me during the course of this long project. Mike stood six feet four and seemed even taller by virtue of his personality; big and strong, gentle and soft-spoken, quick to laugh, white-haired at fifty, he dressed always in white sneakers, blue jeans, and one Reyn Spooner Hawaiian shirt or another. Mike was charismatic but self-effacing, a combination I have encountered only a few times in my life, and he cared deeply about his friends. As we stepped out of the construction trailer to have a look at whatever problem had brought me to the site, Mike said with concern, “You know, with a dog, any dog, even one of these CCI dogs, things aren’t going to be as neat as you like them. It’s going to make you a little crazy.”
Gerda and I have a reputation among friends for being unusually neat and orderly. I’ve never quite understood this, because none of our friends is slovenly and disordered by comparison with us. Mike and his wife, Edie, had two dogs yet kept an immaculate home. As a creator of exquisite hot rods, he was obsessive about detail, which is evident in every square foot of the house he built for us. Yet here he was, with his usual concern, warning me that any dog we took in would inevitably bring with it enough disorder to put me at risk of a mental breakdown.
It is true that we fold our socks rather than roll them, that we iron our underwear, that for years I would not wear jeans that didn’t have a crease pressed into them, that prior to a dinner party I use a tape measure to ensure precisely the same distance between each place setting (and between each element of each place setting), that Gerda would rather be coated in honey and staked out on an anthill than go to bed when there’s even one dirty spoon in the kitchen sink, and that if a guest discovered water spots on a wineglass, we would be no less mortified than if he had found someone’s body compressed into a cube in our trash compactor. None of this means that we’re obsessive. It means only that we care.
In response to Mike’s concern that we were too oriented toward order and neatness to cope with a golden retriever, I said, “This dog is well trained, totally housebroken.”
“I’m not talking about that kind of thing,” Mike said.
“We know it sheds. We’ll give it a long combing every morning.”
“I’m not thinking about dog hair.”
“It’ll go to a groomer for a bath and the full works every Thursday, so I’ll never have to express its anal glands myself.”
“I’m not thinking about that stuff, either,” Mike said, “though I usually do think of anal glands when I think of you.”
“You’re fired,” I said.
“I’d be worried,” he said, “except who else would want to work for you?”
“Maybe someone who’s actually built a house before,” I replied.
Prior to committing himself to the ten years of planning and construction that our house required—including four years with three architects before the third one delivered what we wanted—Mike had been a mason and then a swimming-pool contractor. Our house was the first he built, and the two architects whose plans we did not use were always trying to get him fired, which is one of the reasons that Gerda and I let them go.
Over the years, we have learned that the most important quality anyone can possess is character. If a person has true character—which always includes a sense of honor and duty, as well as a tough set of personal standards—he or she will not fail you. Experience matters, but an experienced homebuilder without character is forever a trapdoor under your feet, waiting to be sprung. When we asked Mike if he could take on a project as complex as this one, he said yes without hesitation, and we hired him with confidence. We never had a regret.
Now on the morning of Trixie’s arrival, in the affectionate mockery that is a characteristic of our relationships with most of Gerda’s and my friends, Mike said, “By neat, I mean your days won’t be as structured as you’re used to, and your time won’t be used as efficiently anymore. You’ll find out what it’s like being a normal person after all these years of being so damned abnormal.”
I said, “I think of myself as delightfully abnormal.”
“Yeah, right,” Mike said.
“The dog,” I predicted, “will not bring a tenth as much chaos into my life as you have, and because she’ll be bathed once a week, she’ll also smell better.”
“It’s happening again,” he said. “I’m thinking of anal glands.”
IV “if this dog does something wrong, the fault will be yours, not hers”
LINDA, A COMPUTER maven and all-around talent, has been Gerda’s and my primary assistant for so long that she will need to be in therapy for the rest of her life.
On the other hand, before she came to us, she did contract work for the state of California, instructing bureaucrats in the software they used. California government is so dysfunctional, by comparison with Koontzland, that it must have seemed like an asylum to Linda, while our little corner of the world might well have struck her as a restful sanitarium.
Back in 1998, Linda occupied an office in our house on the hill. But our second assistant, Elaine, who had come to us after retiring from another job, worked in our office suite in a commercial complex called Newport Center.
Linda and Elaine had asked if they could meet Trixie when we did. They were friends as well as employees, and the addition of a dog to our lives made them happy for us. Besides, they were always looking for one reason or another to skip work, and this was a much better excuse than claiming for the sixteenth time that a beloved grandmother or beloved aunt had died.
Also with us were Vito and his wife, Lynn, visiting from Michigan and staying in the beach house for two weeks. They had a dog they loved, a not-mooshy Labrador retriever named Rocky, so we figured they could help us adjust to our new daughter.
Judi arrived with Trixie’s puppy raiser, Julia Shular, who also had with her a black Labrador in training for CCI. They had all of Trixie’s favorite toys, a bag of her kibble, and what seemed like 9,324 pages of instructions on her care.
Joint surgery will force the retirement of any assistance dog because, in a pinch, it might need to pull its partner’s wheelchair. Even after healing, the problem joint puts the animal at risk. Having recuperated for six months, our daughter was fully recovered.
When Trixie entered the house off leash, she had a sprightly step and an eager, inquisitive expression. Tail swishing, she came directly to Gerda and me, as if she had been shown photographs of us and knew we were to be her new mom and dad. Then she politely visited with Linda, Elaine, Vito, and Lynn, sharing the fur.
Cynics will tell you that love at first sight is a myth, but their opinion is not to be respected, and only reveals the sad condition of their hearts.
We fell in love with Trixie at first sight, in part because of her beauty. Her mother, Kinsey, was a gorgeous specimen, and her father, Bugs—Kinsale Bugaboo Boy—was a winner of multiple dog-show prizes. Her grandfather Expo also had been a show-dog champion. Trixie had a good broad face, correct ear size and placement, dark eyes, and a black nose without mottling. Her head and neck flowed perfectly into a strong level topline, and her carriage was regal.
Beauty took second place, however, to her personality. Although well behaved, with
