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turned around Tuesday, the saddest dog in the yard.
    And Tuesday?
    He went back to ECAD. Alone. Again.

CHAPTER 3
    THE LOST BOYS

     
     
    Love is never lost. If not reciprocated,
it will flow back and soften and purify the heart.
    —W ASHINGTON I RVING
    The ECAD office and training center aren’t a show piece. A low-lying building with a blue tin roof, it is almost ostentatious in its lack of decoration or architectural features. Inside, it is just as practical, composed primarily of a large open work space with a bare concrete floor. There are two long folding tables placed end to end in the center of the room (the brown particleboard kind you see in church dining halls), a circular yellow path outlined on the floor, and five or six green wooden platforms. Mostly, though, the room seems empty. Even the cinder block walls are spartan, painted pale gray and covered with checklists and behavioral diagrams. There are three modest, well-used offices along the right wall, and a steel door in the back that leads to a living area used by clients during their two-week training period. The windows on the left offer views of three enclosed outdoor play areas, two with those tiny plastic slides designed for two-year-olds and usually found in suburban basements. For an organization that survives on donations, in other words, ECAD doesn’t waste much time or money catering to the rich and powerful.
    Even the dogs don’t live in luxury. When not being trained or exercised in the play areas, they are kept at the back of the large room in the kind of large kennels sold at the local pet store. The only training equipment, besides the yellow line on the floor, are the six green wooden boxes. They are used to teach the dogs to get up and down, and they are where the dogs sit attentively, with their handlers beside them, when taking a break. The rest of the training is done with the ordinary objects in the room: doorknobs, light switches, window blinds, chairs—things the future service dogs will encounter in their working lives.
    The special thing about ECAD is the staff. This is a group of people, from Lu Picard down, who believe in their work. It’s not just about the dogs, Lu always says. That was her old job, training puppies for wealthy families. ECAD is about the clients. Everything is done to provide the disabled with better lives.
    It’s hard to argue with that mission when you talk to a mother whose seven-year-old son has been falling down steps at school since having his brain tumor removed. “I just want him to be able to play like other kids,” she says.
    Or the young man in a wheelchair, able only to move his right arm. He did his own research and found ECAD when he was twelve, but his mother wasn’t supportive. After three months, the boy gave the dog back, saying he couldn’t handle the responsibility alone. Seven years later, he asked for another chance. He had finished high school. He was putting himself through college. He was going to succeed. A dog was the last tool he wanted before moving out on his own.
    Or the mother whose son was struck by a hit-and-run driver at age twelve. The brain damage left him barely able to speak and, for four years, unable to walk. You can hear six years of exhaustion and anguish in her voice when she says, “He loves to read. He wants to walk to the library by himself. He’s eighteen. It’s only a few blocks away, but he has to walk past the place where the car hit him, and I can’t do it. He gets so mad at me, but I just can’t. This dog . . . it will give him his freedom. I think it will help me let him go.”
    That’s why Lu Picard and the staff at ECAD work so hard. That’s why they train the dogs so precisely, beginning on the third day of their lives, and nurture them so carefully. That’s why they take less money to do more work, and endure frustrations and setbacks without complaints (or only a few). I don’t think it’s a sacrifice, any more than my life as a