Newport

Clichéd, I know, but life was good. Really, there was no way it could have gotten better. Spring arrived in April like it’s supposed to, not July as it did in Vermont. My job was the easiest job I had ever had. All my co-workers knew two things – how many quarters they needed to work before they retired and what time the coffee truck arrived. My new work friends welcomed me wholeheartedly, and showed me the ropes. At 3:00 on the dot, I was outta there, and straight home to Jazz. We had more opportunities to train in a week with new people, dogs, and environments than we had in a year in Vermont. 

Aquidneck Island, at first glance, didn’t offer up the same opportunities for Jazz and me to enjoy our walks together as we had up north. Within a year, I left my first apartment and rented a small house a few blocks from St. George’s Prep School and half a mile from Second Beach. I discovered we could walk up a little street off Wolcott which ended in a dirt road. At that juncture, I could safely unclip Jazz’s lead. To our left were small hayfields to meander in, and to the right were the fields of St. George’s. We skirted the campus buildings at first, but each time we met a student or teacher, they insisted on saying hello to Jazz. We smartly made friends with the groundskeepers. 

The campus, with its breathtaking views of Second Beach, became one of our favorite walking places. Jazz led the way, down through the fields behind the teachers’ homes toward the coast. From St. George’s, we could cross Paradise to Second Beach. On days when we were truly ambitious, we could leave home and walk to the Sachuest Point Wildlife Refuge at the end of Second Beach. We would follow the path as it hugged the coast around the entire point and then back home through St. George’s. It was an almost two hour hike at a leisurely pace, and she would only need her leash for a short part of it. 

Annually, after May 1st, Jazz was still allowed on Second Beach, but we had to be off the beach by 7:45 A.M. One Saturday morning, I sat on the beach watching the terns dart in and out of the shallow waves. Jazz had found a tennis ball near the dune grass. I am sure a Golden somewhere in town was bemoaning the loss of his ball. It had found a keen new owner. 

Jazz dropped the ball in the sand by my feet and gave me her best, Throw-it-mom look. “Not today, Coochie Bug, we still have to walk home. Tomorrow morning we have a training party and in the afternoon you’re going swimming with Reb at the reservoir. You can play by yourself. Go ahead.” Resigned that I wasn’t bluffing, she pawed the ball with her feet, left, right, left, and soon she had a foot-deep hole in the 

sand. The excavated sand was all over the ball, and all over Jazz. A cup of sand, at least, stuck to her teeth and blocked her nostrils. Gross, really gross. It made me laugh out loud. 

“You’re nuts you know that? Where’s that ballie?” I stretched my legs out on the sand, in no hurry to ruin Jazz’s sandcastle engineering. To my left, the waves lapped at Sachuest Point, and far to my right, the Newport mansions held sentry over the Atlantic. Jazz and the terns competed for my gaze closer up. 

I hadn’t made any normal friends, but Chris and Nancy were great dog friends. I had Jazz. I didn’t need a regular, non-doggie friend. I didn’t even need a boyfriend, a newsflash even to myself. When had my I’m an old maid turned into I don’t need a boyfriend? I wasn’t sure. My faith that this beach was my forever place, and my faith that all I needed was this dog to walk on it with me, gave me a contentment I hadn’t felt in a long time.