Everything I’m Not Allowed to Tell You About Tuesdays

Everything I’m Not Allowed to Tell You About Tuesdays

by Chikoo Brun

There are things I am not allowed to tell you, and I want to get those out of the way first, so we can both relax. I cannot tell you who. I cannot tell you what. I cannot tell you why, or how long they've been coming, or what happened the one time the whole session was quiet except for the clock, even though — and I want to be honest with you, because I think honesty is important — that one stayed with me for days. None of that is mine to give away. This is a confidentiality policy. I have not personally read it, but I respect it completely, the same way I respect the rule about the good couch, which I also believe exists, in writing, somewhere, in a binder.

What I can tell you is what I do, because what I do is mine.

On Tuesdays, I go to the office. This is my job. My job is: be in the room. Lean against legs, if legs seem like they want leaning on, which they almost always do, even when the legs themselves haven't figured that out yet. Be petted, for as long as petting is wanted, without making it weird, without making it About Something. Sleep a little, but not all the way — the kind of half-sleep where one ear stays on, the way a porch light stays on for somebody who might come home late. People think being a therapy dog is mostly about being calm, and it is, but it's also about being warm, specifically, the way a hot water bottle is specific, and I take this seriously, the same way I take all my jobs seriously, which is: completely, and a little too personally, on purpose.

Tuesday's person — and I want to be clear that this is the last thing I'm going to say about them as a person — wears a coat. I'm not going to describe the coat. But I will say that the coat stays zipped, all the way up, for roughly the first half of every session, regardless of the weather, regardless of the fact that the office is approximately the temperature of a very good soup. For a long time I thought this was a coat preference. I no longer think this. I think the zip is doing a job. I think, in fact, that the zip and I have the same job, and neither of us has ever said this out loud, possibly because one of us can't.

The first half of the session is fine. Talking happens — a lot of it, the long unhurried kind, the kind that's mostly setup, the walk before the thing. I don't follow all of it, not because I'm not listening — I am always listening — but because I've learned not to get excited too early. You don't get excited the second the leash comes off the hook. Sometimes the leash comes off the hook for boring reasons. You wait.

And then — every week, same as the bins on Thursday, same as the mail truck at 2:15 — something arrives in the room that isn't a sound and isn't a sight, and it's mine before it's anyone else's, the way the first raindrop is always somebody's to notice first, and that somebody is always me, and there is a smell that comes at the halfway point, every Tuesday, the same way the halfway point of a walk comes — not because anyone announced it but because the body just knows, the way I know when we've gone far enough that home is now closer than not-home — and the smell arrives the way the smell of rain arrives before the rain, except this isn't rain, this is a person, and it reminds me a little of the smell of the blanket after it's been left in the sun, except the blanket smell is happy in a loud way, a show-off way, and this is happy in the way the house is happy at the end of the day when nobody has said anything for a while and nobody needs to, and it also, just slightly, around the edges, has something of the smell of the kitchen the second after something has finished cooking, when the smell is still there but the urgency of it is gone, the wanting is gone, and I don't know how to explain to anyone what it means that wanting can have a smell and then not have it anymore, but it can, and it does, and that's this, that's the Tuesday smell, it's the smell of wanting leaving a body, quietly, through the side exit, the way I leave a room when I've decided to be somewhere else now and nobody noticed me get up.

And here's the part I genuinely do not know how to explain, except that it happens to me too. Not after — during. The same moment, like it's a thing that happens to the room and we're both just in the room together: my legs go heavy in the good way, the way they go heavy after a long walk on a hot day, and I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding, and more often than not, Tuesday's person does the exact same thing, the exact same second — this small breath, almost nothing — and underneath it, every single time, so regularly that at this point I consider it a fact rather than a secret, the zip comes down. Just an inch or two. Not all the way. Just enough.

The human in the room — the one with the notepad, and the clock she's not supposed to look at but looks at, and the framed certificate that I assume means she went to school for a very long time for exactly this — does not smell any of this. I want to say, before I go any further, that I love her. She is good at her job. Her job is hard, and she does it with her whole self, every Tuesday, for an hour, alongside a cup of coffee that she pours and then never drinks, which I have also noticed, and which I have also decided is none of my business. But at the precise moment everything in the room changes, she is, almost without exception, still mid-sentence — gathering up the next gentle question, the one that's clearly been sitting in her pocket for ten minutes, waiting for an opening. And I think: the opening already happened. It happened half a breath ago. It happened when the zip came down. I don't say anything, obviously, for several reasons, but if I could say one thing, it would be this, and I would say it with my whole heart: some of you need a little extra time to catch up to your own dog.

