A Dog Named Hope, 
Chapter 5

By Michael Mooney

"She dresses like us."

"But she doesn’t act like us."

At this, everyone round the dinner table tittered, remembering perhaps the way Hope had responded to the call for evening prayer.

"She dresses like a priest."

"But she doesn’t act like a priest. Besides, she’s a girl."

At dinner that evening, round the table in the dining room, most of the talk was about Hope. Next to the weaving room with its four looms, the dining room was not large. A single table ran down its middle around which the twelve nuns sat. The room had white walls, a scuffed, bare, hardwood floor, and windows overlooking the fields below the barn, in one of which grazed the flock of twenty-five ewes and their lambs. Through the windows the westering sun shone till it dipped below the hillside to the west.

Sister Mary did not sit at the head of the table, which was a place reserved to that evening’s server. But Sister Mary was the leader of the group, and if she tried to keep the discussion focused on the reasons they had brought a working dog to the convent farm at Mount Carmel, still she listened to the comments round the table and tried to understand what each meant.

She reminded her sisters of Hope’s murmuring heart and of the limitations and even the danger that meant. As she spoke she wasn’t sure if she were trying to keep the others’ level of expectation from getting too high or if she were trying to protect herself from forming too close an attachment to the wonderful little dog. She wanted the others to recognize, indeed, what a wonder the dog could be. Before she finished she recognized that directly across from her Sister Ellen, who hadn’t spoken all evening, was looking at her very intently, with a frown of concern on her face, as if she had something important to say.

"It’s my understanding," Sister Ellen said, when the Mother Superior had ceased, as if she had merely waited for the opportunity to begin, "that these dogs accomplish their work through the threat of violence. I would have thought, in such a place as this, we would seek a better way."

Sister Ellen was the youngest in their number, very serious in her manner, very careful and correct in all things, very concerned on all occasions that justice be done. In a small community of people such as the convent of Mount Carmel, where twelve individuals live in close proximity to each other twenty-four hours a day, with little contact with the outside world, it’s easy for small grievances to become long-standing grudges. Sister Mary was aware that, of all the nuns under her supervision, Sister Ellen, who was the youngest, chafed against the easy answer to any question and yearned for a higher standard and a sterner discipline. 

Sister Mary was further aware that Sister Ellen’s unhappiness was in a way her own responsibility, as Mother Superior, and the natural response of an intelligent young woman to the laxness of the authority she found herself subject to. Not that Sister Mary’s authority was particularly lax, but then it didn’t seem possible for her, on the other hand, to rule over the lives of the nuns in her charge by invoking always the letter of the law and the rigorous standards Sister Ellen desired. Sister Mary was aware, too, that some of the older sisters bitterly resented that someone as young as Sister Ellen, so new to their community, should take it upon herself to question the Mother Superior’s judgment and find their way of life at Mount Carmel wanting. 

Sister Ellen came from a well-to-do family in the Madison area, a manufacturing family, Sister Mary believed, but then as Mother Superior she didn’t pay much attention to that. Sister Ellen was a great reader, particularly diligent in her work in the weaving room, and she had an aptitude for color and design. It was Sister Ellen who noted that the washing of the mural in the chapel was causing it to fade, and who had taken it upon herself to restore with pigments and brushes some of that lost richness of texture. 

That was the quality Sister Mary liked in the younger nun, not so much that she found fault but that, when she did, she tried to do something about it. It was a quality that might make her some day a successful Mother Superior herself. She would have to learn in the meantime to temper her sternness and impatience with the limitations of others, and so it was Sister Mary’s endeavor to show the younger nun the virtue in that accommodation which can come about from learning to acknowledge one’s own limitations, which is the way to finding strength and beauty in the world as God had made it. 

Sister Ellen’s words fell on the table now, and the room went silent. Even the pots and kettles in the kitchen seemed to pause. 

Then as if all the others realized in the same instant that someone in their midst conspired to take away their pleasure, everyone began speaking at once, remembering how they had chased the sheep themselves, and wasn’t their doing so evidence of the same thing? and Sister Elizabeth Jane one day in the field, in her breathless exasperation with the silly sheep, had directed harsh words in their direction, taking the name of the Lord in vain! Surely everyone remembered that!

Sister Mary reassured the company that, although she had not seen Hope work, she had detected no violence in the handling she witnessed on the farm where Hope had been raised. She directed her words to all the company, even though she was aware that throughout the babble of raised voices Sister Ellen had not once taken her eyes from her face.

"I don’t doubt the sheep fear the dogs, because a dog must make a sheep think of wolves, even if a sheep has never seen a wolf herself," Sister Mary explained to Sister Ellen directly across from her. "The dog is bred to handle the sheep, not to prey upon them. Let’s wait till tomorrow and see for ourselves."
Everyone agreed that dinner was over. There was a level of expectation amongst the sisters, and now Sister Ellen’s words had introduced a level of dread. Everyone recognized the justice of her concern, and everyone bitterly resented her bringing it up, expressing it, and reminding them. 

It had been agreed that the young dog would sleep in her carry-crate until a suitable shelter for her was built in the barn. But upstairs in the dormitory where the sisters lived in shared rooms there was considerable discussion about just where the crate should be placed and in proximity to whose door. Dogs, even if they are akin to wolves, have a way of getting underneath a person’s skin.

