Chapter 1:
Eddie Murphy and
the Swiss Ambassador
"All knowledge, the totality of all questions and all answers, is contained in the dog."
-Franz Kafka
I tell people all the time, "I have a million stories!" This particular one is about a rich and famous (RAF) person, Eddie Murphy, the world-famous actor and comedian who lived in North Jersey at the time. What made this one pretty special to me is that his stand-up routines have had me laughing so hard I'm choking, and I've loved the characters he's played in several of his movies.
I pulled up to his house. The several-acre property was surrounded by a brick wall. Once through the gate, a long driveway wound through a lawn that must have been manicured by hand with a pair of scissors, getting every blade of grass pointed just right. I parked my Subaru next to the black convertible Rolls Royce under the portico by the front entrance. It was a very hot day, and this was the only shaded spot. I expected someone to come out and tell me to park in front of the multiple-car garage off to the side, but no one did.
Before I could ring the bell, the door opened and I fell in love! To my surprise, it was Eddie Murphy's wife who answered the door, not a servant. Standing in the bright sunlight, up close, she was gorgeous. No airbrushing here. Not sure what to do, I extended my arm to shake hands. She took my hand and, stepping toward me-actually invading my space a little-said, "I have been so looking forward to this all day. Thank you so much for coming. Peaches and Herb are in the sunroom. Follow me."
Then I just barely missed banging into her when she stopped suddenly and whirled around, saying, "My goodness, where are my manners? Can I offer you anything to eat or drink?"
At this point, we were in the kitchen, and I couldn't help but take notice of this kitchen. It reminded me of my own kitchen a lot (not). All kitchens have counters. They're basically L-shaped with the usual kitchen necessities on top of or built into the cabinets: sink, dishwasher, oven, microwave, toaster oven, can opener, and so on. This kitchen had none of that. The counter was a wide U shape, and a cook stood behind it.
Nodding to the cook, I looked at Mrs. Murphy and she simply smiled. "Tell him what you'd like, and he'll make it for you." I barely refrained from asking for the menu. As the words were about to come out of my mouth, it struck me that they may actually have a menu, in which case I'd have to say I was kidding or pretend to be interested in the menu. "Just something to drink would be great," I said with my best smile.
She pointed to four large refrigerators and said, "Help yourself. The first refrigerator has Snapple teas, the second one has sodas, that one is bottled water, and the last one has white wine and assorted stuff." I went with the water, and we were off to meet the puppies.
As for Peaches and Herb, they were one-year-old Maltese siblings, and they were cute as hell. So cute in fact that they got away with murder. I have said it many times: "Dogs, like people, get away with what they can, and they're very manipulative." They were still having occasional accidents in the house, and when I ascertained what "occasional" meant, I said, "Three or four defecations with some additional urinating in the course of a week is not occasional. They are not housebroken!"
With a little trepidation in her voice, Mrs. Murphy asked, "Is it too late?"
"Absolutely not!" was my response, said with conviction.
"As a matter of fact," I continued, "I recently had a call from a woman with a nine-year-old Maltese who told me that she sold her house, bought a condo, and would be moving in a month and a half. She called me because her dog was not really housebroken and was seriously thinking about getting rid of the dog rather than have her new condo carpeting soiled. 'Can we stop her peeing at this late age?' was her question.'" (Frankly, getting rid of a family member like this after nine years is beyond my comprehension and I would have taken an intense dislike to this woman, but didn't because I knew there wasn't a chance in hell that she'd get rid of the dog. Lots of people have said to me 'Either we fix the problem or the dog goes! . . . one way or the other.' More often than not, it's just the dog owner's way of expressing how badly they want help that really works.)
Mrs. Murphy, thinking I wouldn't be telling her this if it didn't have a good ending, asked, "So, what happened?"
With an open, innocent face I replied, "She strangled the dog after it destroyed the new carpet in a week and a half."
I had guessed right at her response, as her look of wide-eyed shock quickly changed to skepticism and then she burst out laughing while calling me a stinker. I laughed with her.
"Actually, it's still a work in progress. The woman's been in the condo a month and there's been one pee on the tile floor without any other mishaps. It's going great, and will require less and less management as time goes on. By the way things are going, my guess is she'll be a trustworthy, housebroken girl in another month or so."
Up to this point I hadn't seen Eddie, and was well enough entertained by the missus that I didn't care. With or without Eddie, it was time to walk the walk. It's usually best when everybody's there so I don't have to repeat myself.
One of the really beautiful bennies of my job is the instant gratification that I get. More often than not, with a treat in my hand, being very casual so it doesn't look like I'm training, I am manipulating the dog around the room with whispers and body language while talking with the owners. And boy, does it feel great when an owner all of a sudden becomes cognizant of the dog's changed behavior and halts talking mid-sentence while exclaiming, "Holy shit, look at Bowser!" Or the husband and wife's sideways glances, sharing their amazement at Bowser's sudden cooperation, then saying to me, "How'd you do that?"
How can you not love a job that gives you this type of instant gratification where people hurl accolades at you and refer you to their friends? It usually gets me instant respect, which makes the dog owners more likely to follow through on my advice, and that increases the likelihood of success. That's what it's all about: Harmony between dog and family.
As a speech pathologist, my wife Jaye has seriously and visibly helped countless children overcome handicaps, literally changing their lives for the better, yet compared to me she receives so very little external gratification. At the end of the year, she gets the usual gifts with thank-you notes. At a chance meeting at a restaurant, a teacher told Jaye she was a miracle worker because of a public address (PA) announcement in the school. I had vaguely remembered Jaye telling me about some kid who was "impossible to understand" now delivering morning PA announcements in school, and I didn't think much of it at the time. With the fuss this teacher in the restaurant was making about a kid who was totally unintelligible now on the school PA system, I came to really understand how few strokes she gets for the incredible things she does.
Another time, Jaye and I were in a Carvel's ice cream store when a mother and young son came up to Jaye. The mother started tearing while thanking Jaye for what she did for her child. In this case, getting proper recognition for the invaluable service she provides required a chance meeting at an ice-cream store. So, if you want a great "instant-gratification job, become a dog trainer, not a speech pathologist.
So, walking the walk, Mrs. E. Murphy takes notes while I walk her through the dos and don'ts of housebreaking, all the while casually getting Peaches and Herb to come with an automatic sit, to stay and lay down without my saying anything, just using hand signals. Mrs. M is duly impressed and starts shouting, "E! Come on down here and look at this!"
I heard some grumbling and he descended the stairs in white shorts and shirt soaked in sweat, wiping his face with a towel. Scowling, he said to his wife, "What-I'm working out!" The lesson ended with him telling me I reminded him of the trainer on the movie set of Dr. Doolittle.
Actually living the life of a seriously rich and famous person is something the great majority of us can only imagine. The public would love to get inside Robert Redford or George Clooney's home just to see their living rooms, bedrooms, perhaps even their actual bathrooms. I haven't been a guest on the Onassis family yacht, nor have I ever met Redford or Clooney, but I have had the great fun of getting to meet a whole bunch of the RAFs, through their dogs of course. I read somewhere that if a person intimidates you, picture that person totally nude. I've had to do it a few times and it really helps. It didn't take long for me to realize, realize down to my core, that regardless of the fame or the circumstances that made them RAFs, like us, they still say stupid things, do stupid things, have gas, have kids on Prozac, and are clueless about their dogs.
So, for the last many years I have found myself inadvertently intimidating the RAFs when they started to understand how little they really knew about their own dogs. I remember an RAF saying with great bluster as I entered the den where the dog was being tended to by an assistant, "I decided we will have the lesson here...
