yacht that took ecotourists around the fjords of Alaska. Several of those well-heeled clients offered him future house-sitting employment, “gigs,” he called them. All in all, he was an easygoing charmer whose predictable rejoinder, “Like, whatever,” to any remark or question was synonymous with his lack of direction and encumbrances in life.
As vacuous as my descriptions may make him sound, I rather liked Wyatt. He had a good heart toward all, whether they were former teachers, girlfriends, or employers. He was not cynical about those of us who were wealthy, nor did he envy or take excessive advantage of us. He remained pleasant and respectful to everyone, even the meter maid who ticketed the car he had borrowed. He always paid the ticket, by the way. I would say he had one of the finest attributes a human being can have, in my opinion, and that is kindness without motives. Of course, his lack of motivation was another matter.
During the bus ride into Lijiang, Wyatt dozed, and Wendy gave everyone who was awake the benefit of her stream-of-consciousness observations. “Omigod, look at those people on the side of the road. They’re smashing rocks, turning them into gravel to pave the road.… Those faces! They look so beaten down. Does the government think people are machines? …” Though Wendy had only arrived in China, she was already sharpening her sensibilities about despotic rule.
LIKE ANY EXUBERANT PUP, Wendy needed to learn “shush.” That’s what Harry Bailley thought. He was sitting across the aisle from her and Wyatt. He had forgotten that he had once possessed the dedication of an activist. In his youth, now some twenty-plus years past, he, too, had wanted desperately to sink his teeth into important causes. He had vowed to resist complacency, abhor apathy, “to make positive, incremental change and leave an imprint after this tenure on earth.”
Years before, a much younger Harry had led the movement to abolish aversive dog-training methods, those that relied on leash-jerking, shock collars, and rubbing the dog’s face in its feces. When he finished veterinary training, he did doctoral studies in the behavioral sciences department at UC Berkeley, investigating pack behavior, how dogs instinctively learned from higher-ups and taught protocols to lower-downs. Dog temperament was not ingrained from birth, he noted. It could be shaped by interaction with other dogs and people and by tasty bribes. Anyone who understood basic Skinnerian principles could tell you that when given positive reinforcement, dogs respond more quickly and consistently to what humans want, and they learn new behaviors more quickly through luring, shaping, and capturing.
“If your doggie has your very expensive alligator purse in his mouth,” Harry would say in his seminars, “offer to trade him a piece of hot dog. Oh goodie, pant-pant, and he’ll drop the purse at your feet. What’s the lesson here? Put your overpriced purses and pumps where Pluto can’t get to them! Then go and get him a smelly old tennis ball. The game is simple: Ball in your hand, treat in his mouth. Even if he’s a basset hound, he’ll turn into an impressive retriever if you do enough trades.”
And through such commonsense advice, Dr. Harry Bailley became the Dog Trainer of Dog Trainers, the founder of the well-regarded International Society of Canine Behaviorists, the inventor of humane training devices (patents pending), the star of The Fido Files, and now the well-qualified owner of my dear, dear Poochini. I’m afraid I never did much training with him, and naughty Poochini had already chewed off the spines of some of Harry’s collection of first-edition books.
“You must inform your clients, gently but firmly,” he often told his disciples at lectures. “Dogs are not people in fur coats. No, indeed. They don’t speak in the future tense. They live in the moment. And unlike you and me, they’ll drink from a toilet. Lucky for us, they are perfect specimens of how operant conditioning and positive reinforcement work, and beautifully so if only we learn how to apply the principles properly. Their human handlers have got to be absolutely objective about what motivates their poochies—so quash their tendency to ascribe Muggum-wuggum’s barking, growling, and counter-surfing to anthropomorphic motives such as pride, revenge, sneakiness, or betrayal. That’s how we speak of our ex-wives, former lovers, and politicians. Remember that Canis lupus familiaris is driven by his own jollies, which are usually harmless to others but can be detrimental to white carpets and Italian shoes. The fact is, dogs mark territory and they masticate. And if dogs resemble Homo erectus in any respect, it is in those traits of the poorly socialized male. Both do what pleases them: they scratch their balls, sleep on the sofa, and sniff any crotch that comes their way. And you, the brilliant dog trainer, must train the owners—that’s right, those barely evolved humans holding those rolled-up newspapers in hand like cavemen’s cudgels—you must train the humans to show the dogs what lucky canines prefer to do other than nip and yowl, or use the leather sofa as a chew toy. Ah! ‘Prefer’ is the operative word, isn’t it? …”
Harry Bailley believed in training people early, before they could inflict any lasting damage upon the wee and impressionable pooches. “Puppy classes!” he would exhort on his television show. “A great equalizer, the perfect socializer, far better than those bore-and-snore book clubs that are all the rage on the other channel. Doggie classes, what a fantastic way for singles to meet. Strong, sensitive men. Woof! Loyal, long-limbed ladies. Woof-woof! And all those sweet, slurpy puppies. Picture their tails wagging—the doggies, you scalawags.” And as his TV clients and their dogs tangoed to “Sit,” “Down,” “Stay,” and “Come,” Harry would ham it up to make everyone feel successful, proud, and continually motivated. “Lure your dog. That’s right, dangle that cheese bit above his nose, now back until he sits. Steady, steady … Yessss! Bingo! Give him the jackpot right away. He’s got it. You’ve got it. Only five point two seconds that time. Good Lord, you two are fast! What a fantastic team!” The dogs panted. The humans, too.
Harry revolutionized dog training. Everyone said so. In the early days, he went so far as to believe his notions of dog behavior could be applied to anything, from toilet training to international politics. He said so in seminars: “Which works faster: beating and humiliating a dictatorship, or luring it to follow a better and more rewarding model? If we call upon the country only to pummel it for being bad, how likely is it to come seeking our humanitarian advice? Isn’t it utterly obvious?” And then Harry would dangle a hundred-dollar bill and bob it up and down so that people in the front row would nod dutifully in agreement. He was rather cocky in those days.
In more recent years, Harry had become less focused on the bad behavior of dog owners and governments and more on his own virility, which he feared might share the fate of endangered species—going, going, gone. He still had his hairline, though it had grayed on the sides—excellent credentials for authority. His physique was still trim; expensive tailored suits helped give him that effect. The damn trouble was, he had an enlarged prostate, the typical benign prostatic hyperplasia that afflicts many men, more annoying than harmful. But by God, Harry would moan, it shouldn’t strangle a man’s best friend before he’s even turned fifty! He was troubled that he had to urinate frequently, and the more he strained, the more he issued forth only driblets, much to his shame at public urinals. He was educated enough to know that the force of urinary flow—or lack thereof—was not a correlation of sexual prowess. Yet he feared that his personal plumbing, which had once spurted those two essential fluids as forcefully as the nozzle on his garden hose, might soon become choked off like a water-saving shower head, and unsatisfying not just to him but to the woman of the moment as well.
He searched the Internet for information that might indicate the prognosis of his sex life should his condition worsen. Ejaculatory backfiring was one worry. Could women really tell? He found a website on prostate problems, with messages from men who shared the same annoying condition. Several posters suggested that daily ejaculations might slow down the hyperplastic activity and keep the pelvic muscles better toned. The message board was also littered with invitations to join porn sites where sufferers could find instant relief for one flat rate. Great, Harry thought, the answer is to masturbate like a kid with a magazine as your one-night stand. No, thank you. He grew more determined to find a lovemate—one would do nicely in this day and age of
