Free By My Side by Alice Peterson

far, everyone has been given their first choice, so Ticket has to be mine. I can relax. Priscilla, the Labradoodle, walks in next. She’s a cross between a Labrador and a poodle, but the poodle gene is clearly the stronger as her coat has tight little curls.
    ‘You’re joking,’ Alex says, followed by an uneasy laugh when Priscilla sits by her side. When Lindsey shakes her head Alex cries out, ‘I’m not taking no poodle home. They’re not proper!’
    ‘Excuse me?’ Lindsey says.
    ‘My friends will take the mickey.’ Alex crosses her arms in a huff.
    Lindsey looks concerned. ‘Alex, of course you need to be happy, but …’
    ‘I can’t have no poodle in Brixton! When I signed up for this, yeah, I thought I’d be taking home a Labrador, not some poodle with curly hair and fancy ways.’ Priscilla barks at this insult. ‘I want Captain, the Golden Retriever.’
    I catch Edward smiling at me. When no one’s looking, I smile back.
    ‘Stop being a Poodleist!’ Lindsey continues.
    ‘A what?’ Alex screws up her face.
    ‘A Poodleist,’ she repeats, annoyed now. ‘Alex, I understand you’re disappointed and I know you did get on well with Captain too, but didn’t you see how Priscilla worked for you in the assessment days? When you were in trouble in the lift, she took over. This is what I mean. Sometimes you don’t see what we see. The dogs chooses
you
just as much you chose him or her.’
    Alex’s face softens for a moment. She looks at Priscilla. ‘I did like her,’ she admits now. ‘She really chose me?’
    Lindsey nods. ‘So can you give her a chance?’
    So if Alex didn’t get her choice, there’s a possibility I won’t get mine now. Jenny could get Ticket. I know she likes him too. He trots into the room next.
    Please give him to me. He’s my boy. Ticket rests his head on my knee.
    ‘He’s yours,’ Lindsey says, as if there was never any contest.

11
    It’s the second week of our training course.
    So far we’ve been given lectures each morning on the many different aspects of looking after a dog: grooming, exercising, feeding, playing, taking them to public places and what to expect, dog psychology – their moods and body language – and we have had to learn all the various commands. We also need to be aware of our environment. For example, if living in student accommodation we need to make sure no one has allergies to pets. That was mainly directed at Tom. I looked over to him, admiring his strength. Tom fights for everything; he writes his essays with a head pointer because he can’t type with his curled fists. He doesn’t rely on equipment like voice liberators to be understood; he battles to be heard. At university he has a full-time carer, just as he has a carer here. When I’d asked if he found the carer’s constant presence intrusive, he said no, but then confided to me that one of them had bullied and taunted his weaknesses to such an extent that he’d cried himself to sleep for months, and almost gave up his degree. Yet, he didn’t, because the most important thing for him is to live away from home and to get a job when he graduates. The carer was sacked and he is now much happier with his new one. ‘I love my mum, but she’d … drive … me round the … bend!’ he’d said to me, followed by a shriek of laughter. He has inspired me to put everything into this training course. If Tom can have a dog and look after it, so can I.
    In the afternoons we often perform role-plays in one of the training rooms, pretending to be in a supermarket, bank, restaurant, lift or shop. If we’re at a pedestrian crossing, we say, ‘Up switch,’ asking our dog to use his front paw to push the pedestrian button. The props are laid out for us, the shelves stacked high with plastic tins of baked beans, reminding me of Guy. All this preparation is building us up to our final assessment day at the end of the week, when we will be taken out on a Farmers’ Market Day. We have been