When Lawrence and I finally found a local reproductive specialist who said she’d be willing to help, the first step was an FSH (follicle-stimulating hormone) test. During the first half of the menstrual cycle, this hormone, which is critical in women’s reproduction, stimulates production of both eggs and the hormone estradiol. As a woman ages, the FSH number goes up and is often used as an indicator that good eggs may not be as plentiful as in younger, more fertile years.
The day I went for my first FSH test to determine where my levels were and whether a baby was even within the realm of possibility also turned out to be the day I met with Penny Weiser to begin setting up our Austin Road Stepping Stones visit. Like twin stars, these parallel paths were locked in each other’s orbit. Penny was looking for a visiting dog to work with her special-needs first and second graders for a while, and when she called me, I jumped at the chance.
Lawrence had already taken several tests in preparation for IUI (intrauterine insemination). Although he had as much sperm as the next guy, his didn’t have the best morphology and motility, meaning they weren’t all normally formed and weren’t always great swimmers. IUI would give the well-developed ones a better chance of finding their appointed target. Meanwhile, I would give myself FSH injections to make sure there were as many targets available as possible. We knew we weren’t guaranteed success, but at least we had a plan. The only problem was that when I wasn’t on visits, with private clients, at classes or planning for the new children’s visit, I was flitting from one mostly icky and sometimes painful test to another.
This was both the absolute worst and best time for me to be taking on a new visit schedule. I was swamped with doctors’ appointments, had to pee in a cup every morning, would soon be shooting myself up with FSHs daily and—worst of all by far—had to stop drinking coffee and wine. I would have easily traded two more shots to the belly per day to have my morning coffee.
The rough schedule made this the perfect time to start the Stepping Stones visits. Penny was going to develop educational plans for each student with set goals for Boo’s visits. Setting up the games and activities for the kids to match Boo’s skills would be an enormous task for me, one that might help take my mind off the fertility quest and let me simply enjoy some time with Boo and the kids.
When we met, Penny described the students’ needs. Two of the children had severe ADHD and frequently erupted in tantrums. Another student suffered from genetic diseases that resulted in profoundly disabling complications. One little girl had developmental delays, and one little boy, Marc, had a rare childhood anxiety disorder called selective mutism (until recently called elective mutism).
Selective mutism is characterized by the inability to speak in one or more social settings. Marc, however, didn’t speak anywhere, not even at home. He was silent with his mother, his father, his uncle, his uncle’s dog, his cousin, his cousin’s dog—he was silent everywhere, with everyone. This was very atypical for selective mutism, and because Penny had never taught a student with this problem before, she scoured textbooks and reached out to other educators who could help her find a workable treatment that might help. Although there is a growing pool of information on the disorder, nothing she found worked for Marc. Being a dog lover herself, she wondered whether a therapy dog might coax the little boy to speak, even if just to the dog. With a condition this severe, she knew it was a long shot, but she was willing to try for Marc.
Before I made many elaborate plans for the group, I wanted to see how they would interact with Boo. It made sense for his first visit to be all about getting them to start communicating with him. The kids had fifth-grade student helpers a couple times a week, and Penny set up Boo’s visits to include them so we would have some additional help if we needed it. Boo’s visits were also effectively a reward for the fifth graders because they enjoyed him as much as the younger kids did. When we got there, the room was almost full: the seven children in the Stepping Stones program, four fifth-grade helpers, three teacher’s aides and Penny.
Boo was his typical, cocktail-party dog working the room in his usual style: feet sniffs, hand licks, a brief ear snuzzle, and in the case of Heather, a petite little girl with a curly head of free-spirited hair who had some developmental delays and seemed perpetually happy, he thought he might gently snack on her barrettes before moving onto the next set of feet. The kids giggled as Boo’s gentle, cold nose seemed to wander aimlessly around their heads before he moved on.
The one child who wasn’t thrilled was Matthew. Sitting across the room as far from Boo as he could get, Matthew required support from one of the teacher’s aides to remain calm. After Boo greeted everybody and all the petting and cooing died down, I plopped Boo on my lap in his usual bug-a-Boo pose, to the delight of the kids. I told his story and showed some of the pictures of Boo with Dante and Atticus so the kids could visualize Boo living at home with brothers, just like many of them did. They were hooked as they watched Boo perched on my lap, his mouth open in a happy, relaxed pant, seeming to look around at nothing and everything all at once. I tried to keep the Boo story short to match the attention spans of the kids, especially the ones with ADHD, but I think I could have gone on for much longer because they were all mesmerized. Even Matthew, still across the room, was now calm, listening, watching everything Boo did.
