Dog Named Leaf (7 page)

I was fascinated to see Leaf’s behavior evolve at the dog park, especially when Jaws wasn’t there. He became fixated on a big, slow-moving,
black-and-tan collie mutt named Norman who’d lie in the sun with his prized possession—an orange ball—resting between his two front paws. According to Norman’s owner, the rescued dog kept his ball with him all the time at home and in the park.

One day Leaf walked over to where Norman relaxed and without hesitation took the ball and ran like a shoplifter. Norman chased after his ball for twenty minutes. Although the large old dog probably needed exercise, having this upstart steal his ball was sacrilegious. When Norman finally got it back, he no longer relaxed with it in the middle of the park. Instead, he kept it in his mouth.

A day or two later, Leaf and I returned to the dog park with his favorite, small, red-and-white ball. He never tired of having me throw this ball for him to chase. This one had all the characteristics of a perfect ball. Its smooth surface allowed for good bouncing, and it was small enough for Leaf’s mouth to easily hold.

Norman suddenly lost interest in his orange ball and chased Leaf’s red-and-white one, forcing Leaf to run the entire time. He had to protect his property by keeping the ball firmly gripped in his mouth. “What goes around comes around,” I told Leaf as he sunk his teeth deeper into his perfect ball.

A
PAT ON MY SHOULDER WOKE ME UP
. L
EAF HAD JUMPED UP ON MY SIDE
of the bed. With shaking hands, I reached for his soft body and wrapped my arms around the little dog. I glanced over on the other side of the bed. Linda was there, still asleep.

“It was a dream. A nightmare,” I whispered to Leaf and hugged him tightly into my chest. I was surprised that he let me. His soothing touch helped my racing heartbeat to slow down.

The disheveled sheets indicated that I must have been thrashing about, frantically searching for the elusive ticket counter. I listened to the steady intake and exhale of Linda’s breath, but her serene face in the morning light did not comfort me. She, with everyone else I had ever known, had left me behind. Leaf lay still and drifted off to sleep on my chest. I chided myself for not being able to shake off the anger, desperation, and confusion I’d felt in the nightmare.

Later that morning I sat in the living room with Linda. We drank our coffee and glanced out the picture window at children boarding the school bus across the street. I told her about the vivid dream. With his
front and back legs fully extended, Leaf lay flat on the gray carpet in front of me and listened intently.

At first I wondered if I should talk to Linda about the nightmare. I did not want to burden my wife with what to me seemed like a premonition of catastrophic loss. But did she need to be prepared? What if the dream presented something that I knew inside of me but hadn’t been able to face?

Linda listened quietly while I described the dream. She asked, “Did you try to go back into the dream and finish it?” I told her that I woke up with a start. Leaf had been there to comfort me. Her face turned pale.

For a few moments we sat silently. The sounds of children’s laughter on the sidewalk had ended with the arrival of the school bus. Linda got up and put her arms around me and rested her head on my shoulder.

“It’s only a possibility.” I cringed at the tremor in her voice. We both knew from our spiritual studies that dreams have meaning. They often warn the dreamer of things to come. “Maybe it’s what could happen in some alternate universe. But not here. Not to us,” she assured me. I squeezed her shoulder, unable to speak. “And besides, I’m not letting go of you.”

I yearned to believe her soothing words. Like Jaws going after Leaf in the dog park, the dream wouldn’t let go. Besides, I could tell Linda wasn’t as certain as she tried to appear. Her assurances had sounded more like questions.

More than anything, I wanted to believe that the dream was unimportant, a perfectly understandable but inconsequential expression of anxiety. Yet I couldn’t shake off the sensation that I’d foreseen the outcome of the brain aneurysm and surgery. It wasn’t the happy ending I needed.

Leaf stood up and came over to us. He stared at me with his penetrating coal eyes. Then he jumped onto the couch and sat by my other side. He lowered his body next to mine and put his head on my knee. I stroked the smooth fur on his forehead. The pall of the dream draped over me like a shroud.

