The Education of Will Read online

  I knew nothing of this until I opened up the local paper the next week. The bold letters of my name stared out at me like a private photograph that ends up on the Internet. I was mortified. There aren’t a lot of people in my area named Trisha, and very few with sheep. It wasn’t just my friends who could put those facts together; it was also the thousands of people who listened to the radio show I cohosted on Wisconsin Public Radio, Calling All Pets. I was fine with using personal ads, having been convinced by friends and colleagues that this was how one met people in the 2000s, but there is a reason they call them personal ads. Having a headline in the local paper that said “Trisha is looking for a man” was, as a good friend said, “like having your pants pulled down in public.”

  I wailed about the ad to my friends for a few days—how could a man be so oblivious as to put a woman’s name in the paper?—and then life went on and I forgot about it. But it was in the paper again the next week. This time I called his number and asked if he would be so kind as cancel the ad, and gosh, I really wish he hadn’t done it in the first place.

  He apologized and said he’d put the ad in the paper because he couldn’t bear not to meet me after hearing my voice. We talked for an hour. I liked his voice, too, so I agreed to meet him for coffee. He turned out to be about my height, with broad shoulders and arms as thick as my thigh. He had thick gray hair, the kind of strong, outdoorsy look that I’ve always loved, and a kind, open face.

  He told me he lived in a condo, the perfect place because it gave him so much freedom. No snow to shovel. No lawn to mow. Lots of time to ride his bike and play soccer. “You’d be wise, then, to walk away right now,” I said. “I have the biggest yard you’ve ever seen, and the chores never stop.” He laughed.

  I wasn’t smitten. But something about him, something grounded and settled, gave me pause as I watched him walk to his car. It occurred to me that dating the men I’d fallen for at first glance hadn’t worked out so well. Maybe I should see him again, just one more time? A week later, we had a drink together; dinner the week after; and eventually, we took the dogs down a wooded trail in an isolated county park on our first excursion alone.

  The dogs ran ahead on the sun-dappled path while Jim and I talked about our careers. I told him about working with aggressive dogs. He told me about his job in a mental health institution with patients who at that time were called “the criminally insane.” We compared notes about dealing with dangerous individuals—him with people, me with dogs—who could become violent if you made the wrong move. Currently, he explained, he worked at a state-run facility that confined and treated sexual predators.

  Here’s a tip for any man in the process of getting to know a woman you’d like to date: Keep the phrase “sexual predator” out of the conversation for as long as you can. Especially if it’s your first time alone with her and you’re in the middle of the woods.

  Everything changed after I heard that phrase, as if a movie director had said “Cue the music,” the kind of music you hear when a single woman walks down a dark stairway while the music tells you she’s making a big mistake and you jump up and down on the couch saying, “Don’t go down there, you idiot! Can’t you hear the music?” The forest morphed from peaceful and serene to gloomy and threatening. I became hyperaware that it was just the two of us, that no one else was around, and that he was clearly as strong as an ox.

  I wanted to go home and get away from this man whose life had something, anything, to do with sexual violence and predation. I walked faster, remembering something I simply had to do at home. Oh, look how the time has flown! It didn’t matter that Jim had nothing to do with the perpetrators of sexual violence himself; he was in charge of human resources for the psychologists and caretakers who did. All that mattered to me was the phrase that linked “sexual” with “predation.” Hearing it made me feel as raw as if I were covered with third-degree burns.

  When we parted, he asked if he could call me again. I stayed quiet for a moment, loaded up the dogs, got into the driver’s seat, and shut the door. I rolled down the window and told him that I would have to think about getting together again, a coward’s version of “No, but I don’t want to say that to your face.” But something about him, an inner strength and kindness, stayed with me. A week later, I called him and confessed how distressed I had been in response to his occupation. His response was so understanding, so tender without being intrusive, that my fears began to recede. We talked for an hour. We met up again a few weeks later, and I began that beautiful slow-motion tango of falling in love.