“Boo is eight, probably older than some of you,” I said. “He lives with me, my husband and two other dogs. He likes to snuggle up with me or with his big brother, Dante, on an oversized chair, and he has some special needs, just like you guys.” This got their attention. “He doesn’t see too well, and he bumps into things a lot. He learns differently from other dogs and moves differently from other dogs, but in the end, he does just fine for himself. His life is full of fun and friends, and he’s loved very much.”
Once the kids connected with Boo, it was time for the interaction activities. I had made some very simple cards out of standard 8"×10" copy paper, and both sides of each card had a big cue word on it with commands like sit, down, stay, paw and come. I use cards like these on visits to turn simple commands into a game or demonstration. Sometimes I illustrate how dogs follow hand signals by letting a kid show me a card, and then I use the corresponding hand signal to cue the dog. For the Stepping Stones class, I had the children read the cards out loud to Boo while I offered him a nonchalant hand signal or body touch to communicate the command. This can be very empowering for kids because they feel like they’ve gotten the dog to do something for them all on their own, and it was an intentionally easy game for this first visit.
Penny would hold up one of two cards, either the down or the sit, as each child in turn approached Boo. The student would have to read the card out loud. (For some of the kids, the words down and sit were tough words to read.) When they gave Boo the verbal command and he complied, they would praise him out loud and give him a treat for doing it correctly. The kids enjoyed giving the treat, and Boo enjoyed getting it, so the exercise was a win–win for everyone.
Although some kids needed help from Penny with the reading, each child except for Matthew came up in turn and read a card out loud. All were happy to have Boo to themselves for this “trick,” and some, like Heather, gave Boo a big hug and a kiss after he got his treat. Eventually, it was Marc’s turn. He was a delicately built boy with café-au-lait skin, brown eyes and a sweet smile. He approached with an impish grin, clearly delighted at the prospect of Boo doing a trick for him.
I thought about what Penny had told me about Marc. He had never said anything—not at home and not at school. When April, his mom, said, “Good morning,” he’d just stare at her. Meals were a guessing game. She could only hold up different foods and wait for him to point to his choices. When she asked him what he wanted to do on a day off, he simply looked at her without speaking and shrugged. The day Marc came home from kindergarten with scratches on his back, April and her husband couldn’t get any clue from him about how they’d gotten there. It wasn’t until she called the school that she found out another student had been bullying him during recess and bit him.
At six years old, Marc had never spoken a single word to anyone. Marc’s parents tried speech and behavior therapy, and when that failed, they enrolled him in Penny’s class for kids with special educational needs. Penny was working diligently with her staff to help Marc begin to feel at ease enough to speak in class. Although they hoped a dog would bring wondrous things to all the students, they knew better than to expect much from Marc, especially because he spent time with many of his relatives’ dogs without any effect on his selective mutism.
The card Penny held up said sit. Marc stood in front of it, his mouth closed. “Do you want to say anything to Boo?” Penny asked. Marc didn’t answer.
“Go on, Marc,” said one of the fifth-grade helpers. No response.
“I know Boo will sit if you ask him to,” I said.
Marc, the boy who had never spoken a single word in his life, opened his mouth, and an almost inaudible sound came out of it. I heard a soft whispered, “Sit,” more air than voice.
I was a bit disappointed as I gave Boo the hand signal to sit. I didn’t understand the disorder well and had hoped for more, but an almost inaudible whispered word was better than nothing. So I said, “Excellent. Great job, Marc! Do you want to tell Boo anything?”
Marc leaned over to Boo’s ear. He mouthed the words, “Good boy,” gave Boo his treat and a big hug and danced back to his place in the circle.
Boo and I left our first visit with the Stepping Stones crew encouraged, thinking it had gone well. I knew Boo’s butterfly wings would get him where he needed to be. I knew he would get there, but I just didn’t know how far he would take himself.
Sometimes, I think Boo probably has an even more dramatic effect on people than I realize. Often, I can see progress during a visit, but unless someone reports about ongoing progress, even when there are repeat visits, I never know his full impact. In this case, though, I found out. Penny told me later that the whisper from Marc was just the beginning for him. That night when Marc’s mom, April, got home from work, she noticed that he was practically bursting with excitement. Sensing something was up, she asked, “Did something happen at school?”
