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The spooky moment central to this story comes on an evening more than ten years ago.
Trixie, a three-year-old golden retriever of singular beauty and splendid form, adopted the previous September, is in her fourth month with my wife, Gerda, and me. She is joyful, affectionate, comical, intelligent, remarkably well behaved. She is also more self-possessed and dignified than I've ever realized a dog could be.
Already, she has changed me as a person and as a writer. I am only beginning to understand the nature of those changes and where they will lead me.
Our first house in Newport Beach, in the neighborhood known as Harbor Ridge, had an exceptionally long upstairs hallway, actually a gallery open to the foyer below. Because this hall was carpeted and provided good traction for paws and because nothing breakable stood along its walls, I often played there with Trixie on days when the weather was foul and on winter evenings when the sun set early.
Initially, I tossed a ball and sometimes a Kong toy. The Kong was about six inches long, made of hard rubber with an inch-wide hole through the middle. You could stuff a mixture of peanut butter and kibble in the hole, to keep a dog occupied for an hour or longer. I tried it twice, but Trixie managed to extract the tasty mixture from the Kong in five minutes, which was less time than it took to prepare it.
One evening the rubber Kong bounced wildly and smashed into a small oil painting, splitting the canvas. The painting was very old; it was one of Gerda's favorites.
When she noticed the damage a few days later, I fessed up: "The dog did it."
"Even standing on her hind feet," she said, "the dog isn't tall enough to do it."
Confident that my logic was unassailable, I said, "The dog was here in the hall when the damage occurred. The Kong toy was here. The Kong belongs to the dog. The dog wanted to play. If the dog wasn't so cute, I wouldn't have wanted to play with her. The damage was inevitable."
"So you're saying the dog is responsible because she's cute?"
I refused to allow my well-reasoned position to be nitpicked. Having prepared a backup explanation, I resorted to it: "Besides, maybe she isn't tall enough, but she knows where we keep the step stool."
So, because the dog had damaged the painting, we could not use the rubber Kong in the hall. In addition, I would not throw the tennis ball anymore but would only roll it.
I explained the new rules to Trixie, whose expression was somber. "This is a valuable teaching moment," I concluded. "If you had gone to your mother immediately after you damaged the painting and had taken responsibility, you would not now have a blemish on your reputation."
Following the new rules, I always released the tennis ball with a snap of the wrist that gave it the velocity to roll the length of the hall. Trixie thundered after the ball, snaring it near the end of its journey or snatching it out of the air if it ricocheted off the leg of a console. She returned it to me, and I fired it off again. After 20 minutes, her flanks heaved, her tongue lolled, and though she still considered the ball a priceless treasure, she was prepared to entrust it to me for a while.
Lying on the floor, facing each other, Trixie panted and I stroked her luxurious golden coat as she caught her breath.
From the week she came into our lives, Trixie and I had spent some time most days lying on the floor, staring into each other's eyes like this. I found it relaxing for the obvious reason that a cuddle with a loving dog is always calming. I also found it strange because she would stare into my eyes as long as I wanted to meet hers—10 minutes, 20, 30—and she would rarely be the first to look away. These sessions were meditation but also communication, though I can't explain what she communicated other than love. I can say that I frequently saw in her eyes a yearning to make herself understood in a complex way that only speech could facilitate.
After Trixie's breathing returned to normal, we remained on the floor, staring into each other's eyes, drawn close by mutual love yet gazing across the gulf that sepa-rates one who can speak from one who can't. Dogs swim through a sea of human speech, listening attentively for words they recognize, patiently striving to interpret what we say, although most of it is incomprehensible to them. No human being would have such patience. Counting the many commands she had been taught when in training to be an assistance dog and all that she had learned on her own—cookie, chicken, walk, duck, step stool, oil, painting, restoration, electromagnetism—her vocabulary was at least a hundred words. It would more than double over the years. This got me thinking … The recognition that words have meaning, the desire to remember them, the intention to act on those that are understood: Does all this lead to the conclusion that the dog also yearns to speak?
Staring into Trixie's eyes, I was sometimes silent but at other times talked to her about my day, my problems, my hopes, whatever was in my head. Those who love dogs know well this kind of rap. The dog does not react—and is not expected to—but listens and wonders.
On that January night, because Trixie had been an undiluted joy the past four months and had been a force for positive change in me, I said, "You're not just a dog. You can't fool me. I know what you really are."
As if in response, she raised her head, eased back slightly, and regarded me with what might have been concern. Trixie's versatile brow muscles allow her a wide range of facial expressions. She never before responded to me in this fashion, and I was amused to interpret her look as, Uh-oh, somehow I've blown my cover.
"You're really an angel," I continued.
To my surprise, she scrambled to her feet as if in alarm, ran down the hall, turned, and stared back at me. Muscles tensed, legs spread for maximum balance, head lifted, ears raised as much as a golden can raise them, she seemed to be waiting for what I might say next.
I'm seldom speechless. Trixie's behavior, which seemed to be a reaction to my words, as if she understood every one of them, raised the fine hairs on the nape of my neck and left me mute.
Intrigued, I got to my knees, wondering what she would do next, but she only stared. She continued to watch me intently when I rose to my feet.
For a minute or two, we studied each other from a distance of 20 feet, as though we both expected something of consequence to happen. Her tail did not wag. It wasn't lowered as it would have been if she had been the least fearful. It was a perfect plume, as still as if she had stepped outside of time, where nothing could move her or even one hair upon her, nothing except her own will.
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A BIG LITTLE LIFE: A MEMOIR OF A JOYFUL DOG BY DEAN KOOTNZ (HYPERION)
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