IV “if this dog does something wrong, the fault will be yours, not hers”

      LINDA, A COMPUTER maven and all-around talent, has been Gerda’s and my primary assistant for so long that she will need to be in therapy for the rest of her life.

      On the other hand, before she came to us, she did contract work for the state of California, instructing bureaucrats in the software they used. California government is so dysfunctional, by comparison with Koontzland, that it must have seemed like an asylum to Linda, while our little corner of the world might well have struck her as a restful sanitarium.

      Back in 1998, Linda occupied an office in our house on the hill. But our second assistant, Elaine, who had come to us after retiring from another job, worked in our office suite in a commercial complex called Newport Center.

      Linda and Elaine had asked if they could meet Trixie when we did. They were friends as well as employees, and the addition of a dog to our lives made them happy for us. Besides, they were always looking for one reason or another to skip work, and this was a much better excuse than claiming for the sixteenth time that a beloved grandmother or beloved aunt had died.

      Also with us were Vito and his wife, Lynn, visiting from Michigan and staying in the beach house for two weeks. They had a dog they loved, a not-mooshy Labrador retriever named Rocky, so we figured they could help us adjust to our new daughter.

      Judi arrived with Trixie’s puppy raiser, Julia Shular, who also had with her a black Labrador in training for CCI. They had all of Trixie’s favorite toys, a bag of her kibble, and what seemed like 9,324 pages of instructions on her care.

      Joint surgery will force the retirement of any assistance dog because, in a pinch, it might need to pull its partner’s wheelchair. Even after healing, the problem joint puts the animal at risk. Having recuperated for six months, our daughter was fully recovered.

      When Trixie entered the house off leash, she had a sprightly step and an eager, inquisitive expression. Tail swishing, she came directly to Gerda and me, as if she had been shown photographs of us and knew we were to be her new mom and dad. Then she politely visited with Linda, Elaine, Vito, and Lynn, sharing the fur.

      Cynics will tell you that love at first sight is a myth, but their opinion is not to be respected, and only reveals the sad condition of their hearts.

      We fell in love with Trixie at first sight, in part because of her beauty. Her mother, Kinsey, was a gorgeous specimen, and her father, Bugs—Kinsale Bugaboo Boy—was a winner of multiple dog-show prizes. Her grandfather Expo also had been a show-dog champion. Trixie had a good broad face, correct ear size and placement, dark eyes, and a black nose without mottling. Her head and neck flowed perfectly into a strong level topline, and her carriage was regal.

      Beauty took second place, however, to her personality. Although well behaved, with a gentle and affectionate temperament, she had about her a certain cockiness, as well. During that first meeting, she seemed always to be either laughing or ready to laugh, and Judi said she had been the class clown of her graduating group.

      Because the male Labrador remained in training, Trixie took advantage of her new status as an ordinary dog to tease him and to tempt him to break his sit-stay. While we listened to Judi and Julia instruct us in Trixie’s basic commands, we watched our girl take three different toys to the Lab and hold them inches from his face, jubilantly squeaking them to impress on him what fun he was missing.

      Her favorite toy was what we called a dangle ball, a big fuzzy ball dangling on a loop of braided rope. She swung this in front of the Lab’s face, like a hypnotist swinging a pendant on a chain, and when he let his mouth sag open, tempted to make a grab for the toy, Trixie stepped back, insisting that he break his sit-stay.

      In spite of our girl’s clownish tendency, we supposedly would rarely need to correct her behavior. Judi said that Trixie was so well trained and so smart that “if this dog does something wrong, the fault will be yours, not hers, because you will have gotten a command wrong or will have forgotten to do some part of her daily routine that she requires to stay on her schedule.”

      Linda and Elaine left, not to return to work, as we might have hoped, but to make funeral arrangements for beloved aunts who had died that morning. What a sad world this is, with so much death.

      When Judi and Julia left a few minutes later, Trixie set off to explore every corner of the house, bottom to top and down again. She would repeat this practice over the years in every friend’s house to which she was invited. With one exception, she never took liberties with anything in those homes, but her curiosity was matched only by her assumption that she was welcome to snoop everywhere.

      Vito, Lynn, Gerda, and I took Trixie with us to dinner that evening at a restaurant that welcomed dogs on its patio. When given the command “under,” she settled under the table, facing out, and watched the other diners. She showed no interest in our food, was never restless, and made no sound.

      Later in the evening, we brought her for the first time to our house on the hill, and she at once explored it as she had explored the beach house. We put her bed in a corner of the master bedroom, and she settled into it. Although we invited her to sleep at the bottom of our bed, and although she’d had some furniture privileges in her previous homes, she preferred the familiarity of her dog bed.

      As we were lying in the dark, waiting for sleep, Gerda said, “A little scary, huh?”

      I knew what she meant: The responsibility for this beautiful creature was now ours alone. Her health, her happiness, and the maintenance of the training that made her not only an ideal canine but also contributed to her confidence and to her sense of her place in the world—those things we must attend to no less dutifully than we would have tended to the needs of a child.

      Sometime during the night, I woke with the feeling that I was being watched. Gerda and I sleep in a pitch-black room, where the windows are covered by wooden panels at night. I didn’t want to switch on the flashlight that I keep on my nightstand, so still lying on my side, I squinted in search of animal eyeshine, but could see none. Tentatively, I reached out past the side of the bed with my right hand, and at once found Trixie’s head. For a couple of minutes, in the dark, I rubbed the sensitive part of one of her ears between my thumb and index finger, and she leaned into this caress. Then she sighed and returned to her bed in the corner, and soon slept.

      I imagined she had stood there, breathing in my complex scent, analyzing me with her talented nose, asking herself if I would be kind to her and love her and be worth loving in return. I intended never to give her reason to answer no to any of those questions.