  • • • • •

  Jim and I are now partners on the farm and live surrounded by a multitude of wild animals, from crickets and mosquitoes to red-bellied woodpeckers and white-tailed deer. We love the country, but living here is not all sweetness and light. The hills, so scenic to live within, funnel water from spring rains and summer thunderstorms directly to the house and the barn. Jim and I battle with flowing water constantly, digging, channeling, damming it up relentlessly in an attempt to keep it from undermining the two structures. We win more battles than we lose, but the water wars will never be over. There are other challenges; there always are in the country. There are bramble bushes that grow everywhere except where you want them; brutally cold mornings that hurt your lungs while you feed the sheep; collapsing barns; and wild animals like raccoons and injured fawns that occasionally show up half-dead beside the farmhouse and demand that you drop your plans and deal with them.

  It is also beautiful. As I write, I can see the hill that rises behind the house. It is bounded by a line of white pines planted by earlier owners, now towering fifty feet high. A chickadee is in the one of the trees, holding a sunflower seed between its feet, industriously pecking away at the shell. A squirrel leaps toward it from an adjacent tree, and the chickadee drops the seed and calls CHICK-A-DEE-DEE-DEE. Its music floats through the window and settles around me like a warm blanket on a January day.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Will, who soon became Willie, lay curled up in the crate beside me as I drove him to his first vet appointment, a few days after I had returned his brother to the breeder. He kept his chin flat on the floor of the crate, his eyes looking into mine every time I glanced in his direction. The countryside was awash with the yellow of sunflowers and goldenrod and the green of head-high cornstalks. It was hot, so I parked in the shade on the side of the building, in a small lot bracketed by the drone of traffic and the sound of dogs barking.

  As I lifted Willie from the car and the barking got louder, he panicked and flailed out of my arms with the strength of a dog ten times his size. He tumbled onto the ground and began streaking toward the road, moving as far away from the barking as he could get. An eight-week-old puppy is pretty fast, but I was able to catch up and grab him before he committed suicide on the highway. Hearts beating against each other’s chests, I carried him back to the clinic, sat down on the cement steps, and held him as I tried to calm us both. It was unclear who was more frightened. After a few minutes it was time to move on, so I checked his collar and leash to ensure that they would stay attached. I checked them again. And again. I’d worked professionally with dogs for almost two decades by the time I got Willie, but the incident eroded my faith in my ability to keep a puppy safe.

  When I set him down, Willie put his nose down in front of the clinic and began to sniff like an industrial vacuum cleaner, so hard that his nose was scraping against the concrete. I expected his nose to start lengthening like that of an animated creature in a Disney movie. My heart fell. I knew what this sniffing might mean. His uncle Luke would have quickly sniffed his way around the area and happily moved on, anticipating what was coming next. But there was no sense of curiosity in Willie’s behavior; it was desperate and obsessive and foretold serious trouble as he got older. Early in my career I had seen a puppy named Yugo, a brindle-brown Labrador cross who entered my office as if his nose were attached to the carpet. He managed a weak wag when his olfactory investigati
ons brought him close to me, but his head remained down and focused on the smells of other dogs. He returned in adolescence with a serious aggression problem toward other dogs. Since then, hundreds of dogs had entered my office and ignored me, slamming their noses to the ground, snorting their way around the room as they sucked up the scents of my four-legged clientele. It didn’t matter if they were puppies, adolescents, or full-grown dogs, obsessive sniffing appeared to correlate with one thing: serious aggression toward other dogs.

  As Willie snorted around, his nose pressed to the grass, I realized I had been holding my breath. I made myself take some deep breaths and waited for Willie to finish sniffing. He continued. I waited. The air forced in and out of his nose was so loud, it sounded like it was powered by an industrial bellows. Eventually, it was time to go inside. I called his name. No response; not even a flick of an ear. I crouched and held a treat within an inch of his nose. Nothing. Willie continued to suck up the dogs’ scents like a dehydrated elephant at a water hole. After a few more attempts to lure him inside, I picked him up and carried him in.

