Returning at night, that Sunday after Thanksgiving, we followed this routine, but when we entered the house with armfuls of laundry and feast-day leftovers, Trixie was not in the foyer. The rest of the house was dark, and when I called her name, she did not appear out of either the living room or the family room, or out of the dining room.
A sweeping staircase rose from the foyer and turned to meet the open gallery that served the second-floor rooms. At the head of these steps were the double doors to the master suite, one of which stood open, as we had left it.
Carrying a favorite Booda duck in her mouth, Trixie bolted from the dark bedroom, where many of her toys were stored near her dog bed. In a state of great excitement, she hurried down the stairs and raced repeatedly around the foyer, squeak-squeak-squeaking the duck, bounding more than running, capering more than bounding, nothing less than rapturous. We had never previously seen her in such a state of bliss.
Gerda and I stood watching this exhibition with astonishment, at first wondering about the reason for it, but then arriving at the obvious explanation as Trixie’s jubilation continued undiminished. Although only three years and two months old, our girl had lived in six places: with her breeder for two months, with her puppy raiser until she was nearly eighteen months, at CCI during the six months that she received advanced training, with Jenna, the young woman she assisted for six months, with her puppy raiser again, while recuperating from elbow surgery, and most recently with us. When we had taken her to the beach house for the holiday, she recognized it as the place where she had met us, must have recognized it because she did not rush to explore it as she always did a new place. Throughout that four-day weekend, she expected that we would pass her along to yet new people and that she would be leaving her sixth home for her seventh. When we took her back to our house on the hill, she raced up the stairs to the master suite, found her bed where it should have been, found all her toys as she had left them, and realized that she was not being shipped off to a new place after all.
The running, the bounding, the capering, the squeak-squeak-squeaking merriment was a celebration of the recognition that this was still her home and that we were her family forever. We were so touched, we knelt at once on the foyer floor to further reassure her. Trixie came to us, tail lashing, butt wiggling furiously. She dropped the toy duck and licked our hands, though she was not a dog given to much licking. She snuffled against our hands, and gave us that joyful golden smile from which every lover of the breed takes much delight.
Scientists and animal behaviorists have written libraries full of nonsense about the emotions of dogs, suggesting that they do not have emotions as we know them, or that their exhibitions that appear to be emotionally based do not mean what we interpret them to mean in our sentimental determination to see a fellowship between humanity and canines. Like too many specialists in every field, they are educated not out of their ignorance but into ignorance, because they are raised to an imagined state of enlightenment-which is actually dogmatism-where they no longer experience the light of intuition and the fierce brightness of common sense. They see the world through cloudy windows of theory and ideology, which obscure reality. This is why most experts in economics never see the financial disaster coming until the wave breaks over them, why most experts in statecraft and military strategy can be undone by an enemy’s surprise attack.
As anyone who has ever opened his heart and mind to a dog knows, these creatures have emotions very like our own. The usual arguments against this truth are, by their convoluted nature and by the hidebound materialism that informs them, revealed as sophistry or, worse, as the dogmatic insistence of science that is in fact scientism.
That night, on our return to the house on the hill, Trixie was declaring, This is where I belong, and was expressing her joy that at last she had a place in the world from which she would not be taken.
Trixie’s sense of place in our family grew, as did her place in our hearts. Later, in a smaller but nonetheless lovely moment, she repeated this declaration in a much different fashion.
We had thrown a party at the beach house at which such a good time was had by all that the last guests did not leave until half past midnight and we did not finish the cleanup until almost two o’clock. We had not come prepared to stay the night and needed to return to the house on the hill.
No dog was ever more people-oriented than Trixie. I believe this was her nature, but her nature had been reinforced by CCI, which must train its assistance dogs to ignore other dogs when on duty with the person that it serves. She met only a few people that she didn’t like, and of course she was adored in return. At a party, she always circulated until she dropped.
She had barely enough energy to jump into the back of our SUV. Usually, she would have curled up in the cargo space and snoozed in transit.
Perhaps because we were again at the beach house but now on our way to the place that she considered home, she did not want to be separated from us. As I got behind the wheel and started the engine, Trixie scrambled out of the cargo area, into the backseat, across the console, and onto Gerda’s lap. Weighing sixty-two pounds at that time and given the appearance of greater bulk by her thick golden coat, she looked bigger than her mom. She curled up on Gerda, propped her chin on the curve of the door that might be called the windowsill, and sighed with contentment.
This is where I belong, the sigh clearly said, and it so touched Gerda that she would make no effort to dislodge her furry daughter. As we drove home, Trixie began to snore, her breath lightly steaming the side window, safe in loving arms.
Dogs might love a place, as people do, but the only place they love beyond all others is the place where you are. When we left the house on the hill, in Harbor Ridge, home would become wherever we took her.
Once the walls of our new house were framed and the windows set in place, Trixie padded room to room with tail continuously wagging. Visit after visit, her delight was obvious as she capered through the structure, as though she had developed a deep appreciation for the style of Frank Lloyd Wright, which inspired the project.
After months of watching her react with enthusiasm to the place, we suddenly realized what most appealed to her. Our Harbor Ridge house was Victorian, with French windows set well above her head. In the new house, windows in many rooms were instead five feet wide and extended ceiling to floor. When the view mattered, that entire wall of a room was one large-paned window beside another, expansive sweeps of wood-framed glass that brought the outer world into the house. In Harbor Ridge, she could glimpse the outside only through a few French doors. In the new place, she could see nature wherever she went, and this sent her spirit soaring.