Marc, the boy who had never spoken a single word to his mother, his father or any other family member or friend, looked at his mother and in a full voice said, “Boo.”
“Boo who?” she asked.
Words began spilling out of Marc’s mouth, his voice growing louder and louder. “I petted Boo! I brushed him! I love him!” The little boy raced into his bedroom, grabbed his Scooby Doo toy and began to act out the entire therapy session, using the stuffed dog as a prop. This time, it was Mom who was speechless as she listened and listened and listened to her son for the first time in his life. Then, he said four words she’d begun to assume she would never hear from her son: “I love you, Mommy.”
“It was as if a door had opened,” April told Penny later, through tears, “and we could finally see what was inside. Thank goodness for Boo. That dog is a miracle worker.”
That old pattern-creating universe arranged things so that the day after Boo’s first visit to Stepping Stones, my reproductive specialist called to let me know we needed to start injections the next day.
Just after midnight on the day the injections were to begin, Lawrence, who was sleeping downstairs because of a bad cold that he didn’t want to pass on to me at such a critical time in the fertility process, crawled his way upstairs to tell me he couldn’t breathe. I took one look at him and knew he needed help—fast. It was clear that he was in a horribly bad way. Within seconds, we were in the car, and I was driving like a madwoman. I made the thirty-minute trip to the hospital in just under seventeen. With a blood-oxygen level in the seventies (normal is between ninety-five and one hundred), he needed oxygen immediately, but that was the last information I got on his condition for three days. Lawrence hadn’t gotten the forms to sign that would allow the doctors to talk to me about his condition, and Lawrence himself couldn’t tell me much because he was so doped up.
With no idea how good or bad things were, and figuring Lawrence would be home soon, the reproductive specialist and I decided to go ahead and start the IUI meds. Waiting would only make my eggs older and less cooperative. Furthermore, if they were giving Lawrence steroids, which my doctor figured they were, the sperm he produced in a couple weeks would be subpar, so now was really the best time given all the information we had.
By Tuesday, I finally got administration to bring him the right HIPAA forms so the doctors would talk to me, and by that afternoon, I understood that he was in very bad shape. No matter what they did, they couldn’t get his blood oxygen above eighty-four, and they wouldn’t let him leave the hospital until it was at least ninety-four. I was in a meteor shower of stressors in the middle of this IUI cycle, worrying that Lawrence was in deep medical trouble. He was on oxygen, being injected with steroids and other medications I couldn’t even pronounce, and there was talk of a lung biopsy. Meanwhile, I was shooting up daily with the Follistim, trying to figure out how we were going to pay for both the expensive meds I was on and the ongoing hospital stay. (The doctors refused to release him, and the insurance company refused to pay for another weekend in the hospital. Every woman in the middle of infertility treatments gets the lecture from her specialist: relaxation and low levels of stress are essential for better fertility. However, if stress truly is a contraceptive, I wonder how any woman anywhere ever gets pregnant.)
Our specialist called me on Friday to let me know that the egg—the one and only egg I could produce—would be ready to pop the next morning. At the time, I was teaching three classes on Saturday mornings, and the thought of making forty-eight-plus calls to let people know I had to cancel class—not to mention the question of what I would say when they asked why—would leave me with an unbearable response. The plan was to get up at 3:30 a.m. to feed and walk the dogs, zoom to the hospital to pick up the sperm deposit by 5:45 a.m., then get on the road to the reproductive specialists no later than 6:00 a.m. This was either going to be the biggest bust or the funniest story we would ever tell our children.
“Where did I come from?” they would ask.
“Well,” we would say, “when two people love each other very much, they drive through the middle of the night to the hospital to pick up the sperm to transport it to a doctor who will put it in the right place to find the egg that will become a baby.”
I don’t know how I managed to get through the day, but I did—dogs, sperm, reproductive specialist, classes and all. Nevertheless, two weeks later, on the winter solstice, the blood test came back negative.
Since Dad’s death, the holidays had grown darker and darker, but this Christmas was my lowest point yet. Lawrence and I spent the day alone at home, making a roast and watching old movies. I called Mom to wish her a Merry Christmas, but when I tried to reach out to my sister and her family by calling them on Christmas, they were annoyed that I had called during dinner and never called back. I hadn’t told anyone other than Mom about our assisted reproductive quest. I hesitated in telling her, knowing that the whole family would treat it as nothing but fodder for derision, but because things had improved between us and she was so down after Dad’s death, I took a chance that she would be supportive, and it might cheer her up. I realized that when Mom was gone, too, I would officially have no family left but Lawrence and the dogs. She was happy and supportive, and I swore her to secrecy.
