Until Tuesday Read Online Free PDF

move. When he finally did, Tuesday walked away from his old life without complaint. He went into his new cell. Then he curled up under the man’s bunk, put his head down, and pined.
    That’s the moment that makes Tuesday unique. I think of a young golden retriever heartbroken under a cot, refusing even to eat, and I think: only Tuesday. Only Tuesday would take separation so hard after just three months. Only Tuesday would feel the loss so profoundly. It was a rare and unfortunately confluence of events, a perfect storm of unintended consequences. Tuesday had been conditioned to leap enthusiastically into a human-dog bond. He had been trained through rewards to believe that all his master’s actions were a response to his behavior. And he was a deeply, deeply sensitive dog. His moping wasn’t an act. It was genuine pain and loneliness and regret. Dozens of other dogs went through similar experiences with only minor adjustments. Only Tuesday spiritually collapsed. Only Tuesday made you want to drop everything and throw your arms around him and say, Come away with me, boy. I will give you what you need .
    The new raiser was high-strung. He wasn’t prepared for this outward display of emotion, and he quickly grew frustrated with Tuesday’s moping. I imagine him as a whiny Steve Buscemi type, tugging at the leash and saying, “C’mon, Tuesday, c’mon,” then throwing up his hands and saying, “It’s not my fault, man. Not my fault. It’s the dog, man.”
    That wasn’t going to work. Tuesday, more so than other dogs, sizes people up. He studies them, and he understands. He responds, as I have come to learn, to people he respects. As the begging from his new raiser turned to excuses, then complaining, I can imagine Tuesday sighing and wondering how he had fallen so far in the world. He went through his training, because that’s what he was conditioned to do. But the moment it was over, he went back under the cot and didn’t move. For almost a week, he lived with his head down and his spirit flagging, missing his friend.
    Eventually, an inmate named Tom intervened. Tom was the oldest prisoner in the group, having served more than thirty years of a twenty-five-to-life sentence for second-degree murder. As a young man, he had read almost every book in the prison library. He had lifted weights and worked mess hall jobs and earned several college degrees. But when his first parole passed, he stopped trying so hard to improve himself and started to accept his fate. By the time Puppies Behind Bars came along, he was spending most of his time in his cell or watching television.
    “In the prison system, you shut down your feelings,” he said. “You gotta do that to survive, because it’s hard. But the dogs brought me back, you know, to the human side.”
    By the time Tuesday came along, Tom had trained six dogs, all Labrador retrievers, and every single one of them had graduated to additional training. They were all out there in the world, making it a better place. This was rare. Lu Picard and East Coast Assistance Dogs had an 80 percent success rate, but many service dog training facilities graduate less than half their dogs. That’s not a negative statement on them; it’s just a reflection of the difficulty of the training. Service dogs must be elite in every aspect of their lives. So Tom was, understandably, proud of his perfect 6-0 record. There wasn’t anyone else in his facility with that kind of record. In the closed prison world, success was his social currency, the reason other prisoners looked up to him and listened to him and, perhaps best of all, left him alone.
    The other prisoners couldn’t believe it when he offered to take Tuesday. “What do you want to risk your record for on that crazy dog?” they teased him. “That dog’s no good.” Tuesday was a washout. A bum. A broken-down six-month-old. None of the prisoners thought he was going to make it except Tom. And even he wasn’t sure.
    “It was