Tough Love For Wolfie, Part The First

In my dog-training heyday, you could walk into our house and see, several feet away from the door, Lexi and the now long-departed Mojo lying like statues on the rug, holding down-stays.  If you stayed for dinner, I might move the dogs to a spot from which they could watch the festivities, and they would lie there until the evening was over.

I had trained Mojo and Lexi in the old no-nonsense way, in which commands were clear, immediate compliance was expected, and the administration of food treats was viewed as morally suspect.  The method was especially appropriate for Lexi, who had lots of drive and would have taken over the household and organized it according to her principles, if we had let her.  But it also worked for eleven-pound Mojo, who seemed to enjoy showing off his world-record stays before our guests.

When we got Wolfie, I trained him the same way.  I remember having a pot-luck dinner for ten people when he was nine months old, and he held his stay next to Lexi like a champ.  Soon after that, however, things began to fall apart.  The winds of revolution were blowing through the dog-training world, but they were the benign breezes of positive reinforcement.  In the classes I faithfully attended with Wolfie, talk was of getting your dog to enjoy his work, getting him to want to please you, and helping you to develop a quality relationship with him.  And the treat bag was as important a piece of equipment as the leash.

I was told that a dog like Wolfie has a natural instinct to check out the people who enter his house, and that he should be allowed to greet guests at the door.  This marked the first step on the slippery slope.  It was easier for Wolfie to hold a down-stay when people came over than to moderate his enthusiasm if he was allowed to go up to them.  It's not that he jumped up on people or, heaven knows, was aggressive.  But he's a powerful dog with an extra-long tail that becomes a kind of bull whip when he gets excited, and his welcomes could be--well, overwhelming.

We hit the bottom of the slippery slope when, in an attempt to provide him with intellectual stimulation, I signed Wolfie up for herding lessons.  Herding is its own separate universe of dog training.  Although a herding dog needs to be under control, "you don't want blind obedience from him.  He has to be able to think for himself in order to do the job," the instructor explained.  So when Wolfie got up on his own initiative from his down-stay in the sheep pen, it might be because he had seen one of the sheep do something she shouldn't have, something that I in my ignorance might have missed, and I wasn't to correct him for it.

In a word, Wolfie was expected to hold down-stays no matter what when he was in the house, but was allowed to break them in the sheep pasture.  As that fundamental precept of parenting as well as of dog training, consistency, went out the window, I abandoned all attempts to make Wolfie stay when someone knocked at the door.

The entrance of guests into the house, formerly a scene of grace and serenity, now became a frenzied struggle as I tried to get Wolfie to say hello calmly and to withdraw politely.  And it didn't take Lexi long to realize that the regime under which she had lived all her life was finally teetering, and could be toppled.  Soon my friends were greeted by not one, but two German Shepherds hurtling towards them, jaws agape, tails wagging madly, exclaiming "Oh, hel-lo!  We thought you'd never get here!  My, what is that delicious smell?  How about a kiss?  We hope you'll take us home with you.  But meanwhile, may we sit on your lap?"

(To be continued.)

Dog, Woman, Sheep

Wolfie and I had our weekly herding lesson today. Or rather, he got to do what he wants and knows to do, and I tried to learn to guide him, and then get out of his way.

In many ways, these lessons are the highlight of our week. Addicted as I am to them, however, I find them challenging.

Here's how it goes. We drive some twenty minutes to Sarah's place (Sarah is our instructor). I let Wolfie out of the car ONLY after he makes eye contact with me—which can take a while since he needs to take in all the smells that have settled over the place since the last lesson.

We greet Sarah, then go through the sit, make eye-contact, release ritual through a series of gates until we get to the pen where the sheep are. We're talking only three or four sheep here--not herds of hundreds--wise and experienced and not easily rattled.

I take my place at the head of the sheep, who are wide and woolly, and who for some reason seem to want to follow me (so unlike goats!). I start walking them around the perimeter of the pen, then tell Wolfie to “walk up.” With Sarah holding a long leash, Wolfie “puts pressure” on the sheep from behind. If he puts too much “pressure” by following too quickly or too closely, I'm supposed to stop him and make him sit.

How am I supposed to know when he's putting on too much pressure, if I'm facing away from him? By the way the sheep act. How am I supposed to make him sit from a distance, when all he wants to do is run after the sheep? By sheer force of will, power of personality, intensity of intention.