The only positive aspect of that Christmas was that Lawrence was home from the hospital and finally terrified enough to start taking care of himself. He was even inspired by the twelve days in the hospital to begin running and exercising.
All we could do was hope that Lawrence and I could create a family based on the love we had built and learned over the years rather than the dysfunction our families had taught us. We only had enough of the very expensive FSH for one more round, and we geared up to begin the IUI procedure again, hoping that the steroids Lawrence was on in the hospital would be out of his system and that the stress levels of the last round would not repeat themselves.
The only activities that were helping to lower my stress levels, even just a little bit, were my visits with Boo to Stepping Stones. If Lawrence and I couldn’t have a child of our own, then at least we could join Boo in helping those who were already here.
When Boo and I arrived at our next Stepping Stones visit, Penny told me the wonderful news about Marc and his response to Boo. As she finished telling me the story, she started to cry, so of course I started to cry because who could respond any other way? That was only the beginning, she continued. Days after Boo’s first visit, when she heard an unfamiliar voice tell one of the students, “Get in line!” she was riddled with goose bumps as she turned around to see it was Marc talking in line like all the other students. There were now days, she told me, that she actually had to tell him to use his indoor voice in class. It was a breakthrough that no one could have predicted, and no one could explain. Although there are still times when Marc lapses back into silence, he’s made incredible progress. As his mom April said, “Now that he can finally tell us how he feels, we’re discovering his personality. He’s still a very sweet, loving boy, but now he’s a talking sweetheart—with a lot to say!”
We know that dogs and other animals lower our stress and anxiety levels and that there is an anxiety component to selective mutism, but why now, and why Boo? Was it just timing? Was it something that Boo exudes? Was Boo a mirror for these kids, like he was for me, because of his learning disabilities? Could the kids feel him understanding them? These are the mysteries of AAT and the human–animal bond. Marc began to sleep each night with a photo of Boo under his pillow, cuddling with it like a security blanket. Even after my silly, clumsy and often daft dog went home, his presence continued to bring Marc the courage to keep on talking.
I well up with tears every time I think of that month. It was an incredible gift to learn that Boo gave a lost little boy back to his parents by shattering the silence that kept Marc imprisoned in lonely isolation. At the same time, Lawrence and I were devastated that we hadn’t conceived a little boy or girl of our own. The levels of irony were almost epic, although we were briefly encouraged, hoping that if a miracle happened for one child and his family, maybe there would be another miracle for us with our second IUI. The Follistim only helped me produce one egg the last go-round, so the doctor took me up to the maximum dosage of 900 IUIs. Yet, after three days on that nuclear dosage, there was zero sign of any egg lurking in my ovaries.
My body was shutting down. We had exhausted our supply of $5,000 FSHs, and there was no money for more. Lawrence had been out of work without pay for three weeks, our insurance didn’t cover infertility treatments or a good chunk of Lawrence’s hospital stay and now Porthos was having troubles again.
Dante and Porthos had always been the best of buddies. Matched almost identically in size and play style, they would body-slam each other with big, huge, happy grins, rapid-fire play bows (where their front ends go down and back ends stay up, as if they were engaged in some kind of medieval jousting contest that required courtly bows) and other play indicators. They routinely played tug with anything from a large toy to, eventually, the tiny remnants of that toy. When there were no toys around, they often simply mouth wrestled while we all lounged on the bed getting ready for sleep.
There aren’t many species on this planet that play into adulthood: humans, dogs, cats and a few others. Researchers are still working out all the reasons for play. Because it requires much energy and can be injurious, it often doesn’t fit into standard models of the furtherance and preservation of the species. Play for dogs builds community, allowing them to work out communication skills, and from an evolutionary point of view, it allows animals to role-play, if you will, the skills they would need for survival: wrestling, tugging, digging and even reproduction. The trick is that many of these games require immense trust because one dog’s mouth might be right up next to or in the other dog’s mouth. Dante and Porthos always had this level of trust with each other.
