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pack alone. When the puppies were released, most proved to be golden retrievers, the others Labradors. They raced exuberantly to me. In an instant, I was wearing a live-puppy coat.
    In the care of Vito and Lynn, Trixie watched me go into the fenced kennel and pressed to the chain-link with interest, as if saying, I used to live here, Dad. But why would you want to? The house on the hill is way better than this .
    Then the puppies exploded into the play yard and clambered over me. I laughed with delight—and Trixie at once turned her back on this display and refused to watch. Vito and Lynn tried to get her to turn to the fence once more, but she clearly disapproved of me cavorting with cute puppies.
    We took this to mean that after just a few days, she had bonded with us, and she did not want to consider that she might have to share our affections with another dog. Hour by hour, we were more certainly a family of three.
    Long before that day, Oceanside had thoughtfully set aside a large tract from which the city council intended to carve gifts of land to be granted to worthy nonprofit organizations. CCI’s Southwest Chapter had previously been quartered in the San Diego area, but had moved north to accept Oceanside’s generosity. In a moment between sessions with Pinnacle , Gerda and I asked Judi Pierson what CCI intended to do with the substantial portion of their land they had not already built on, and she described a project that intrigued us and that eventually became an important part of our future—and Trixie’s.
    After returning to Newport Beach that afternoon, we took the Pinnacle team to dinner at Zov’s Bistro in Tustin, for years our favorite restaurant. Zov didn’t have a pro-dog policy, but that day she made an exception and allowed us to bring Trixie. Our golden girl went under the table, facing out, and got up only to lap at a bowl of water.
    An hour before the end of dinner, when I glanced down at Trixie to be sure she remained content, I saw her head raised. Something interested her. A piece of chicken the size of a plum lay on the patio floor, twelve inches from her nose. Evidently another diner had tossed it to her, but she was trained to disregard anything that might distract her from the person with disabilities whom she served.
    In CCI’s large training room, food is sometimes dropped at various places before the day’s lesson begins. The dogs then go through their paces, learning to ignore the treats and remain focused on the needs of the trainer who is a sit-in for the wheelchair-bound person with whom the dog will eventually be paired. While in working mode, assistance dogs also must ignore other dogs, as well as cats, rabbits, birds, and anything else they might ordinarily want to chase, such as butterflies and Peter-bilts.
    On the patio, at dinner with the CNN folks, Trixie was retired, had no person with disabilities to serve, yetshe remained faithful to her service-dog tradition. When we left the restaurant an hour later, she had not touched the chicken; as we departed, she stepped over the treat with more pride than regret.
    Largely because of the time constraints of a television show, the finished episode of Pinnacle got a few things wrong when my answers to some questions were trimmed and spliced. But that had nothing to do with any agenda of theirs and everything to do with my tendency to ramble.
    Near the end of the program, pressured by the producer, Gerda and I did a minute or two of swing dancing—without benefit of music, silently counting the beat—to demonstrate the result of all those years of lessons during which I had broken the spirit of more than one dance instructor. This is my favorite moment of the show, not because of our dancing but because the camera slowly zooms in on Trixie, who is watching us intently, as if she has never seen dancing before and as if she is solemnly wondering in what other peculiar rituals her new parents might engage.

VIII
i screw up, dog takes