Susan Conant - The Barker Street Regulars

A number of years ago, a reader sent me a striking photograph of a gigantic dog under an even more gigantic tree. Kind reader, although I have lost your name and address, I want to thank you for suggesting the element of this book that you will recognize as your contribution. For the appearance of Alaskan malamutes Ch. Kailas Paw Print (the late Tracker) and Ch. Kaila The Devils Paw (Narly). a legendary grandsire and his magnificent young grandson, I am grateful to Chris and Eileen Gabriel, who will, I hope, forgive the use that Holly makes of Trackers famous name.

Many thanks to Bruce Southworth, B.S.I., the best guide since Watson to the world of Sherlock Holmes. Any Sherlockian errors contained herein are entirely my own fault. For welcoming me to the world of therapy dogs, I want to thank Sally Jean Alexander of the Pets & People Foundation, as well as the real Rowdy, Frostfield Perfect Crime, CD., C.G.C., Th.D., my perfect girl. For the unfailing strength that drives our little team, Rowdy and I rely on the stalwart wheel dog in our lives, her half brother and my perpetual puppy, Frostfield Firestars Kobuk, C.G.C.

I also want to thank Jean Berman, Judy Bocock, Fran Boyle, Dorothy Donohue, Roo Grubis, Roseann Man-dell, Janice Ritter, Cathy Shea, Geoff Stern, Margherita Walker, and Anya Wittenborg, as well as the editor who always takes Best of Breed in my book, Kate Miciak.

W HEN ALTHEA BATTLEFIELD FIRST referred to the Sacred Writings, I naturally assumed that she meant the American Kennel Club Obedience Regulations. She didnt. What Althea had in mindwhat Althea held perpetually in the forefront of her considerable intellectwas The Complete Sherlock Holmes. Neither had nor held is quite right, however, except perhaps in the nuptial sense of to have and to hold. Althea loved and cherished Holmess adventures with a passion that admitted only the richer and the better, and entirely discounted the possibility of the poorer or the worse. As to the bit about from this day forward, if you count Altheas six preliterate years of dependence on parental voices, shed been reading Sherlock Holmes for ninety years.

This is to say that soon after Rowdy and I first entered Altheas room at the Gateway Rehabilitation and Nursing Center, she and I recognized each other as kindred spirits, women with passions: in her case, Sherlock Holmes; in mine, dogs. Not that I disliked Holmes. On the contrary, the ill-used hound of the Baskervilles was one of my favorite literary characters, as I was quick to tell Althea, who pretended to bristle at the suggestion that the beast had been other than real. And not that Althea disliked dogs. Indeed, Altheas mild fondness for dogs was the reason Rowdy and I began to visit her in the first place. When she referred to my gorgeous Alaskan malamute as a big husky, however, I pretended to take umbrage. In other words, Althea knew about as much about dogs as I did about Sherlock Holmes.

Before I say anything else about Althea or about the subsequent murder of her grandnephew, Jonathan Hubbell, I want to state outright that in taking Rowdy on pet therapy visits to the Gateway, I wasnt engaged in a mission of noble altruism. Im ordinarily thrilled to have my self-serving motives mistaken for saintly wishes to help others, but this is a story about trickeryfakery, fraud, artifice, subterfuge, call it what you willand I feel impelled to dissociate myself from the deliberate effort to deceive. In fact, Rowdy became a therapy dog only because Id taken him to an obedience fun match that also offered therapy dog testing, and Id had him tested because I knew hed breeze through and because I thought Id found an effortless way to get him a new title. Hah! Well, Rowdy aced the test, but as I discovered only when I registered him with Therapy Dogs International, that organization takes ferocious objection to having its initials, T.D.I., used as a title. Why? Because of an utterly irrational suspicion that certain despicably title-hungry dog owners might see T.D.I. only as an easy new title and, once having obtained it, might selfishly refuse to take their dogs on therapy visits. So there I was with a certified therapy dog and no new title when I heard about a local Boston-area group called Paws for Love, which did a thorough job of screening dogs and training handlers for therapy work, andnot that I cared, of coursewould bestow on Rowdy the title Rx.D. when he had visited his assigned facility fifteen times.

Continuing in the spirit of full disclosure, I should mention my realization if I were ever to end up in a nursing home, the only thing that would cheer me up would be a visit from a big, friendly dog. I nonetheless entered the Gateway with the prejudices characteristic of most human beings and entirely foreign to dogs. First fear: The place would smell of urine. It didnt, but if it had, Rowdy would have considered the stench a fabulous bonus. Second fear: Everyone would have Alzheimers, and ten seconds after wed left, no one would remember wed been there. Some people did have Alzheimers. One was a woman named Nancy, whose body had reached a state of advanced shrinkage in which her weight in pounds equaled her age in years: ninety-three. As I learned only after our first visit to her, the Gateway staff had never before heard her utter more than a word or two. I had to be told that Nancy didnt usually speak. The first time I led Rowdy toward her wheelchair and asked whether she liked dogs, she ignored me, but croaked to him, Beautiful! Beautiful dog! Come! Come here, beautiful dog! Her hands were like a birds feet. She perched one on top of Rowdys head. He licked her face. She giggled like a child. I love him, she said to me. I love him.