Chapter 7 #2
This whole thing is an exercise in damage control. Nothing else.
“Right.” I gather the leads, trying to arrange them as Archie instructed. “Muffin on the right, Douglas in the middle, Daisy on the left.”
“Perfect. You’ve got this.” Archie gives me a thumbs-up that feels approximately sixty percent genuine.
I’m oddly reluctant to leave him. Which is ridiculous. The man is sitting on a park bench. I can literally see him from most of the walking path. And yet.
“I’ll call you if anything goes wrong,” I say.
“Please do. I expect this will be better than anything on Netflix.” He settles back on the bench like he’s claiming a front-row seat, and despite myself, I almost smile.
I take about ten steps before Douglas stops dead to sniff a particularly fascinating patch of grass. I wait. I let him sniff. I’m being a good dog walker. This is fine.
Then Daisy squats, and my blood runs cold.
I knew this was coming. I’ve been dreading it since Archie handed me the little bag dispenser as I left the apartment with a cheerful “You’ll need these!” But knowing something is coming doesn’t make you ready for it.
The bag crinkles as I extract it from the dispenser. The smell is…present. Very present. I crouch to deal with the situation, breathing through my mouth.
And when I straighten, prize in hand, I catch Archie watching from his bench with an expression of pure delight. “The first one is always the hardest. And that was an elegant technique! Very minimal gagging!”
I refuse to dignify that with a response.
Instead, I locate a trash can and dispose of the evidence, then sanitize my hands so thoroughly I might have removed the top layer of skin.
When I glance back at Archie, he’s grinning broadly, and despite the smell still lingering in my nostrils and the fact that the dogs are already pulling me toward the next sniffing opportunity, I feel the corner of my mouth twitch upward.
The next ten minutes pass without incident as I settle into the walk.
Douglas sniffs. Daisy bounces. Muffin maintains her surveillance of the perimeter.
I’m finding a rhythm, pausing for sniffing, a gentle tug when Daisy gets too enthusiastic, a steady pace for Douglas.
This isn’t so bad. This is almost…manageable.
Then I see a woman approaching with a German Shepherd. It’s the kind of dog that looks like it could eat Muffin as a light snack and still have room for Douglas as the main course.
The German Shepherd is perfectly well-behaved as it walks calmly at its owner’s side, barely glancing our way.
But it appears Muffin doesn’t care about good behavior.
Muffin cares about establishing dominance.
And apparently, in Muffin’s mind, size is irrelevant when you have the heart of a warrior.
She plants her feet and begins to growl, a low, rumbling sound that seems physically impossible for something that weighs barely more than my laptop to create.
I don’t need to look at which way Muffin’s tail is wagging to figure out she’s not happy.
And that’s when Daisy spots the jogger with a golden retriever. The golden retriever is bounding beside its owner with the carefree joy of a creature who has never experienced an anxious thought in its life.
Daisy wants to meet this dog. Daisy needs to meet this dog. Daisy has decided that this golden retriever is her soulmate, and nothing—not leads, not commands, not the laws of physics—will keep them apart.
She bolts.
The lead yanks tight around my wrist. Douglas, still attached to the central tether, is jerked sideways with a startled “bawoo.” Muffin, refusing to abandon her standoff with the German Shepherd, digs her claws into the ground.
I turn to grab Daisy’s lead with my other hand, and that’s all it takes. The leads wrap around my legs like some kind of leash-based bondage situation I definitely did not consent to.
What the hell do I do? I’m supposed to call Archie if anything goes wrong, but there appears to be a fundamental flaw in our plan. Calling Archie means having a hand free, and I’m fresh out of free hands. I’m also fresh out of free arms, free legs, and any remaining dignity.
I’m fairly certain that if I let go of anything, at least one dog will end up in a German Shepherd’s mouth.
The German Shepherd and its owner pass us with the serenity of people who have their lives together. The owner gives me a small, pitying smile that somehow makes everything worse.
Muffin, deprived of her nemesis, redirects her fury toward Daisy, who is still straining toward the retreating golden retriever like a lovesick missile. Douglas has given up entirely and is lying on the ground, his wrinkled face a portrait of existential resignation.
I take a deep breath. I’ve navigated corporate crises. I’ve managed hostile board members. I can manage three dogs.
The problem is physics. Three dogs, three directions, one human. The solution, therefore, is to reduce the variables.
I awkwardly crouch, given the lead situation, and scoop up Muffin with my right hand. She’s small enough that I can tuck her against my chest like a furious, wriggling football. Her growling intensifies, but at least she’s no longer anchored to the ground.
That frees up enough slack for me to untangle my left leg. I give Douglas’s lead a gentle tug, and he heaves himself upright with the enthusiasm of a man being asked to do overtime on a Friday.
Daisy is still pulling, but with Muffin contained and Douglas mobile, I can at least steer us toward a bench that’s mercifully empty and manage to loop all three leads around the armrest.
I extract my phone with trembling fingers and call Archie.
“How’s it going?” He sounds far too cheerful.
“I need help.”
“What kind of help?”
“The kind where you tell me how to stop three dogs from simultaneously losing their minds.”
