Chester and Gus Read online

  I knew this would happen sooner or later and it would be the saddest part about becoming a real service dog. I loved Penny more than I’d ever loved anyone. I couldn’t imagine leaving her, but recently I’d come up with a new idea where maybe I wouldn’t have to. My plan was to get matched with someone Penny could fall in love with. Then she could marry that person and we could all live together afterward!

  It was a great idea except it made me extra nervous meeting the group. I tried to avoid going near the people who looked like they were already married, but that was hard to figure out. I definitely avoided the three children in the group. I knew Penny felt uncomfortable with children, so I didn’t think she’d want to marry one.

  At demonstration time, each dog and trainer pair were given five minutes. Hershey and Milton used more time than they should have showing off tricks. When it was my turn, there wasn’t much time left.

  Penny and I walked out to the middle of the group. Across the yard, I saw my mother and I thought about Cocoa, who’d wanted her own person, too, but couldn’t stop eating things she wasn’t supposed to. I heard my mother’s voice: Some dogs aren’t meant to do this work. That’s just how it is.

  I looked at the strangers sitting in the chairs. “Okay, Chester, are you ready?” Penny whispered.

  Panic rose up from my stomach to my throat. No, I told her. I don’t want to leave you.

  “Heel,” she said.

  I did.

  “Sit.”

  I did.

  “Stay, please.”

  I did.

  “That’s a good dog,” Penny said, crouching down to hug me. Then she stood back up to talk about me to the group like the other trainers had about their dogs. “Chester is a highly intelligent, very sensitive dog. I’ve trained seven dogs now, and there are many ways in which he’s different from any of the others.”

  I could tell she was nervous. She kept wiping her hands on the front of her skirt.

  “From the very beginning, I noticed that Chester seemed to understand certain words before I’d ever taught them to him. I’ve done some research about canine language acquisition and discovered that some unusual dogs can pick up on our speech even when they aren’t being directly addressed or trained. When tested, some of them have a vocabulary of up to five hundred words or more.”

  I saw Wendy in the back of the circle point to her watch.

  Penny kept going: “Anyone who chooses Chester should know that he currently has a working vocabulary of at least three hundred words along with the ability to infer meaning, which I’ve never seen in a dog before. If I lay out three objects, two of which are known to him, and ask him to select one with a name he doesn’t recognize, he’ll infer that it must be the item he doesn’t know. This is almost unheard of in the animal kingdom outside of chimpanzees and gorillas. I’ve talked to some canine behavior scientists who’ve told me they’d like to meet Chester.”

  I was proud to hear all this, but also worried. She’d gone on for so long, it was a little embarrassing. Milton snorted in boredom. Hershey yawned.

  Also, she was telling people how smart I was rather than having me show them.

  Finally Wendy thanked Penny and told her our time was up. “Our guests need a chance to meet these dogs and get to know them one on one. Trainers, if you don’t mind, we’ll ask you to move around the room and give each person here a chance to interact with your dog—”

  “I just have to say one more thing,” Penny interrupted. “Chester is an extraordinarily smart dog, but he is also a little sound sensitive. He overreacts to loud, unexpected sounds. We’ve worked on it a lot, but I’m not sure how much better it’s gotten. There. I just had to say that.”

  Wendy smiled at Penny, but it wasn’t a real smile. “Fine then. Thank you, Penny.”

  “It’s not that intrusive. He’s fine with telephones and microwaves. He has a hard time with sirens and thunderstorms.”

  “Yes, okay. Thank you again, Penny.”

  After that, we moved around the room like the other dog/trainer pairs, but no one reached out to pet me or ask any questions. One man whose wife was in a wheelchair asked Penny what sort of words I knew. “Well, nouns, mostly,” Penny said. “I test him by laying three objects on the floor and asking him to fetch one.”

  “And you don’t think he looks at your eyes to figure out which one you’re after?”

  “No,” she said, but I could tell she was surprised, like maybe she hadn’t thought of this before. “I don’t think so.”