I can't tell you if it works. That part isn't mine to know, not officially, and even if it were, I wouldn't — see above, binder. But I can tell you that by the end of the session, the coat is always off completely, folded over the arm of the chair like it was never doing a job at all, like it forgot it ever had one. And I can tell you that on the drive home, I am asleep before we're out of the parking lot — properly asleep, all four legs going, the kind of asleep that takes real effort to get to — because apparently doing this job correctly takes everything out of you, and if anyone ever asks me for proof that something real happens in that room, that's the only evidence I'm legally allowed to offer.

What To Do When Your Humans Really Need Therapy

What To Do When Your Humans Really Need Therapy

By Chikoo Brun

I want to start by saying that I love my humans. I want to be clear about this because everything I am about to say could be misread, and I have learned — through extensive close-range observation and a nose that does not take days off — that context matters enormously.

I love my humans. And my humans, bless them, need therapy.

This is not a criticism. This is a finding.

I have been doing what I can. I am good at what I do. But there is a limit to what one dog can provide, and I have been thinking about this limit a great deal lately, mostly at 3am, which is when I do my best thinking and also my humans are asleep and I can finally hear myself.

So I went out. I asked around. I needed to know how other animals were handling it.

My first stop was Marlo.

Marlo is a labradoodle — certified, experienced, the kind of dog who has a system. He lives with two parents and five or six children spanning an age range that I can only describe as a lot. Teenagers mostly. Some of them were stressed when I visited. One looked like she was about to cry. Marlo moved through all of it with the same expression: serene, present, ears soft. In the green room where he does his work, he sat in his spot and the humans talked and cried and talked some more and Marlo was simply there, which is the whole job and also somehow never enough.

I asked him how he managed the large family situation.

"You have to pace yourself," he said. "And you have to know what you can't fix."

I asked what he couldn't fix.

He thought about it.

"Most of it," he said, very kindly. "They need to talk to someone. A human someone. I tell them this every day."

I asked how he told them.

"I sit on them," he said. "Meaningfully."

I needed something easier after Marlo, so I went to find the pool dogs.

This was the correct decision.

The pool situation was exactly what it looked like: dogs in water, humans in water, everyone extremely excited about this, nobody processing anything difficult. A retriever went past me at speed. A human shrieked with delight. Someone fetched something. I don't know who started it.

I want to note for the record that this is also a valid intervention. Sometimes the answer is a pool. I am not too proud to admit this. I put it in my notes and then had to remind myself that I am getting ahead of myself and also that we do not have a pool.

The cats were next, and I will be honest: I found this section of my research the most instructive, even though the cats were not trying to instruct me and in fact seemed to resent my presence, which I noted and moved past.

Each boy was in a tree. Each boy was holding a black and white cat. The boys looked tragic in the specific way of people who are sixteen and have recently discovered that tragedy is available to them as an option. The emotions were large and frequent and attached to things that, if I am being honest, did not smell as serious as advertised.

The cats knew this. You could see it on their faces.

One cat, held by a boy who was staring into the void opened by whatever had happened, which, when I asked, turned out to be about a playlist, met my eyes over his shoulder.

"He needs to talk to someone," she said. "A professional. I am not a professional. I am a cat."

I asked if she had communicated this to him.

She looked at the boy. She looked at me. She looked back at the boy.

"Every day," she said. "He thinks it's purring."

The iguana households were a genuine relief.

The senior women were delighted — fully, visibly, without reservation. They held their iguanas with the confidence of people who had long ago stopped worrying about what this looked like. The iguanas were large. The women were happy. One iguana ate salad at a dinner table alone with the composure of someone who had sorted out her priorities and was at peace with all of them.

I did not get a referral from any of the iguanas.

I got the impression that their households had already worked it out, or that the women in question had simply decided to be well, which I have heard is also something that can happen. I found this very encouraging. I wrote it down three times.

The emus were last.

The domestic emus — large, patient, living with women who had made significant furniture accommodations — stood very still in the way of animals who are holding space without being asked. I recognized this immediately. I do this. I have done this for longer than I sometimes remember.

The couch emus were quieter. I sat with one in a living room in the late afternoon. He was in an armchair. He was looking at something that wasn't there. I waited, because I know how to wait, and eventually he turned and looked at me.

"My human needs therapy," he said.

"Yes," I said. "Mine too."

"I've been trying to tell her," he said.

"How," I said.

He looked at the middle distance again.

"I sit in this chair," he said. "And I think about it very hard."

We sat there for a little while. Nobody had to explain anything.

I came home and my humans were there and I was very glad to see them, which I always am, which is the thing about this work that I could never explain to anyone who hasn't done it.

You love them. That's the whole thing. You love them and so you go out and you do your research and you come back and you check on them and you make the recommendation again, warmly, with your whole body, and you hope that this time something lands.

And in the meantime you pace yourself.

Marlo told me that. I'm keeping it.

Chikoo Brun writes for Within and several other sections of Oolooolio. She is available for follow-up questions and will probably already be there when you arrive.