about whenever you decide to talk about your work, while they would still have the inclination to try to be supportive when you act like a big child—the way that university professors always do. Keep whoever you find out of your research life. Your research and writing will never stop being your passion, but you need to have passions outside of your career.”

  I asked the big shaggy dog, “You want me to pick my life mate based on her profession? I think that all of this therapy is melting my mind. How about some supper?”

  The 6 or 7 days that I spent with Wolf were quiet and relaxing. I taught my classes and did some laboratory wor
k, but I kept my hours closer to a 9 to 5 normal workday, rather than the usual 12 to 14 hours I had been working. I would dash back to the house to let Wolf out at noon and play with him a bit. Nobody noticed, or at least nobody commented that I was not working as many hours. Yet the research and writing were still getting finished on time.

  In the evenings Wolf and I would spend an hour or more talking. That Deputy Dawg accent was becoming so easy and natural that, at one point, when I spilled a cup of coffee in the psychology lounge I was surprised to hear myself saying, “Dang, what a cotton pickin’ mess I’ve made!” My professional colleagues who were sitting with me laughed, thinking that I was trying to be funny.

  During one of my conversations with Wolf, I made another major decision. We had been discussing the first steps that I had to take to get my life back on track.

  “Well,” the Deputy Dawg voice said, “one thing that you’ve got to do is to get yourself a dog. You need a dog to keep you sane, and I don’t make no gosh-darn house calls.”

  “I can’t, there is a ‘no pets’ policy in my apartment building.”

  “Then buy a house.”

  “They are way too expensive here in the city.”

  “Dag nabit, then be creative. You’ve got some money left over from paying off Mossy and settling up your debts when you sold the other house. You can teach summer and evening courses in addition to your regular teaching and salt all of that money away. You can also do some consulting work, some more writing … I figure that if you do all that, then in less than two years you could have enough to put a down payment on a small house—and a small dog.”

  The moment the words were out in the air I knew that this was the course of action that I needed to take.

  Wolf and I worked out other small decisions over those days we were together. In the end I felt as though I knew where I was going and what I would be doing. It was as though I had undergone an extensive round of psychotherapy and had achieved the insight, comfort, and guidance that clinical psychologist strive to bring to their patients.

  In a way, I had blundered inadvertently into what today is known as pet-assisted therapy. In North America the number of pet-assisted therapy programs was under twenty in 1980, but by the year 2000 more than one thousand such programs were in operation. We probably owe the origin of using dogs as part of psychotherapy to Sigmund Freud (funny how often that name comes up when a psychologist is writing or talking), who often had one of his dogs with him during therapy sessions. He first noticed that the presence of the dog seemed to be beneficial for patients who were children or adolescents. They seemed more willing to talk openly when the dog was in the room.

  Later, Freud noticed that having the dog in the room also had a positive effect even if the patient was an adult. He thought that this might be due to the fact that patients often worry about whether what they are saying might seem unacceptable to a listener—even a psychologist. However, nothing the patient ever says will shock the therapist’s furry companion, who continues to stay close and pay attention. Freud suggested that this gave the patient a sense of safety and acceptance. Clearly, this was what had been happening between Wolf and me.

  Although Freud carefully recorded his observations and interpretations in notes and journals, they were not well known or readily available until the 1960s. The first formal presentation of pet-assisted therapy came about quite independently, more than 20 years after that great psychologist’s death. Boris Levinson, a clinical psychologist associated with Yeshiva University in New York, was working with a very disturbed child and noticed that when he had his dog Jingles with him, therapy sessions with this child were much more productive. Other children who had difficulty communicating also seemed more at ease and actually made real attempts at conversation when the dog was close by. Levinson presented a scientific paper describing his results at a meeting of the American Psychological Association. Other psychologists were not impressed by his results, and many ridiculed his work—some even asked him what percentage of the therapy fees he paid to the dog.

  Freud’s influence reached out from beyond his grave to help rescue Levinson’s work and reputation. Shortly after Levinson’s case studies were reported, Freud’s journals were translated and published. New insights into Freud’s life also came from books published by people who knew him and who mentioned his therapeutic use of his dog. With evidence that a scientific icon such as Freud was willing to entertain the value of animal helpers in psychotherapy, the laughter stopped and some serious research began.