  “Dogs are pretty good at reading people’s faces. Understanding what we’re saying, I’m not so sure about.”

  “Oh, Chester understands. I know he does. I could do a demonstration right now. If I lay out a towel, a sock, and a shirt and ask for one, he’ll get it right eighty-two percent of the time.”

  She was talking too fast and her face was red. She wanted people to like me, but instead they were moving away from her. I didn’t blame them exactly. These people were in wheelchairs mostly. They needed different kinds of help. They weren’t interested in my vocabulary.

  I watched Hershey, who’d obviously found the person he’d always dreamed of: a burly, tattooed man in a wheelchair. They already loved each other, I could tell. Milton had also found his person—a gray-haired woman who used a walker. He sat beside her, with his chin raised for a scratch. She was bent over, talking softly to him.

  It had been less than an hour, but already each person had picked out their dog. The only leftovers were me and Grendel, a high-strung poodle waiting to be matched with a dog-allergic person.

  I worried that Penny might start to cry in front of the group. I smelled tears coming. I nudged her with my nose and then my whole face. It’ll be okay, I said. I get to go home and stay with you now! We’ll come back and try again next month!

  She didn’t hear me of course.

  Now I understand that something more was going on. Penny wasn’t about to cry. She was mad. She was also watching the sky, and the dark clouds rolling in. She knew what was coming before anyone else out in the yard did. She saw the jagged finger of lightning. I don’t know why she didn’t move to get us inside before the explosion, unless maybe she knew what would happen and wanted it to transpire exactly as it did.

  These people had already chosen the dogs they wanted and I wasn’t one of them.

  They’d already rejected me.

  Maybe she thought: We’ll stand right here and make sure we never have to go through this again.

  The next thing I knew, thunder cracked above us. I thought the sky had exploded. I thought the world was ending. I scrambled to the nearest cover I could find, a ramp outside my old play yard. I shut my eyes for a long time.

  When the noise finally stopped, I opened my eyes. Three puppies and my mother were staring at me.

  “What’s wrong with him?” they asked my mother.

  “Never mind him,” she said, walking away.

  When Penny finally found me, she said only, “Come on, Chester, we’re going.”

  We walked to her car past a half dozen dogs getting to know their new person on the porch. It was raining by then but we were the ones getting wet. My brothers didn’t look at me or say goodbye. Wendy called out to Penny, “We’ll be in touch!”

  Penny kept walking.

  “Never mind these people,” Penny said when we got into the car. “I mean it, Chester. You’re too smart to do this work. You’re too good for all of them. We’re going home.”

  How to Communicate

  PENNY STAYED AWAKE LATE THAT NIGHT reading about Chantek, an orangutan who learned sign language, and Rocky, a sea lion who did math problems with his flippers.

  “I never knew how smart animals could be, Chester. It’s amazing. Bring me my red reading glasses, would you?”

  She’d forgotten that colors were hard for me. I brought her one pair. “Not those,” she said. “The red ones.” She was hunched over the computer, squinting at typeface.

  I foun
d another pair and hoped for the best.

  “There they are! Thank you!”

  The more she read, the better she felt about what happened at the farm.

  “This could turn out to be the best thing that happened to either one of us. If you’d found a match there, you would have spent the rest of your life working for someone else. Instead we can focus on you, and getting the world to recognize how smart you are.”

  She kept reading for most of the afternoon. By the end of the day she had a plan worked out. “I’ve just found out there are dogs who can be taught to read. At first you do it by reading commands off prompt cards. Once you get the idea, we keep building in new words until you have the reading vocabulary of a first grader! Then I put up a wall of words and when there’s something you want to tell me, I’ll attach a laser pointer to your head that will read the words as you look at them. Think about it, Chess—you’ll be able to talk!”

  I wasn’t sure about this. How would reading help me be a better service dog? Were there people with disabilities who used flash cards, not words? I hadn’t seen anything like that in the videos we watched, but maybe there were.