During the next few days, Leaf started acting oddly. He’d paw the living room coffee table until any newspaper, envelope, or magazine on top of it fell to the floor. With great focus and attention, he shredded them into tiny scraps. Each time I discovered scattered papers on the floor, I’d ask, “Leaf, what are you doing?” His behavior puzzled me. He’d never been like Taylor, who gnawed on anything that looked chewable. Why had he suddenly started ripping up papers?

As if trying to answer my question, Leaf would pick up one of the smaller shreds in his mouth and bring it to me. As soon as he delivered one piece, he’d grab another shred with his mouth and give it to me. With great determination, he persisted by tearing larger pieces of newspapers and magazines and gripping them in his jaws. He’d repeatedly shake his head and rip them into fragments. Then he’d bring the scraps to me. “Stop!” I’d finally yell at him.

I’d either scoop the papers off the floor or leave the living room so I could have some quiet and drink my coffee elsewhere. With all I had on my mind, I was not in the mood to deal with my dog’s new way of acting out. I had no idea why he was making such a mess. Having to pick up after him annoyed me. Why couldn’t he just behave and leave me alone?

Eventually, I was so frustrated that I gathered up magazines or newspapers from the living room coffee table and brought them to the adjacent dining room. I stacked the papers in the middle of the table where Leaf couldn’t reach them. It wasn’t exactly the best spot, since we had to move them aside in order to eat our meals. But at least the coveted items were no longer targets of Leaf’s strange obsession. Moving the papers out of his reach finally forced him to stop the weirdness.

The more I thought about the nightmare and my exclusion from the “Building of Life,” the more Leaf followed me around the house. He slept underneath my computer. He climbed onto my old lounge chair and watched me when I dressed for work. Perhaps I was imagining it, but it
looked to me as if my gloom and anxiety weighed heavily on his young shoulders. He’d been through so much loss in his young life. I began to feel guilty over the possibility that I could be causing him more distress.

I wasn’t able to reassure him that everything would be all right. The dream had shaken me to my core. Would my dog, still emotionally fragile, have his world rocked once again? What if, as my dream had predicted, I had been denied a ticket to the Building of Life? What would happen to Linda and me? What would happen to Leaf?

W
ITH THE BRAIN SURGERY LOOMING
, I
WORKED HARD TO HOLD ON TO
my concept of normalcy. My daily routine consisted of going to work at my day job and writing at home in the evenings and on weekends. Life with my wife and our pets was especially important now. After the dream in which I lost everybody I loved and cared for, I appreciated each waking moment.

I especially enjoyed observing Leaf’s slow progress from fearfulness to trust. With his startling intelligence and amazing ability to communicate and strategize, he was a perfect subject to study. I took volumes of notes on our adventures together. Surely I would write about Leaf in depth someday. My growing affection and respect for him brought us closer as friends.

Leaf was the most deliberate and careful dog I’d ever known. He pursued what he wanted but only after assessing each situation and deciding that the time was right for him to act. At our local small dog park with its picnic tables and shade trees I had the opportunity to watch him repeatedly use strategies and problem-solving skills to get what he wanted. What he wanted on one occasion was to play with the ladies, or at least one lady in particular.

About six months after we adopted him, one of our visits to the dog park turned out to be different from all the others. We were there for about fifteen minutes, while Leaf played with several large dogs. From
the corner of my eye, I saw a dignified woman wearing a long, pale-pink overcoat. She walked a bulldog who wore a shocking-pink collar that glinted in the sunlight. I would not have expected a woman in such an impeccable outfit to bring her pooch to a lowly dog park.

Nonetheless, both the woman and her dog arrived at the gate. The woman looked down and asked, “Ethel, do you want to play here or go for a nice, peaceful walk?” Ethel immediately pulled away from the gate. She wanted the walk. With great dignity, the woman and Ethel began their slow stroll down the sidewalk next to the fence.