  As I sat on a rocking chair talking with Wolf, it was 10 years before any new convincing scientific confirmation of the therapeutic value of interacting with a dog would be published in scientific journals. I just knew that it dang well worked for me, dag nabit!

  CHAPTER 7

  THE ARRIVAL OF JOAN

  There is an old saying, “Every journey begins with a single step.” The real truth is that every journey begins with an intention or a plan to go somewhere. Having benefited from what seemed like a miracle, I was starting a new journey and a new life. My 6 or 7 days of meditation and therapy with Wolf had given me my plan. I now knew what I had to do. First, I had to get a house or some sort of living space that would allow me to have a dog. It could be a little house, since I was planning on sharing it with a little dog. Next, get the dog. Along the way I wanted to control my addiction to work and research and reestablish and strengthen some friendships that I had neglected during my illness. It would also be nice to find a life partner to share my new home.

  I went to Peter, who was still head of the department, and explained that I wanted to earn a bit more cash, so he signed me up to teach an evening course and two additional courses in the summer. It was a lot of extra teaching, but it was the same subject matter that I had been teaching since I arrived at UBC. Over two years my savings grew to the point that I had enough to finally put an initial payment on my little house.

  This heavy teaching load was often exhausting, but I enjoyed working with the interesting range of students that populated the evening and summer classes. In my large evening sections of Introductory Psychology, there are always a few mature students—individuals who are clearly older than the average undergraduate, people who had to delay completing their university education because of financial, family, or work-related concerns.

  The stories of these mature students are often quite interesting. I once had a pair of adult students taking my course, one of whom was a convict on parole who was trying to get a college degree to start a new life, while the other was his parole officer. The parole officer enrolled in my section of the course initially to monitor whether his client was actively working on his education. He also seemed a little upset by the fact that the convict was earning higher grades than he was.

  Another mature student in my class was a thin brunette woman who seemed to be around my age. She appeared to be quite dedicated to getting good grades but also less than perfectly organized. Since my classes are large, with the smallest being around 200 students, my examinations are made up of multiple-choice questions, and the scoring is done by machine. As part of the testing process, students must know their university identification number, because grades are entered and sorted using that code. This number is listed on students’ registration materials and library cards. Usually for the first test in each course I make sure that I have the class list with me just in case someone forgets his number, but after the first test I assume that everyone knows it. Immediately before the first examination this woman came down to the front of the class because she did not know her student number. Her name was Joan, and I searched the list and found her number. Just before the second test, however, she appeared before me again, this time quite embarrassed.

  “I know that you’ll think that I must be ditzy, but I forgot my student number again,” she said.

  I didn’t have the list with me that time, so I told her to bring her materials to me directly at the end of the test p
eriod and we would walk to my office to find the list that had her number.

  On the way to my office I noticed that Joan had very pretty eyes, a sort of greenish-blue with some light brown flecks, and so transparent that I felt as if I were looking through the water to see the bottom of a clear mountain lake. She also had a sweet sort of half smile when she was relaxed. She was also wearing a wedding ring.

  Joan seemed a bit shy around me, almost as if she were a little frightened, and for some reason I got the impression that she had been undergoing some rough times—or she may have just been uncomfortable being the only student in the class who did not have her student number for this second exam. Walking to my office, she explained that she had been trained as a medical laboratory technician and worked for several years in a hospital in Yellowknife, the capital of Canada’s Northwest Territories. Now that she had moved to Vancouver she was returning to the university because she wanted to become a primary school teacher. It didn’t cross my mind then that Wolf had suggested that a good partner for me would be a nurse or grade school teacher, and now I was talking with someone who was a kind of hybrid of those two professions. It would be a couple of years before my relationship with Joan developed beyond professor and student.

  My friend Peter Suedfeld is quite brilliant in many ways, and much of his life reads like a plot for a book. He was born in Hungary, and his father was a concert cellist. His life fell apart with the onset of World War II, when most of his family became victims of the holocaust. As the Nazis clamped down on the Jewish population, their living conditions became more brutal and dangerous. After the Russians liberated Budapest, Peter and his father managed to sneak into Austria and ultimately found their way to New York, where Peter was reared by an impoverished great-aunt. However, he made it through school based on hard work and native intelligence, served in the army as a sniper stationed in the Philippines, and returned to complete his university training as a psychologist.