  For the rest of the day, we worked on the first card she wanted me to learn. It had “SIT” written in large black letters.

  “Siiiiiit,” she said, holding up the card. She pointed to the word and drew it out.

  I sat, of course. My rump knows only how to follow orders. Next, Penny pulled out the same sign again and said nothing.

  I sat again. It wasn’t hard to make Penny happy. She squealed and clapped and showered me with kisses.

  Over the course of the afternoon, she made up three more signs, each one written in a different color ink on a different color paper. Even if I had trouble with my colors, it wasn’t hard to memorize what each card looked like. “STAY” was in big black letters. “SHAKE PAW” was in smaller letters. “BANG” was on a card with a folded corner.

  I wasn’t really reading them of course. Dogs can’t read words. But we know how to please people. When Penny explained what “BANG” meant and showed me the trick, that was easy too. By the end of the day, I’d mastered all four cards. Penny was thrilled.

  “You’re already better than Willow! She can read only three commands and she made it onto Good Morning America!”

  All this excitement made Penny a little breathless when she answered the phone that evening. “Yes, hello, Wendy! We’re fine,” I heard her say. “Better than fine, in fact! I’ve just taught Chester to read four words.”

  I hoped Penny wouldn’t go on or say the part about how I might learn to talk soon using a laser pointer attached to my head. I knew Wendy would think it sounded silly. Penny didn’t say anything about that—instead, she went quiet for a while.

  “But I don’t understand. I assumed Chester would have another chance to find a match . . . Are you saying that because no one picked him that one time, he has no chance of being a service dog—”

  Wendy must have cut her off. The next thing I heard was: “I won’t do that, Wendy. It’s not right. I told you I’m happy to keep him for now.”

  I didn’t understand what was happening until she hung up and called her sister. By then, she was crying. “She’s telling me I can’t keep Chester—that I should read my contract, which says if he fails the qualifying test or can’t find a match, they’ll place him with a suitable family. Legally he’s theirs! I’m not allowed to keep training him!”

  I wasn’t sure why this surprised her when she’d been telling me all along that this would happen. “You won’t live with me forever, Chester. I wish you could but that’s not the deal.”

  “They obviously don’t care about him. Apparently a family will pay eight hundred dollars for a service dog reject. All they care about is the money!”

  She turned away from me as she yelled into the phone.

  I never understood that. Penny had spent so much time confirming how much language I understood—then she said things like that right in front of me.

  That night, Penny invited me onto the sofa and showed me the video clip of Willow’s appearance on Good Morning America. “Maybe this will cheer us up. This dog is famous like you should be.”

  After I watched it, I understood. Dogs don’t learn to read to help people. They learn to read to get on TV. Penny wanted to show up Wendy and the others on the farm who had made her so nervous at our demonstration.

  Realizing all this didn’t make me love Penny less—it only made me wish I could read her words and talk to her using a word wall and a laser. Then I could tell her that she didn’t need to try so hard or get so nervous. We didn’t need to be on TV for people to like her. I loved her and I knew other people would too. If we could just relax and be ourselves, everything will be okay.

  That’s what I would have said to Penny if I could talk in words she understood.

  But I couldn’t of course, so I just sat beside her and watched videos of people pretending their dogs could read.

  Mysterious Boy

  A FEW DAYS LATER, SARA AND MARC came to visit.

  “We have a little boy, Gus, who can’t wait to meet you,” Sara said, getting down on the floor beside me.

  Marc laughed, sounding a little nervous. “I don’t know about that. We have a boy who’s not sure how he feels about dogs, so we’re hoping to get a really nice one.”

  Penny was in the corner of the kitchen, not saying anything.

  “He needs a friend like you,” Sara whispered. “We love him so much, but it’s not easy figuring out how to be his friend. He doesn’t really like other people very much, especially other kids, so we’re hoping, maybe with the right dog—”

  I liked these people fine, but they didn’t seem like the right match for me. Especially the part about having a boy at home. I thought about the boy who carried me up the slide. Boys made me nervous.

