The Dog Walker

This is an original story, written for this site. It is fiction, not a teaching or a traditional account. Pelmo, Maître Claire Ferrand, Gaston, the other dogs and their owners are invented. Paris, its canal and its park are real, and so are the Seven-Line Prayer and the eight names of Guru Rinpoche; what is said about them comes from the sources listed below.

Seven leads

At half past seven on an October morning, Pelmo had seven leads in two hands and a plan, and the plan was already falling apart.

She was twenty-six, Tibetan, and a professional dog walker in the north-east of Paris. She had grown up in a Tibetan settlement in south India. Many young people leave the settlements to look for work; Pelmo had simply looked further than most. Her French was fast and accented. The dogs did not mind.

Every morning she collected them one door at a time. Then she took them along the Canal Saint-Martin, a narrow canal finished in 1825, with its locks and its arched iron footbridges, and up to the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, where a little round temple stands on a cliff above a lake.

The names

Every dog came with a perfectly good name. Pelmo used those names on the doorstep. In the park, she used her own.

Pistache, a young spaniel who believed every puddle and fountain in Paris had been put there for her, was Tsokye Dorje, the Lake-Born Vajra. Ulysse, an old golden retriever who sat calmly while everyone else lost their heads, was Shakya Senge, Lion of the Shakyas. Chouquette, a small terrier who lay down in any patch of sun she could find, was Nyima Özer, Rays of the Sun.

Biscotte, a grey poodle who learned every trick the first time, was Loden Choksé, Wise Seeker of the Sublime. Napoléon, a tall silky Afghan hound who walked as if the pavement had been laid for him, was Pema Gyalpo, the Lotus King. Lulu, a Pomeranian the size of a cushion with the bark of a much larger dog, was Senge Dradok, the Lion's Roar.

The owners noticed. Napoléon's owner, a retired dentist, asked politely whether "Pema Gyalpo" was a brand of dog food. Pistache's family decided it was Tibetan for "sit". Lulu's owner looked it up, found a painting of a fierce dark-blue figure in a blaze of flames, and decided not to ask.

The truth was simpler. At home, the names of Guru Rinpoche were said every day. In Paris, nobody said them at all. So Pelmo put them where she would hear them a hundred times a morning: at the end of a lead.

When she confessed this to her mother on the phone, there was a long silence from south India. Then her mother said, "Then you had better behave well in front of them," and rang off laughing.

There were eight names and only seven dogs. One name Pelmo had never given to any dog, and never would. That one she kept for the prayer.

Dorje Drolö

The seventh dog was Gaston.

Gaston was an old French bulldog, a breed that first appeared in Paris in the nineteenth century. He was brindle, dark stripes over red-brown, like a small tiger who had let himself go. He had a scowl, a belly, and breathing like a coffee machine, because the breed's flat face makes breathing hard work. So Pelmo never hurried him.

She called him Dorje Drolö, the Wild Wrathful Vajra. In paintings that form of Guru Rinpoche is deep maroon and blazing, standing on a tigress amid flames, a vajra raised in one hand. A vajra is a small scepter that stands for what cannot be broken. Gaston had the frown for it, and the tiger stripes.

He belonged to Maître Claire Ferrand. Maître, master, is how lawyers are addressed in France. She left for court before seven and came home after nine, and in eight months Pelmo had met her three times. They communicated by notes on the kitchen counter, mostly about Gaston's stomach.

Every morning Gaston came down in the lift, walked to the front step, and sat. Then he lay down. He did not move for treats, pleading or reasoning. He became a sandbag with opinions.

The tune

One cold, wet morning in the spring, out of ideas, Pelmo sat down on the step beside him. To warm herself up she began to hum the Seven-Line Prayer, to the tune her mother uses in the kitchen in the mornings.

She was halfway through the second time when Gaston sighed, stood up, sneezed on her shoe, and set off down the street.

It happened the next day, and the day after. Pelmo did not think it was a miracle. Perhaps he liked the tune. Perhaps he liked her sitting down and not hurrying him. He was a dog, and dogs do not explain. But every morning she sat, and hummed, and Gaston, in his own time, got up.

Saturday

One Saturday in October, Pelmo's phone rang at nine.

"He's broken," said Maître Ferrand. For once she had a free morning and had decided to walk her own dog. Gaston was lying across the step like a draught excluder.

Pelmo hesitated. "Did you hum?"

"Did I what?"

Pelmo explained, as briefly and as embarrassingly as possible. There was a pause. Then a woman who argued before judges for a living sat down on her own doorstep and hummed at her dog. She tried Édith Piaf. She tried the national anthem. She tried something from the radio. Gaston closed his eyes.

"He's waiting for you," she said at last, sounding personally offended. "Come on Monday. And on Monday evening I'm coming home early. I want to know what you've been calling my dog."

Eight names in plain words

On Monday evening she was there, in the kitchen, still in her court clothes, with two coffees and a closed folder pushed to one side. Gaston snored in his basket.

So Pelmo told her, in plain words.

Guru Rinpoche, she said, is Padmasambhava, the Lotus-Born, the teacher Tibetans remember for bringing the Buddha's teaching to Tibet in the eighth century. The traditional accounts say that at different moments of his life he appeared in different forms, and they remember eight of them by name. They are not eight people, she said. They are one teacher, appearing as each moment needed.

The first, the accounts say, was born on a lotus in a lake. One took a monk's vows. One studied with many teachers and mastered what they taught. One ruled as a king. One was a yogi, painted with the sun held in the sky by rays of light. One spoke the truth without fear, like a lion's roar. And one, Dorje Drolö, was so fierce that nothing harmful dared argue with him.

"Fierce like angry?" asked Claire.

"Fierce like someone who won't let you be hurt," said Pelmo. "That's how it was explained to me. Kindness that can't be pushed around."

Claire looked at the basket. Gaston opened one eye at her, then shut it again.

"So," said Claire slowly. "One advocate. Eight approaches, depending on the judge."

Pelmo thought about it. "Maybe a little bit," she said.

The name she kept

"And the prayer? The one he likes?"

Pelmo gave her the sense of it, not the words. It has seven lines. They say where Guru Rinpoche came from and how he was born in a lotus, and they speak of what he attained. Then they say his name. Then they picture the dakinis, female figures of wisdom, gathered around him, wish to follow where he went, and ask him to come and bless.

"The fourth line is just his name," said Pelmo. "Padmasambhava. That's the one I never gave to a dog."

Claire nodded, as if it were a point of procedure she fully respected. Then she asked, "And which one am I?"

Pelmo looked at the phone buzzing face-down on the table, the folder, the coffee going cold. "On the phone," she said carefully, "Senge Dradok."

Maître Ferrand laughed so loudly that Gaston woke up and glared at them both.

Afterwards

Not much changed after that. Claire did not become a Buddhist. Gaston did not become a morning dog.

But on Sunday evenings now, Claire sits on the front step beside him with a cup of coffee: not humming, not checking her phone, just sitting. Sometimes, after a while, Gaston gets up and they go round the block. Sometimes he does not, and they stay there together and watch the street.

The notes on the kitchen counter are a little longer now. Last week's ended: Say hello to Pema Gyalpo.

That night, in her small room under the roof, where the servants of the building once slept, Pelmo said the prayer through once, properly, not humming. At the fourth line she said the name she keeps for no dog, slowly, and let it be the only name in the room.