Until Tuesday by Bret Witter, Luis Carlos Montalván Read Free Book Online

soldier was a sacrifice. We believe in what we do and we love it. What’s monetary enrichment compared to personal accomplishment? What’s a new car compared to the knowledge that you’ve bettered someone’s life?
    That’s why Tuesday was a problem. Because their work was so important, the dogs at ECAD had to be the best. How can you give that young man in the wheelchair a dog that might ignore him? How can you give a brain-damaged child, who shuffles slowly and weakly when she walks, a dog that might pull her into the street?
    Tuesday wasn’t a bad dog. He just wasn’t attentive to commands, and he sometimes refused to follow the two most basic: side and heel, the commands telling a dog to walk on your right or left side. In Lu’s opinion, he was immature. I think he was wounded from losing Tom, as only a sensitive dog like Tuesday could be.
    I know that ECAD dogs, when trained in the usual way, don’t miss being bonded. How would they, as Lu argues, when they’ve never experienced a consistent relationship with a human being? Do you miss speaking Portuguese? Or seeing the sunset over the North Pole?
    But what happens when a dog, especially an intuitive and emotional dog like Tuesday, experiences a strong human bond not once but twice, only to lose it both times? How does he feel then?
    Lu saw the pitfalls. But she also saw the potential in Tuesday. He was warm and beautiful. He was mild-mannered. He was smart and sensitive and impossible not to love. And, Lu suspected with her fifteen years of intuition, she had the perfect trainer to reach him: Brendan.
    It has long been known that training a service dog can be beneficial for the trainer as well as the dog. In fact, Green Chimneys Farms, one of Lu Picard’s support organizations and a pioneer in the field since the 1940s, began training service dogs primarily as therapy for emotionally troubled children. For the past thirteen years, ECAD has performed that therapeutic role at Children’s Village, a residential school for troubled teens in Dobbs Ferry, New York, about an hour north of New York City. Working at ECAD is a voluntary program for the students, so it is surprising, at first, that so many of the teenagers seem withdrawn, aggressive, or dismissive toward their work. But remember, these are some of the most troubled kids in the New York State foster care system. Like Tuesday, most have been passed through multiple caregivers and learned that hardening your heart—even to dogs—is the only way to survive.
    Brendan’s story is typical. Born in an impoverished area of Brooklyn, he bounced between a series of foster parents and his mother’s house, never staying longer than a few months. He had always been quiet, but now he withdrew from the world around him. He stopped listening to his foster parents; he stopped trying to make friends. He was vulnerable, but even worse, he was large. He was always the huge new boy in a rough school. But he wasn’t a fighter. This made him a target for hard boys and others trying to prove themselves. He got picked on and he got beaten up. He wanted nothing more than to go home to his mother, but she had younger children now. He never stayed for long.
    Eventually, Brendan took to the streets. He stayed out as long as he wanted, whenever he wanted, and never worried about the consequences. No punishment could touch him, because he didn’t care. He was angry, but more than that, he was hurt, and he was only a kid, so what did he know? All he wanted was his mother, and she wasn’t going to take him back. So he fought. And argued. And stared at the wall and shrugged when they suspended him from school.
    A social worker recommended Children’s Village. The State of New York agreed. It was the ideal place for a lonely young boy, but the transition wasn’t easy. He hated his old life, but he hated his new life even more. He wouldn’t talk to anyone, even the other kids in his cottage. He wandered to class in a daze and ate