That is, until one cold, snow-covered day when Dante tried to play with Porthos in the backyard, and everything went horribly wrong. Whirling around, Porthos went straight for Dante’s throat, and all Dante could do was try to defend himself from the younger aggressor. At his age, Dante came in at about the equivalent of a seventy-five-year-old human. He was horribly outmatched by the spryer Porthos, whose four years of dog life made him around thirty-five in human years. Shaking with fear, I finally separated them, probably screaming the whole time, while Boo paced in a circle around us, worried and howling. The snow was covered with blood. Porthos had a few scrapes, but Dante seemed badly wounded. I put Porthos into the crate—thank goodness he had a reliable kennel-up command—and took Dante immediately to the vet’s.
Porthos hadn’t even signaled. He’d exploded from play to aggression. It was unusual for a dog’s personality to change like this: an adult dog’s established normal behavior will remain that dog’s behavior, with slow changes that come with age and experience (unless, of course, we are shaping behavior through training). So, whenever there is a sudden change in behavior, we have to ask if the dog’s overall health has changed. Big, dramatic changes like this are usually an indicator of health or neurological changes.
We managed Porthos carefully around Dante and Boo. I watched for any indication that his inflammatory bowel disease was flaring up, but he seemed fine. A week later, wanting to let the boys all have a good time together in open space, Lawrence took the three of them for a walk in the woods. Not more than three minutes after they left, he came running through the back door, Dante at his side.
“Porthos is dying!” he yelled. “Come now.” Dante’s expression was a mirror of Lawrence’s: a combination of worry and terror. I threw down my sewing and ran to join them.
Boo, meanwhile, never left Porthos’s side. When we got to the spot in the woods where Porthos had gone down, Boo was standing there, watching out for his charge and howling his usual coyote-like howl—whether warning or pleading for help, I will never know. Normally, when Boo is left to his own devices in the woods, he simply wanders from one scent to the next, like he had years ago on the walk with Cindy and Julie when we first diagnosed his disabilities. But this time, Boo remained in place, watching Porthos, perhaps in disbelief or perhaps to protect the dog he once cared for as a baby dog.
This kind of protective behavior isn’t uncommon for dogs. They have been known to protect one another from threats or outsiders. In the wake of a devastating earthquake and tsunami that ravaged Japan in 2011, rescue workers came upon two dogs, one injured and the other guarding him, refusing to let anyone near his injured friend. The workers were eventually able to persuade the vigilant guardian to let them approach, and the two dogs were rescued. I have to assume that Boo was protecting Porthos in this way, refusing to move from his post.
As Lawrence and I approached, we could see that Porthos was frothing massively at the mouth, whirling in circles without any control, stumbling over himself, his back end tucked so much that his tail appeared to be lost under his body. He barked wildly and menacingly at nothing that I could see, and even when I called his name and stood in front of him to get his attention, it was as if he didn’t recognize me. I had no idea what could be going on.
Eventually, I got my hand through Porthos’s collar and brought him back to the house. He continued to bark wildly and stumbled over himself the whole way back. Boo stayed at his side every step.
When Porthos was secured in his crate, Lawrence described the events. It sounded as if Porthos had a massive, knockdown seizure. I thought back to the altercation a week before. Sometimes small seizures in dogs can present themselves initially as sudden bouts of aggression. Panicked, I called Julie and Cindy at home on a Sunday. Julie, bless her, was home and told me to give him some Xanax, which we already had for the anxiety associated with his inflammatory bowel disease, and watch for any further neurological signs. If any appeared, I was to take him to the emergency clinic.
There were no more neurological events, and after watching him closely for the next week, the final pieces came together when Porthos went into diabetic ketoacidosis. He was hospitalized for three days. I brought him home each night to keep his anxiety under control, sat up with him most of each night to make sure he didn’t seize again and then took him back to the hospital first thing in the morning for treatment.
Porthos’s ability to go under things never fully developed after the trauma he’d gone through with the grooming table, and given the level of anxiety it would create for him to be in the cages at the hospital, the staff agreed to tether him to the cages in the procedure room, even though nose to tail he made a five-foot-plus obstacle around which the staff had to work. I will be forever grateful to them for this. At one point during his hospital stay, one of the doctors was worried about his level of energy and asked Julie and Cindy whether his behavior was normal, just lying there doing nothing. That question reminded me of the third graders who called Dante lazy. “No,” came the answer, “he’s just got a really great settle.”
The only thing that seemed to be going right for us around this time were Boo’s visits, in particular his visits to the Stepping Stones classroom. Boo loved visiting the sisters at Maryknoll and hearing the stories the kids would read to him at the library, but he was the mascot for the kids at Austin Road and seemed to know how important he was there. Marc continued to blossom, reading aloud more, drawing more, participating more. He drew picture after picture of Boo surrounded with red, glittering hearts. Penny predicted that Marc would eventually catch up with other kids his age and that he should expect to have the life every parent hopes their child will have.