“Ah.” There’s a pause. “What triggered it?”
“A German Shepherd and a golden retriever. Muffin chose violence. Daisy chose love. Douglas chose to lie down and accept death.”
“Okay, here’s what you do. You need to yawn at them.”
“What?”
“Yawning is a calming signal in dog language. It’s contagious for them just like it is for humans. If one of them is getting overstimulated, a nice big yawn will help bring their energy down.” He demonstrates an exaggerated yawn into the phone.
Is he actually serious?
I look at the dogs. Muffin is on my lap, still vibrating with residual fury. Daisy is whining toward the path where her beloved golden retriever disappeared. Douglas has his chin on the ground, ears puddled around his head like a furry surrender flag.
“You want me to yawn,” I say flatly. “In public. At dogs.”
“Trust me,” he says.
I look around. A woman with a pram is watching me from a safe distance. An older man on the nearest bench has lowered his newspaper to observe the spectacle. I have never felt more ridiculous in my entire life.
But I also don’t have any better ideas. So I decide to trust Archie Mansley.
I yawn.
It’s a terrible yawn, the kind of yawn an alien would produce if you described the concept to them without ever demonstrating.
“That was pathetic,” Archie says through the phone.
“It turns out I’m not a natural yawner under pressure.”
“Everyone’s a natural yawner. You’re just in your head. You need to really sell it. Open your mouth wide. Let your eyes water. Make it contagious. Stop thinking about how ridiculous you look and just…let it happen.”
Nobody talks to me like this. People defer to me. They hedge their feedback in qualifiers and caveats. Archie just told me my yawning was pathetic and is now coaching me through it like I’m a first-year intern.
But there’s nothing else to do right now but give it another attempt.
So I yawn again, wider this time, letting my jaw stretch open in a way that feels vaguely obscene.
Muffin’s growling stutters.
I yawn a third time, really leaning into it now, and something shifts. Muffin’s rigid little body relaxes, just slightly. She gives a full-body shake that starts at her nose and ripples down to her ridiculously fluffy tail.
Daisy yawns.
I stare at her. She stares back at me, and then her tail gives a tentative wag. It’s right-sided, which, according to Archie’s tutelage, means she’s feeling okay about life.
Even Douglas lifts his head, yawns enormously, and then heaves himself back to his feet with the air of a philosopher who has decided that perhaps life is worth living after all.
“Holy shit,” I breathe into the phone.
“See? It’s like doggy Xanax, except free and non-addictive.”
“It’s a miracle,” I say.
“Now, do you have the treats I gave you?”
“Yes.”
“Throw a handful on the ground. Right now.”
“Won’t that reward bad behavior?”
“It activates their nose, and sniffing actually lowers their heart rate. It’s a biological reset button. You’re not rewarding them. You’re redirecting their brain from panic mode to foraging mode. Completely different neural pathway.”
“Okay.”
I reach into my pocket, extract the treat bag, and toss a generous handful onto the ground.
Then I tentatively put Muffin back on the ground.
And sure enough, all three dogs immediately drop into sniffing mode. Muffin is no longer a warrior. Daisy is no longer heartbroken. Douglas is no longer contemplating the void.
“It worked,” I say quietly.
“Told you.”
But he doesn’t sound smug about it. He sounds genuinely pleased that it worked for me, not that he was right.
That distinction shouldn’t matter as much as it does.
I’ve had executive assistants, legal teams, and a therapist on very expensive retainers in the past. But none of them has ever been as useful as a children’s entertainer on speakerphone.
“Thank you,” I say.
“That’s what I’m here for.”
“I might head back to you now,” I say.
“I’ll be here,” Archie says. “Oh, and, Leo?”
“What?”
“There’s a coffee cart on the way back. If you want to grab me a latte on your way back, I wouldn’t say no.”
I can’t stop myself from smiling. “Anything else, Your Majesty?”
The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them.
“Oat milk. Two sugars. I’m injured. I need the calories.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
I hang up and look down at Muffin, who has finished her treats and is now gazing up at me with something that might almost be respect.
“Don’t tell anyone about the yawning,” I instruct her.
She wags her tail. I choose to interpret that as agreement.
I gather the leads and start the walk back toward Archie’s bench, the dogs trotting beside me in something that almost resembles order.
I never thought I’d yawn at dogs in public.
I never thought I’d stand in Hampstead Heath wearing sweatpants and sneakers, pocket full of treat crumbs, and hands still faintly smelling of poop bag despite the industrial-strength hand sanitizer.
And this is day one.
What else will I do in the next few weeks that I never expected?
I stop at the coffee cart and order an oat-milk latte with two sugars and a black coffee for myself. I loop the three leads around my wrist and hold the cardboard carrier tray in my free hand. I have never felt further from the man on the cover of Forbes Tech Quarterly.
When Archie spots me coming back, his face lights up when he sees the coffee cups in my hand. He starts to laugh at something, probably the state of my hair, my sweatpants, or my general air of dishevelment.
I should be annoyed. Instead, I’m almost looking forward to telling him about everything that happened.
I don’t know if this is what damage control is supposed to feel like.