If you haven't been around sheep a lot, it's not easy to discern the moment at which they “feel the dog” and alter their pace. Nor is it easy to get your sheep-obsessed dog to drop to a sit at twenty paces. My first obedience class was somewhere in the late 1970s. My last one was a couple of months ago. During all those intervening decades I heard “if your dog doesn't comply with a command instantly, go and enforce it,” i.e., walk up to him and MAKE him sit.

But in herding, if you walk back to your dog to enforce a “sit,” you are abandoning your sheep, which makes your dog want to rush in and take care of them himself.

The only option for me, then, is, the moment the sheep alter their gait, to whirl around and, calmly and masterfully, project such laser-like energy with my command that Wolfie will instantly drop into a sit. (The reward for a herding dog who sits, BTW, is neither treats nor pats, but a “walk up” command to go after his beloved sheep again.)

In desperation, I thought I would try visualizing Wolfie in a sit as I gave the command. I'd read and heard about visualizing your dog doing whatever you wanted him to do, but had never thought it as efficient as a good “snap and release” on the leash.

This morning, having nothing to lose, I decided to try it. “Sit!” I said, while staying with my sheep. I pictured Wolfie sitting ten feet behind us, and by golly, he did. “Walk up,” I said, and started walking with the sheep. The minute they began to speed up, I whirled around and said “sit!” to the thundering Wolfie. Just in time, I remembered to visualize, and he sat.

This worked amazingly well for a while. Then I started to lose it, and inevitably, so did he. Something happened to my focus, my concentration, my will. I got distracted by the sheep, the sweat running down my face, the bugs. It wasn't working anymore. My mind was mush. It was time to quit. Sarah nicely got Wolfie to drive the sheep into a corner so we could tell him “that'll do!” and praise and pet him, and the lesson was over.

I came home exhausted. I couldn't understand why. The exercises we'd been doing in the relatively small pen were not physically challenging. It must have been the mind part, the visualization, the part that made Wolfie do what I wanted him to do without an outward sign. The weird part.

Why did it work so well, and why did it take so much out of me?

Spring Training

While the Convalescent napped this morning, I took the dogs to the woods to take the edge off their energies. It was a bright, clear day. The kind of day when you don't care that the temperature is in the 20s, because it feels like spring anyway.

When we returned, the little goats were clamoring to be let out of their pen. This time I was ready. I had Wolfie on the leash and made him and Lexi lie down and stay while I opened the gate. Blossom and Alsiki scampered out and started racing up and down the yard, right by the dogs' noses. They leaped about, all four legs off the ground at the same time, greeting the new season.

I made Wolfie walk with me towards and away from the goats. I made him sit close to them, then lie down. The goats were unfazed. They got closer and closer, until they touched noses with Wolfie, who was so shocked it didn't even occur to him to lunge. Either Blossom and Alsiki are extremely stupid, getting that close to a dog who is so much bigger and faster than they, or they are extremely clever, and had figured out that he was under my control.

I walked Wolfie around on the leash some more, and then I sat on the picnic table in the sun and the dogs lay down on the squishy wet ground and the goats settled down to clearing our lawn of last year's dead leaves. I was relaxed, Lexi was relaxed, even Wolfie was relatively relaxed. The chickadees twittered, and a pastoral calm descended on us all.

I now know that Wolfie will eventually be reliable around Blossom and Alsiki. I can tell by the way he holds his body, his tail, his head, his ears. This ability to watch closely and read a dog's body language (which I am just starting to develop) is the greatest benefit from the zillions of hours I have spent in dog training classes, more important by far than all the obedience exercises put together.

Wolfie is still far from perfect--I'm sure he'd chase the goats if he had the chance. But by the time we were finished today I had the feeling that he and I had reached a new level of understanding. I can't wait to work him again tomorrow.

What, you might ask, is the point of all this? It certainly isn't to teach him to herd the goats, because I haven't the least idea how to go about doing that. The language of herding--"away to me" and so on--is a mystery to me.

What I want is, first of all, for Wolfie to NEVER chase the goats for sport. I want him to be "calm-submissive" around them and pay attention to me when I ask him to do something. After that, who knows? I'm interested to see where his instincts will take him. He certainly is concerned, when he and Lexi and I go out together, about keeping both of us in sight at all times. He can usually be found exactly half-way between Lexi and me, and if I lag behind, he comes and gets me. How that will translate around the goats, I don't know. It may drive him crazy, having to keep constant track of all of us.

It's going to be an interesting summer.