But dogs are adaptable, and the next morning at the convent if there was work to be done, and reasonable encouragement, and not much interference, Hope could be expected to do her work well. It was decided that the sheep should be moved from one pasture to the other, a thing that had previously required all the nuns to take a part in, spread out across the field driving the sheep before them, which the sheep, who were mindful of the slowness of the women and their general harmlessness, could easily frustrate. Sister Mary now proposed that she and the dog should accomplish the work together, just the two of them.

If the other nuns were no longer required, still they wanted to watch. Hope came out of her carry-crate, looked around at everybody, and recognizing Sister Mary, presented herself to her as ready for action and eager to begin. Together they walked down to the field, the little dog following at the nun’s side, sniffing at the grass, hurrying to catch up. Sister Mary opened the gate between the two pastures and entered the field where the sheep grazed.

The others drew back to either side, knowing not to block the entrance where they wanted the sheep to pass. Hope followed the nun into the field without seeming to notice the sheep a hundred yards off, who all lifted up their heads to look at the two black-and-white figures coming their way. Sister Mary stopped, and Hope came up beside her and sat, looking up at her, wagging her tail in the short-cropped grass, seeming to beg for an order.

Sister Mary wasn’t sure what to do next. She wanted to reach down and pet the little dog who looked up at her so winningly and who seemed at that moment so much wanting to be petted. She was aware of the others watching, aware that she herself was setting the tone for everything that would follow.

"Okay!" she said quietly, uncertain where the word came from, which she never used herself, until she remembered that she had heard Marcia say it to Cap. "Okay, Hope -- Away to me!"

As soon as she said the words she remembered that Marcia had made a whooshing sound to set Cap in motion -- a kind of "whoosh, whoosh" -- and she wished that she could begin again, except that the little dog was no longer at her side, and when she looked, Hope was tearing through the field not directly at the sheep but out and around and behind them, and the sheep had come together in a knot, and they all turned to face the dog.

It’s a sheep dog’s instinct when she’s set on a flock of sheep to circle out and around the sheep to a point directly opposite the handler called the balance point, in order to push the flock back in the direction of the handler. This was the work Sister Mary had spoken of, and the work Marcia had showed her how to do. Sister Mary watched the dog travel out and around, and when the sheep were directly between them, Hope came down upon the sheep and stopped. Most of the ewes turned to trot towards Sister Mary, but three of them still faced the dog, lowering their heads and pawing the earth, as if they meant to resist her authority.

Hope paused, one foot in front of the other, her whole self inclined directly at the recalcitrant ewes, her eyes glaring at them. From Sister Mary’s vantage she could see that six or seven feet separated dog and ewes. She wanted to call out to Hope some word of encouragement or command, as she had heard Marcia do with Cap, and at the same time she didn’t want Hope to do something rash that would justify Sister Ellen’s concern. 

"Hope!" she called. "Good girl, Hope!"

Hearing her name, the dog took a step forward without altering the angle of her approach or the fierceness of her look. Twenty yards away, the other sheep had all stopped to graze. For a moment it looked as if the stare-down between sheep and dog would go on forever, even though with Hope’s step forward the distance between them had grown unbearably small. Then with one accord the three ewes turned and trotted towards the others, while Hope pressed up behind them, but at a more respectful distance now, and then the flock started again in Sister Mary’s direction.

They trotted along, two by two and three by three, as if they had been told to come in this fashion, and only at the last did Sister Mary remember to back up and get out of the way. Then it was accomplished. The sheep were through the gate and into the other pasture, and someone thought to close the gate behind them, almost before Sister Mary remembered to call the dog off.

"Here, Hope!" she called. "Hope, that’ll do! Oh, what a good girl you are, Sister Hope!"

The little dog ran to her side just as the gate closed, and when the others had rushed forward, she submitted thankfully to a lot of petting. Flopping down on her side, panting with a rapid breath, she seemed to know how well she had performed. The nuns all gathered round, and even Sister Ellen seemed pleased and a little in awe of what she had witnessed, which seemed indeed to partake of the miraculous.

"It was as if she could read your thoughts," Sister Ellen said to her Mother Superior. "It was as if she knew all along just what you wanted her to do!" 

"She certainly seems to know just where to go and how to do it," Sister Mary allowed.

"And the sheep -- but it was as if she talked to them, telling them to line up in rows and go here or there."

Everyone in the group had something to say, and all agreed that Hope was a marvel. The object of their enthusiasm lay at their feet stretched out on her side panting with a rapid breath. She lifted her head in acknowledgement of their attention, and lay her head back down again. The nuns as a group instinctively drew back a step as if in their thoughtless excitement they might have deprived the dog of air to breathe. Then following Sister Mary’s example, they all knelt down in a circle.

Sister Mary put a hand on Hope’s chest and felt the rapid beating of her heart. The little dog lifted her head and touched her nose to the nun’s hand. Someone thought to run back for a bowl of water, from which Hope lapped noisily without even getting to her feet. This seemed to revive her, and after another minute she stood up, gave herself a shake, and addressed herself to Sister Mary as if to say, "Okay, Boss, what’s next?"

That was enough for the day, and the group followed Sister Mary and "Sister" Hope back to the barn. For all their excitement of a few minutes before, hardly another word passed between them. But that was how they all thought of her: Sister Hope had become one of their number.

(to be continued)
 
 

Author Michael Mooney lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.