  “He’s not great with children,” Penny said.

  I was surprised. It was the first mean thing I’d ever heard her say about me.

  Sara seemed surprised too. “Really? He seems like he’s got such a gentle disposition. Like he’d be great with kids.”

  “Maybe I should say he hasn’t spent a lot of time with them. I tried, but both times we had incidents that left him pretty scared. It’s hard for me to say how he’d react around a group of children.”

  I thought about my one time sitting in front of the school, with all the girls hugging me and whispering in my ear before the bell rang. I liked that part. I really did.

  “I don’t know,” Sara said. “Maybe this is crazy, but I have an instinct this is the right dog for us. Don’t you feel it too, Marc? Look at his eyes. Don’t you think Gus will fall in love?”

  “I don’t know, sweetheart. Maybe.”

  “I think I’ll call Wendy and tell her we’ve found him. This is the one we want.”

  I could tell Penny was upset. She didn’t want me to go with these people. “Maybe I should come out to your house and meet your son. Just to get a better sense of the situation.”

  “Okay,” Sara said and looked at Marc. “Is that how it’s done?”

  “I could help Chester get settled and show you what he can do. I know he’s not an official service dog, but he’s so capable, he ought to be able to use all his skills.”

  “Oh, we’d love that Penny! What a nice offer! That sounds great.”

  That night, Penny and I sat together on the sofa for our last dinner and evening of watching TV together. I knew she was sad. So was I.

  “I don’t know if these are the right people for you, Chester. That’s why I asked to come out to their house. I can’t bear to think of you ending up with a family who wastes your gifts. I promise that if I get a bad feeling while we’re at their house, I’m going to do whatever I have to to get you back.”

  I knew how sad she was. I put my head in her lap and licked her hand. I thought about my mother, who didn’t care when I left. I promise I’ll make you proud! I tried to tell Penny. I�
��ll use everything you taught me. People will see me and know I had the best trainer in the world!

  The next day Penny drove me over to their house. I wanted us both to be brave. I didn’t want them to think Penny was strange or nervous the way Wendy did.

  “I’m going to tell them you can read,” she announced in the car. “I want them to know that it’s a possibility for you. Maybe I’ll show them the videos of Willow.”

  I’m not sure that’s a good idea, I tried to tell her with my eyes.

  “Obviously they won’t have as much time to work with you on it as I did, but I still think they should know.”

  When we walked into the house, the first thing Penny said was “I’ve brought some flash cards I’ve been using to teach Chester how to read. I know that might sound crazy, but there are professionals out there who say teaching dogs to read is the best chance we have to achieve real communication between dogs and people. I think Chester is capable of this. I’ve never known a dog who is so intelligent.”

  Sara and Marc looked at each other. “Okay,” Sara finally said.

  Penny kept going: “I understand that you’re adopting him into your family, but I’d like him to have a chance to realize his full potential. That’s all.”

  “Why don’t you give us the flash cards and whatever other material you have? It sounds great. I’m happy to look through it.”

  Penny looked confused. She thought about it for a minute and then said, “Do you mean it or are you just saying that?”

  “Oh, I mean it! A dog who can read! How exciting. We had no idea.”

  Penny smiled. I could tell she liked Sara more now and didn’t care when Sara went upstairs and came back down to say, “I’m so sorry about this, but Gus is feeling too shy to come out of his room right now.”

  She didn’t wonder what that meant or worry that it might be a bad sign. Instead she sat down with Sara and told her more about my reading program. I didn’t listen to that part. I was wondering why a boy wouldn’t come down and meet his new dog. The more I thought about it, the stranger it seemed. Why hadn’t he come with his parents to Penny’s house? Then I got an idea: Maybe he was in a wheelchair! If he was and I ran into Milton, he would think I was a real service dog and not just a family pet! In fact, he didn’t have to be in a wheelchair. Maybe he could be blind or deaf. Just someone with problems that I could help with. That’s what I hoped.