By now, Boo’s effect on Marc had become a source of inspiration and community for the rest of the kids in the Stepping Stones class. For weeks after the first time Marc spoke, the other kids cheered every time he opened his mouth. “Thanks for talking to us, Marc!” they would say, or, “Marc, you talk great. Good job!” As he was lavished with praise, the shy little boy blossomed, but that wasn’t the only thing that was going on. Positive-reinforcement trainers know that when we praise our dogs for doing well, it makes us feel good, too (simply put, positive thinking can release serotonin, the happy neurotransmitter), which means that the simple act of all the kids working together to support Marc helped all of them. Boo’s miraculous work with Marc didn’t only include the humans. After seeing how he responded to Boo, Marc’s family got him a little rescued Jack Russell, adding another save to Boo’s record.
Visit after visit, more members of the class experienced their own Boo miracle. Alexander, for example, was sweet and attentive, patiently waiting for his turn to be with Boo, always following directions very well. I was shocked when Penny told me that Alexander suffered from severe ADHD and that before Boo started coming to class, he regularly erupted in frequent tantrums, couldn’t hold a still position for more than five minutes and never made eye contact with the other kids. This was not the Alexander that Boo and I knew. There were no tantrums, he stayed seated for the entire hour of our visit and even after the dog left, Penny said, Alexander remained calmer and more focused for the rest of the day. “The dog has brought out Alexander’s caring side,” she continued, “and he’s blossomed both socially and academically. It’s amazing that an animal has such a healing power.” Alexander improved so much that he was able to start attending mainstream classes twice a week. His parents were so impressed with their son’s progress that they made plans to get him a rescue dog of his own. By my count, this puts two more saves in Boo’s win column.
Boo’s career and our infertility treatments continued along parallel paths. We were thrilled to find that Boo was nominated as a finalist for the Pet Partners’ national Beyond Limits Award for an outstanding AAT team, and we got the news just as we were moving into the world of donor eggs. Once again, I was hopeful that this was a sign of good things to come. Lawrence got a better job with good health coverage, so we would get at least part of one round of the very expensive infertility treatment covered, and Mom insisted on helping out, too. Boo was on CBS Evening News, in our local papers and even in the New York Post, and animal fans nationwide were voting for their favorite Beyond Limits finalists in a YouTube election. At the same time, we had our first batch of fertilized donor eggs implanted. I couldn’t be more thrilled for Boo: win or lose, the little dog who everyone thought was a dullard was chosen from thousands of entries to be a Beyond Limits Award finalist. Even Dante hadn’t made it that far.
The first implantation of fertilized donor eggs didn’t take, and although Boo didn’t win the most votes, my overall joy at his successes kept my spirits up despite the infertility battle. After the second batch of implanted donor eggs, we were overjoyed when the doctor called to tell me that I was “a little bit pregnant.” It seemed that all our hopes had been well placed. He said the hCG (human chorionic gonadotropin, the hormone that indicates pregnancy and is measured in home pregnancy tests) numbers weren’t great—they would have produced a negative on a home pregnancy test—but they were high enough to indicate pregnancy, and he was guardedly optimistic. The pregnancy was heavily supported with progesterone shots, and for a few weeks, Lawrence and I watched the numbers creep up little by little. I recognized the physical state I was in from times before when I’d thought my period was just very late. This was a particularly painful revelation for me: it meant that at least a few times I had actually been pregnant naturally but lost the baby.
At six-and-a-half weeks into the pregnancy, there was some bleeding, and the doctors said the hCG numbers were dropping. I had miscarried. They stopped all support and told me to keep coming back into the office to make sure the miscarriage went appropriately, or I would need a D&C procedure. It seemed that my body was telling me no, it was not going to support a pregnancy. My heart was shattered, and Lawrence withdrew into himself.
We never had a direct conversation about how we felt. Our feelings were all over the floor in a heap, and the only approach we could take was to try to slog through and organize them. We had spent his entire bonus that year and then some, as well as the money gifted by my mother to pay for the treatments. I had no strength emotionally or physically to go back to blood draws, injections, diets and the blame that comes from the loss. I was wracked with self-inflicted guilt: Did I work too much? Did I eat the wrong thing? Even if we had any faith left in our ability to get pregnant, we were too broke—emotionally and financially—to keep trying donor eggs. It was clear to both of us that repeated rounds would just be deflating and depressing.