  One look at the receptionists and Willie melted into pudding. Eyes glowing, he licked faces and wagged his entire body, charming everyone. He thought nothing of his vaccination—he was too busy kissing the vet’s face. Willie wiggled gleefully as the vet examined his mouth, and he squiggled and happy-faced his way throughout the entire exam. When we were done, the vet commented on what an adorable pup he was. I put him down on the floor, his puppy leash tangling around his oversize paws.

  Willie and I smiled our way out into the lobby. Then, horror of horrors, we discovered a bichon frise puppy sitting on the linoleum like the disembodied tail of a rabbit. A bichon puppy is a tiny thing, as intimidating as a fluff of whipped cream. Unless you were Willie. All happiness gone, Willie’s body went stiff, his mouth snapped shut, and he backed up as if he had seen a monster. I was looking at an adorable fuzzball of cuteness. He was looking at Godzilla. “Willie, Willie!” I said cheerfully, trying to jolly him up and show him there was nothing to be afraid of. He dived under a chair and began to growl. I took some more deep breaths, hauled him out, and put him in the car.

  It might seem strange to worry about the behavior of an eight-week-old puppy, but animal behaviorists know that even young pups can act in ways that suggest serious problems later on in life. Did your pup chew up the remote control? Think nothing of it; that’s as normal as a toddler who wants to put everything in her mouth. You expect it, deal with it, and it goes away. Did an eight-week-old pup go stiff and emit a menacing growl right out of a horror movie while standing over a piece of popcorn? That’s not typical and is predictive of serious trouble if not handled right away. Time to call a trainer or behaviorist—or maybe Stephen King with a scene suggestion.

  The problem with Willie wasn’t just what he was doing; it was the age at which he was doing it. His behavior replicated that of mature dogs whose extreme fear of other dogs had developed into teeth-bared, hard-eyed aggression. Adult behavior is rarely a good thing to see in a puppy, but it happens. “Puppies of the Corn,” I call them: dogs who, like the glaze-eyed children in horror movies, are adorable one moment and terrifying another. Babies aren’t supposed to act like aggressive grown-ups, and it is chilling when they do.

  Once I was asked to evaluate a litter of seven-week-old Labrador puppies, and I was taken aback by their responses when I gently lay them down on their backs. Usually, puppies will squirm a bit and then settle down, perhaps mouthing your hands with bright eyes and cheerful faces. A few will go soft and still, eyes all liquid innocence. However, four of the puppies in this litter fought as though their lives depended on it, then went rigid while their eyes turned into cold, glittery marbles that stared straight into my own. If they’d had a gun, I think they would have used it. Two of them tried to leap up and bite my face, snarling as they did. Oh, my. I followed their progress and learned that three of them had been euthanized as young adults because they had bitten so many people.

  With cases like that in mind, I called Willie’s breeder when we got back home to ask if anything had happened in his past to explain his behavior. But nothing she knew of could explain Willie’s reaction to other dogs. His parents had good dispositions, Willie had played well with his littermates, and she was aware of no traumatic incident related to the other dogs. Willie had seemed cautious when he first met my other dogs, but he’d quickly become comfortable around them. Lassie had even begun teaching him to play tug games with her. His behavior at the vet clinic was inexplicable. What could have happened to turn a squirming, happy-faced puppy into a terrified wreck in the presence of unfamiliar dogs?

  • • • • •

  A few days after we returned from the clinic, a good friend brought over Comet, a mellow golden retriever who was famous for his benevolence toward puppies. Willie took one look at the dog placidly standing thirty yards away and began to growl. Then he began to bark like a police dog confronting a serial killer, his lips curled over his tiny puppy teeth, jagged white triangles in the sun. I asked him to back up, and I waited until he had stopped barking and growling, then I reinforced him for being quiet and a little bit calmer.

