The Mountaintop School for Dogs and Other Second Chances Read Free

eyes.
    â€œWelcome to the mountain,” he said.
    â€œBut I’m not on it.”
    â€œWelcome anyway. It’s great you’re in time for breakfast. You look hungry.”
    I asked him, “How old are you?”
    That was when the desk clerk from last night stuck her head out the inn door and yelled two sentences before slamming it shut. She was addressing the driver.
    â€œThey’re starting her right off! Tell her to get in here and get ready!”
    â€œUh-oh,” said the driver. “I guess they changed the plan. Sorry about this. Mrs. Auberchon will show you where to go. She’s the manager.”
    â€œOh, the manager. I guess I’d better meet her.”
    â€œYou just did. That was her. Listen, you have to hide, but don’t be nervous. Just follow instructions and you’ll be perfect.”
    It was cold. My teeth were starting to rattle. I was getting the feeling I should do as I was told.
    â€œThe dog who’ll try to find you might qualify for SAR,” the driver said. “So we need to practice with a stranger. You have to hide like you’re in a building that’s on fire, or was bombed, or you were in a plane wreck. You have to pretend you’re unconscious.”
    He gave me a grin, a big one. “By the way,” he said, “I’m old enough to figure out you saw those sledders, or at least you heard them, and you didn’t get it they’re still just pretty much babies. But don’t worry. I’m not going to tell on you.”
    In my application to the Sanctuary, I had sort of suggested I was someone who had actual experience with actual dogs. But still. I’m not going to tell on you? He sounded
four.
    â€œGet a new muffler!” I cried.
    On my way back inside, I thought again of breed names, reciting them as if I’d put them in my head like a drug that’s good for you: something to calm you down in moments of trouble.
    Airedale, basenji, corgi. Doberman. Entlebucher mountain. Finnish spitz. Glen of Imaal. Havanese. Ibizan. Japanese Chin. Komondor. Lhasa apso. Malamute.
    Then I thought of dogs I knew of who are not in the actual world. Lassie, I thought. Sandy in
Annie.
Kep, Pickles, Duchess, and John Joiner of Beatrix Potter. The nanny in
Peter Pan.
Toto. Buck in
The
Call of the Wild.
Flush, the dog of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Virginia Woolf. Crab, the only dog in Shakespeare. Cafall, the dog of King Arthur. Argos, the dog of Odysseus.
    And there came back to me the odd contentment I felt when I first looked at the Sanctuary website. I hadn’t cared that it looked old and gave few details. I’d read the simple, short description of the training program with the sense that it was saying to me, personally, somehow,
you want to be here.
It hadn’t occurred to me to think it strange that there weren’t any photos of people, or information about who my teachers would be, or how the program actually worked. I had stared a long time at the photos of the lodge, the evergreens encircling it in a half-moon, the ceiling of mountaintop sky—and then of course the dogs, lots of them, happy, healthy, and friendly, and completely ready to play their parts as perfect students to new trainees. I only now thought to wonder where Sanctuary dogs came from.
    I reentered the inn. In my head was the picture of myself I’d imagined, starting with the videos I watched for a whole afternoon of the Westminster Dog Show, the handlers skipping solemnly around the ring holding leashes, the animals gorgeous, flowing in prances, in trots, radiant with well-being, like they were saying, look at me, look at me, look at
me.
    I’d turned on the TV a few times to see
Animal Planet,
but I never timed it when a dog show was on; anyway, there were too many commercials. So I went to YouTube. I watched a few videos from animal shelters and rescue societies, but I didn’t give them much attention. They didn’t apply to