It was time to begin the domestic adoption process. My age disqualified us from almost every possible means of adoption save for Friends in Adoption, and even they knew it was going to be almost impossible for a birth mother to choose me over the hundreds of better mommy options out there. By the end of the three-year average waiting period, I would be older than many young grandmothers. Still, it was all Lawrence and I had to hope for.
He was sure that we would be chosen quickly. “Why wouldn’t a birth mother or birth parents choose us? We have a lot to offer.”
“That’s besides the point,” I would say, trying to hide the echoes of my family in my head that told me that regardless of what we had to offer a child—a loving home with loving parents, creativity, sensitivity and wonderful animals—no family would want me. I just had to hang onto Lawrence’s hope and focus my attention back to the faces eager to see Boo and whatever silly games I had ready for them.
One little girl named Heather liked giving Boo kisses and hugs, but she also loved the care-taking exercises, such as brushing Boo or—her favorite—the Boo-Boo Boo game, which made everybody laugh, kids and adults alike. I would buy a box of silly kids’ bandages with Scooby Doo or Sponge Bob on them, and the kids would take turns fixing a pretend boo-boo on Boo, just as their parents fixed their boo-boos. For many of them, the simple act of taking a bandage out of the wrapper, pulling the tabs off and placing it somewhere on Boo—and focusing enough to do it—was a big effort, but the prospect of seeing Boo covered with silly bandages by the end of the exercise was a great incentive. The kids would tell Boo to feel better as they dressed his imaginary wounds. Remarkably tolerant Boo delighted at the attention and naturally just didn’t care that there were countless bandages clinging to his furry body. (Fear not, no Boos were harmed in the making of this game. I made sure to remove all bandages with the utmost care, without pulling out hairs.)
Another game the kids squealed over, and the one I most enjoyed putting together, was Where in the World Is Boo? I would ask Lawrence to make silly photoshopped pictures of Boo in various places on the planet and sometimes in outer space, too. I told the kids that Boo was a great explorer and challenged them to guess where he traveled to by the surroundings in the picture. Once they guessed the location, I would show them pictures of various things Boo might pick up on his travels, and the kids would have to identify them. When I held up the silly black-and-white picture of Boo wearing a pith helmet, floating in bad perspective next to the pyramids, Alexander alone shouted, “Egypt!” The kids clamored to gather around the images of the treasures Boo collected on his adventure and correctly identified games, vases and other artifacts from the ancient civilization. Penny was impressed at their focus and level of abstract thinking in these games, but I wasn’t surprised that Boo could make even geography fun. Lawrence put a silly Jacques Cousteau hat on Boo for his trip to Paris to see the Eiffel Tower, and once we even managed to land him on the moon.
In return, each time Boo came to visit, the kids showed him pictures they’d drawn of him, Boo holiday cards and a crown they’d made for him. They even wrote a story about him that they illustrated with their drawings. Even when he wasn’t present in the classroom, Boo was still motivating this group of very special kids. For Matthew, the boy who’d stayed as far away from Boo as possible during the first visit, the regularity of Boo’s visits—and the class’s focus on and love of Boo between visits—was a gift. It wasn’t just Boo or other living dogs that terrified him; Matthew even refused to play with stuffed animals. Yet, each visit, he was able to move much closer to the circle.
When we desensitize dogs to a trigger, like I did with Boo to my truck when he was still a puppy, we can’t rely on language and abstract processing to explain that the trigger won’t hurt them. With people, however, just discussing something that is scary in joyful terms—the way the class talked about Boo when he wasn’t there—can help the desensitization process. When Matthew participated in drawing pictures of Boo, making Boo cards and telling Boo stories, he was using abstract processing and forming a positive association with Boo. Every time Boo came to Stepping Stones, Matthew looked more interested and excited. By the third month, he was in the circle with the other kids. Boo couldn’t quite approach Matthew for a hello yet, but he could walk close by, especially when Matthew was enthralled by some of our sillier games.
One day we were playing Red Rover, Red Rover, Let Boo Come Over, in which the kids line up in two lines across from each other and call Boo back and forth between the two lines. One child would help me walk Boo across the gap and then exchange places with the next child in line. During this game, the unimaginable happened: Matthew allowed Boo to glide past him so closely that the dog’s fur just brushed his skin. Matthew didn’t even notice at the time, but when everyone congratulated him on his courage, I could tell how proud he was of himself. Soon afterward, he would even hold the end of Boo’s leash (with me holding the leash in between) to walk around the circle for Duck, Duck, Boo. The black Lab mix had finally gained the boy’s trust, and Matthew was never separate from the Boo festivities again.