Leaf studied their interaction. When Ethel led the woman away, he clearly wanted to do something to change the bulldog’s mind. Running like a bullet to the fence, he kept pace with the retreating Ethel. He wiggled, waggled, squealed, and barked. In doggy language he tried to convince her to come into the park. He spotted a tennis ball, picked it up in his mouth, ran back to the fence, and dropped it in front of his paws to
tempt her. Leaf was determined to persuade Ethel that playing with him would be preferable to taking a boring walk.

My boy finally got Ethel’s attention. She glanced over at him and slowed down. Leaf gave his last squealing appeal. He wiggled his whole backside and then quietly sat. How could Ethel resist a romp with a fellow who looked so cute and playful?

There was a moment of silence. Ethel and the woman looked at Leaf. To seal the deal, Leaf splayed out his front and back paws and furiously wagged his tail.

That did it. Ethel made a U-turn so fast that the woman lost her grip on the pink leash. Leaf sprang to his feet and hurried to greet Ethel with unbridled enthusiasm.

Once inside the dog park, the woman unhooked the bulldog from her leash. Leaf immediately covered Ethel with multiple doggy kisses. With unrestrained joy, he sniffed her all over. His expectations of how much fun the bulldog would be were fulfilled. Ethel at first played hard to get—this is a game Leaf dearly loves. Then she dropped the elusive female charade, and the two of them ran side by side with abandon. They kept pace like two slow race horses sprinting around a track. Their fur touched. Leaf’s ears flopped in the wind. In a
Lady and the Tramp
moment, Ethel forgot her good breeding and let herself have fun with a scruffy former shelter dog.

The woman asked, “Is that your dog?”

“Yes, his name is Leaf. He’s our little teenage boy.”

“Ethel normally prefers walking,” the woman murmured.

Ethel and Leaf circled back to where we stood. The other patrons of the dog park watched the drama with Leaf and Ethel unfold.

“He loves it here,” I said. Leaf picked up a stick in his mouth and took it back to Ethel.

“He has certainly captured Ethel’s heart.” The lady looked confused as she placed her white-gloved hands in the pockets of her pink overcoat. “Ethel doesn’t normally like other dogs.”

Suddenly, Ethel snapped at Leaf’s nose. Leaf adroitly backed away a couple of inches. He had become a master at avoiding scratches and bites from our cat’s training sessions. Rather than finding his new girlfriend’s rebuff unnerving, Leaf looked at Ethel with even more adoration.
She likes rough play,
his face seemed to say.

He grabbed a stick and tempted her to get it from him by laying it down at his feet, inches away from Ethel.
Go on. Snatch it.
She made a slight move toward the stick. Leaf grabbed it back in his mouth.

Ethel, unaccustomed to not getting whatever she wanted, turned her head away as if to say, “Enough of him. Let’s go.” Leaf dropped the stick. He backed away so Ethel would have a better chance to take it. But Ethel was already trotting toward the gate. The woman hooked the leash to Ethel’s pink collar. She reached for the gate latch.

Leaf ran to the gate. Ethel glanced at him, still obviously enjoying his attention. As the woman fiddled with the gate latch, Leaf gently grabbed the pink leash with his mouth and pulled it out of the woman’s hand. Then he led Ethel back into the dog park with the leash gripped in his mouth.

At first the woman appeared flustered. “Oh, no, no, we have to go,” she called. “Ethel, come back. Ethel!” She walked to the two dogs and picked up Ethel’s leash, holding it more firmly this time. Leaf, having made his final argument, let it go.

Leaf sat and watched Ethel and the woman return to the gate. The woman turned around and said, “Leaf, next time we see you in the park and Ethel wants to play, we’ll be back.”

Ethel appeared to grin at the promise of more fun to come. Leaf, of course, took it all in stride. After all, what lady can resist a charming tramp?