What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures

fell under the sway of conservative elements within the Vatican. In the interim, theologians began exposing the holes in Rock’s arguments. The rhythm method “ ‘prevents’ conception by abstinence, that is, by the non- performance of the conjugal act during the fertile period,” the Catholic journal America concluded in a 1964 editorial. “The Pill prevents conception by suppressing ovulation and by thus abolishing the fertile period. No amount of word juggling can make abstinence from sexual relations and the suppression of ovulation one and the same thing.” On July 29, 1968, in the “Humanae Vitae” encyclical, the Pope broke his silence, declaring all “artificial” methods of contraception to be against the teachings of the Church.

In hindsight, it is possible to see the opportunity that Rock missed. If he had known what we know now and had talked about the Pill not as a contraceptive but as a cancer drug – not as a drug to prevent life but as one that would save life – the Church might well have said yes. Hadn’t Pius XII already approved the Pill for therapeutic purposes? Rock would only have had to think of the Pill as Pike thinks of it: as a drug whose contraceptive aspects are merely a means of attracting users, of getting, as Pike put it, “people who are young to take a lot of stuff they wouldn’t otherwise take.”

But Rock did not live long enough to understand how things might have been. What he witnessed, instead, was the terrible time at the end of the sixties when the Pill suddenly stood accused – wrongly – of causing blood clots, strokes, and heart attacks. Between the midseventies and the early eighties, the number of women in the United States using the Pill fell by half. Harvard Medical School, meanwhile, took over Rock’s Reproductive Clinic and pushed him out. His Harvard pension paid him only seventy-five dollars a year. He had almost no money in the bank and had to sell his house in Brookline. In 1971, Rock left Boston and retreated to a farmhouse in the hills of New Hampshire. He swam in the stream behind the house. He listened to John Philip Sousa marches. In the evening, he would sit in the living room with a pitcher of martinis. In 1983, he gave his last public interview, and it was as if the memory of his achievements were now so painful that he had blotted it out.

He was asked what the most gratifying time of his life was. “Right now,” the inventor of the Pill answered, incredibly. He was sitting by the fire in a crisp white shirt and tie, reading The Origin, Irving Stone’s fictional account of the life of Darwin. “It frequently occurs to me, gosh, what a lucky guy I am. I have no responsibilities, and I have everything I want. I take a dose of equanimity every twenty minutes. I will not be disturbed about things.”

Once, John Rock had gone to seven-o’clock Mass every morning and kept a crucifix above his desk. His interviewer, the writer Sara Davidson, moved her chair closer to his and asked him whether he still believed in an afterlife.

“Of course I don’t,” Rock answered abruptly. Though he didn’t explain why, his reasons aren’t hard to imagine. The Church could not square the requirements of its faith with the results of his science, and if the Church couldn’t reconcile them, how could Rock be expected to? John Rock always stuck to his conscience, and in the end his conscience forced him away from the thing he loved most. This was not John Rock’s error. Nor was it his Church’s. It was the fault of the haphazard nature of science, which all too often produces progress in advance of understanding. If the order of events in the discovery of what was natural had been reversed, his world, and our world, too, would have been a different place.

“Heaven and Hell, Rome, all the Church stuff – that’s for the solace of the multitude,” Rock said. He had only a year to live. “I was an ardent practicing Catholic for a long time, and I really believed it all then, you see.”[2]

March 13, 2000

What the Dog Saw

CESAR MILLAN AND THE MOVEMENTS OF MASTERY

1.

In the case of Sugar v. Forman, Cesar Millan knew none of the facts before arriving at the scene of the crime. That is the way Cesar prefers it. His job was to reconcile Forman with Sugar, and, since Sugar was a good deal less adept in making her case than Forman, whatever he learned beforehand might bias him in favor of the aggrieved party.

The Forman residence was in a trailer park in Mission Hills, just north of Los Angeles. Dark wood paneling, leather couches, deep-pile carpeting. The air-conditioning was on, even though it was one of those ridiculously pristine Southern California days. Lynda Forman was in her sixties, possibly older, a handsome woman with a winning sense of humor. Her husband, Ray, was in a wheelchair, and looked vaguely ex-military. Cesar sat across from them, in black jeans and a blue shirt, his posture characteristically perfect.

“So how can I help?” he said.

“You can help our monster turn into a sweet, lovable dog,” Lynda replied. It was clear that she had been thinking about how to describe Sugar to Cesar for a long time. “She’s ninety percent bad, ten percent the love… She sleeps with us at night. She cuddles.” Sugar meant a lot to Lynda. “But she grabs anything in sight that she can get, and tries to destroy it. My husband is disabled, and she destroys his room. She tears clothes. She’s torn our carpet. She bothers my grandchildren. If I open the door, she will run.” Lynda pushed back her sleeves and exposed her forearms. They were covered in so many bites and scratches and scars and scabs that it was as if she had been tortured. “But I love her. What can I say?”

Cesar looked at her arms and blinked. “Wow.”

Cesar is not a tall man. He is built like a soccer player. He is in his midthirties, and has large, wide eyes, olive skin, and white teeth. He crawled across the border from Mexico fourteen years ago, but his English is exceptional, except when he gets excited and starts dropping his articles – which almost never happens, because he rarely gets excited. He saw the arms and he said, “Wow,” but it was a “wow” in the same calm tone of voice as “So how can I help?”

Cesar began to ask questions. Did Sugar urinate in the house? She did. She had a particularly destructive relationship with newspapers, television remotes, and plastic cups. Cesar asked about walks. Did Sugar travel, or did she track – and when he said track he did an astonishing impersonation of a dog sniffing. Sugar tracked. What about discipline?

“Sometimes I put her in a crate,” Lynda said. “And it’s only for a fifteen-minute period. Then she lays down and she’s fine. I don’t know how to give discipline. Ask my kids.”

“Did your parents discipline you?”

“I didn’t need discipline. I was perfect.”

“So you had no rules… What about using physical touch with Sugar?”

“I have used it. It bothers me.”

“What about the bites?”

“I can see it in the head. She gives me that look.”

“She’s reminding you who rules the roost.”

“Then she will lick me for half an hour where she has bit me.”

“She’s not apologizing. Dogs lick each other’s wounds to heal the pack, you know.”

Lynda looked a little lost. “I thought she was saying sorry.”

“If she was sorry,” Cesar said softly, “she wouldn’t do it in the first place.”

It was time for the defendant. Lynda’s granddaughter, Carly, came in, holding a beagle as if it were a baby. Sugar was cute, but she had a mean, feral look in her eyes. Carly put Sugar on the carpet, and Sugar swaggered over to Cesar, sniffing his shoes. In front of her, Cesar placed a newspaper, a plastic cup, and a television remote.

Sugar grabbed the newspaper. Cesar snatched it back. Sugar picked up the newspaper again. She jumped