The fact that Penny was able to fill me in on the children’s progress between visits was an incredible gift to me. It’s invaluable for me to know what’s working during visits so I can tailor the activities appropriately, either continuing with a successful activity or changing it to make it more effective. It’s also the purest form of positive reinforcement. Hearing stories like Marc’s, Alexander’s and Matthew’s tells me that the time away from my husband and dogs at home, or away from clients and classes, is very well spent. Whenever I slouch at the inconvenience of getting Boo ready for visits—the weekly nail grinding, the regular teeth brushing, the baths, the inspections right before each visit—all I have to do is remind myself how much of an effect he has on the people he visits, and I straighten right back up again. I think about all the lives Boo and Dante have touched and remember why I got into animal-assisted visiting in the first place: to share the healing powers of dogs and to show just how strong their love can be. There is no greater gift we can give to ourselves than to give happiness to others.
My journey with Boo, a journey that began on that magical Halloween day, has been one of humility, gratitude and joy. He taught me that all of us learn at different speeds and that although not all dogs may be able to learn the same things or perform the same tricks, we all have our hidden strengths and abilities. He taught me that there was no reason to choose harsh punishments and training methods when gentle methods work better and build a better relationship. He taught me to disregard the silly notion that a dog who doesn’t comply with a command is being dominant. I think back to that long year of potty-training Boo and how he shut down in class with the über-puppies. Thanks to Boo’s patience with me, instead of assuming a dog is being stubborn or dominant, I ask myself, What is that dog telling me? Is the command unclear? Is it that he physically can’t do the behavior? Is he afraid? It’s not my job to dominate a dog; it’s my job to understand him, and with that understanding, I will get what I need from the dog. When I do my job properly, it makes me a better trainer and probably a better human being.
Boo taught me to have faith in a dog to learn, even if the pace is slower than expected. I shudder to think what would have happened to Boo in another home. Dogs who don’t house-train quickly don’t usually get to stay, and even if they do, if they also have trouble learning simple commands—like to sit and lay down—they’re often ignored and left to languish. In the wrong environment, dogs with Boo’s initial level of fear and anxiety are typically crippled by that fear and run a huge risk of becoming fear-biters, often ending up in shelters or being euthanized.
But Boo didn’t just teach me about dogs, he also taught me about life. He taught me to be patient with others, to understand that we all work within our own limitations and more important, he taught me to be patient with myself. He taught me that different doesn’t automatically mean bad and that the parts of myself I’ve always seen as disabilities might actually, in some circumstances, be advantages. To this day, I’m not sure if Boo was such a successful therapy dog despite his disabilities or because of them. Dante may have been funnier and more entertaining, and Porthos may have been smarter, but Boo—with his love of people, his clumsy snuzzles and his funny gait—taught me that sometimes disabilities and differences can be the greatest, most powerful assets.
Boo taught others, too. He taught Lawrence that he could be a good father and gave him the faith and courage to want a family of his own. Boo brought warm snuggles at night curled up between us. Although he was not the dog I originally wanted him to be, never becoming a service dog for Chuck, Boo proved he was better than I could have dreamed—having gifts for more than just one person—and I suspect Chuck would have approved of Boo’s other career plans. Boo wasn’t able to help Chuck when he lost his power of speech, but Boo was destined to give Marc the gift of speech. Without the early (if ambitious) training I did with Boo, he would never have become a Pet Partner. The road that led Boo to help Marc and so many others began with bitter disappointment, but it ultimately led to a truly spectacular series of gifts—gifts that for some, like Marc, only Boo could have given.
Boo turned out to be so much more than I could ever have imagined. He’s not bright. He doesn’t do tricks. He bumps into things and usually has a confused look about him. I often work with clients who are disappointed and frustrated by their dogs’ behavior. I remind everyone that the universe doesn’t always give us the dogs we want; it gives us the dogs that we need—and the dogs that need us. It’s up to us to discover their gifts and forge a loving partnership to help us all realize their true potentials. By doing so, we can learn and grow in ways that may surprise us. Ultimately, that’s the true magic of the human–animal bond—and the true miracle of Boo.