She arrived in a Volvo wagon, filled with dogs.
Echo heard them coming and ran to see, her claws skidding on the hardwood, as she scrambled from the too-high windows in the bedroom, to the tiles of the mudroom. I snuck out the front door while Echo was detangling herself from the curtain she had just destroyed.
“Enough!” a pear-shaped woman bellowed, stepping out of the car. There was instant silence. “Hi,” she added, sticking out a hand, “I’m Tiffany… the trainer from the vet.”
“Looks like your busy,” I pointed to the menagerie in the Volvo. The Border Collie riding shotgun perked up, purposefully mistaking my gesture as an invitation to wriggle over into the driver’s seat.
Tiffany’s smile remained, but her throat made a sudden sound. The border collie teleported back to the passenger seat.
“Let’s meet Echo!” Tiffany suggested brightly and made for the door that was rattling off its hinges.
Another useless vet I.V.
By the third trip to as many vets, I was desperate. Our new dog was broken, and I was out of ideas. The vet-tech listened to my monologue, occasionally nodding as I listed what we had tried, before scribbling something on a pad, handing me the prescription, and saying, “Call her.”
“She’s a pharmacist?”
“She’s a trainer.”
“Is she a dog whisperer?” I asked incredulously.
“Whisperers aren’t real, and Echo will be just fine,” she assured me, as she swept up the shattered remains of the clinics ceramic treat jar.
But now that Tiffany had arrived, I needed to improvised a strategy to get her inside the house. Quickly formulating a plan, I explained that I’d go around front and act like I was trying to open the door. Then when I yelled, “Okay, NOW!” it meant I could see Echo coming and it was safe for her to open the mudroom door.
“Why?” Tiffany asked, looking bored.
I sighed and explained the hell we had been through, that Brooks and I had tried everything, but if the door was opened even a crack, Echo would slam past and take off running, that we had chipped her and even equipped her collar with a GPS tracker, but it couldn’t refresh as fast as she could run. With luck, we might corner her before dark.
“Then don’t let her get out,” Tiffany muttered in a flat voice.
My voice rose, “She’s even pushed the neighbor’s door open and attacked their dog in its own kitchen! She’ll fight anything! Dogs, deer, cats, and little critters, she actually eats them! I can’t take them away - even if I spray her with the hose – since you’re a bigshot certified trainer, you know that’s supposed to work … and the places we go, where other people don’t, there are like apples and blackberries bushes… and she grazes ‘till her muzzle is bloody like she’s starving… and then she carries apples and things in her mouth, until she’s hungry again.
Brooks thought it might be hormones. We tried to have her fixed, but when they shaved her belly, they saw she already had been. That vet recommended Prozac, but Echo didn’t last a day! She reacted to the medication, lay down and started howling … on a walk! I had to carry her home over my shoulders. Eighty pounds of dog seeing pink elephants ain’t no fun…”
“… You done?” Tiffany interrupted, opening the mudroom door.
Dogs have an unfair advantage: they charge on four legs. I out-mass Echo two-to-one, but Tiffany’s a foot shorter than myself and half again as heavy.
She opened the door and walked in with the authority of a snowplow, not slowing until Echo was in her bed on the far side of the kitchen.
“Good!” she praised, then went back, closed the door, and asked innocently, “So, what’s the problem?”
Completely exasperated, I tried to make it simple, “I’ve had dogs before! She won’t listen to a word I say. That dog can’t even sit…”
“… Like that?”
On the other side of the kitchen, Echo was sitting on her bed, glaring at us.
“…Or lie down…” I snarled, then sputtered to a stop… because Tiffany had looked over, dipped her chin, and Echo had dropped to her belly with a resigned huff…
In case you think I’m exaggerating, and no, not a whisperer.