  That afternoon I stood at the kitchen sink, worrying about Willie while I looked out the window, watching nuthatches flitting around the feeders full of sunflower seeds. Being trained to observe canine behavior is a mixed blessing, as experts can see trouble looming that others wouldn’t notice. Some symptoms of behavioral problems, like those of many diseases, can be readily cured if addressed early on, before they become intractable. However, experience makes us especially wary about the slightest sign of trouble, which may not actually develop into a serious problem. Ignorance indeed can be bliss. Just because a child is slow to talk doesn’t mean he will be diagnosed on the autism spectrum. Just because a puppy is terrified of other dogs doesn’t mean he’ll be aggressive.

  But it might.

  • • • • •

  After dinner, I accidentally dropped a piece of broccoli that landed between Willie and Pippy, who leaned forward to slurp it up. In response, Willie charged at her like a junkyard dog at midnight. Eyes glaring, the corners of his mouth pushed forward in what is called an “offensive pucker,” little Willie threw himself at Pip, challenging a dog six times his size. I’m not sure who was more surprised, Pippy or me. Reflexively—thank God for twenty-plus years of practice—I said, “WHAT are you doing!?” in a shocked voice. I stepped between him and Pip and moved Willie backward by walking toward him. I asked him to sit down. While he did, I fed Pip the food from the floor.

  Then I gave Willie some treats while he was backed away, to teach him that good things happen if you are polite and patient but not if you are rude and pushy. Externally, I was calm and in control; I’d dealt with this type of dog behavior for so many years that I didn’t need to stop and think about how to handle it. But knowing how to handle it was one thing; knowing that the puppy I’d already fallen in love with had serious aggression issues was another. A nine-week-old puppy who goes after an adult dog over a piece of broccoli is not behaving within the bell curve of normal development. Resource guarding is a common problem in dogs, but watching a baby puppy going after an adult dog over a vegetable is like watching a five-year-old boy threaten his mother with a butcher knife because she turned off the television.

  • • • • •

  That night I sat on the couch and worried about this bundle of behavioral problems that I had brought into the house. I turned to see Willie watching me, his face baby-soft and expectant, his body wagging from the shoulders back. I moved off the couch and lay down beside him. He nuzzled into me, the side of his head pressing against my neck. I inhaled the scent from the top of his head, as a girlfriend had told me she’d breathe in the smell of her son’s hair, savor it, and yearn for it when they were apart.

  Even as a tiny puppy, Willie wanted nothing more than to be with me, to cuddle against me with his face pressed against my neck o
r chest. Willie’s love of people was as extreme as his fear of dogs outside of his own pack. He loved everyone on two legs and appeared to be overjoyed that the world contained an infinite number of us. When friends came over to meet Willie, he’d stop for a second as he watched them get out of their cars, seemingly stunned by the appearance of yet another person. He’d quickly glance at me as if in amazement—“Look! There’s another one! I’ve found ANOTHER ONE!”—and then he’d charge forward, tail thumping, body soft and loose as he transported us into puppy rapture.

  A lot of visitors came to the farm those first few weeks, and he charmed each of them. Willie was the perfect ambassador for his species, a public relations gold mine. He treated people as if each of us was the best present imaginable, wrapped up in a bow just for him. In the evening, he lay down beside me, snuggled deep against my heart, and licked my face with his skunky puppy breath. I forgot about his fears; I forgot about my own worries. My eyes closed as the light faded and the wood thrushes sang their fluted lullabies from the oaks behind the house.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The morning after Willie and I went to the vet clinic, Lassie came over and licked my hand, which dangled over the side of the bed. I stroked her face as sunrise lightened the room, and turned to cuddle next to Jim, who was snoring quietly beside me. We’d been together for six years by then, but he retained his condo in Madison and came out to the farm on weekends. Geriatric Pippy Tay was sound asleep but thumped her tail and opened her eyes when I said her name. In a few minutes, Pippy Tay arose from her dog bed, and I wrapped the pancakes of poop she’d passed in the night inside the tissues I’d learned to keep by the bed. Jim helped her get down the stairs, supporting her hindquarters and steadying her as she descended the steep, narrow passageway. I padded behind them to greet Tulip, at her post in the living room, and to let little Willie out of his crate.