The Four O'Clock Stare

Here is Bisou, giving me the four o'clock stare, which often begins at 3:45 and continues unabated until 4:23, when I can't stand it any longer and give in and feed her (her official dinner time is 5:00).

As parents, my spouse and I believed that consistency was important, and that giving in to unjustified demands that contradicted standing rules was misguided. We applied this same principle to our many dogs in the course of fifty years, with excellent results. Until Bisou came along.

With all my dogs before her, mostly Shepherds and Setters, I had to work hard on eye contact. It became almost a reflex, before letting a dog out the door, or feeding it, or inviting it into the car, to stop and ask for a sit, and eye contact. The sit came easily enough, but the eye contact often took years to achieve. So I was charmed and amazed when Bisou, at nine weeks, came to us with perfect built-in eye contact.

I must have showered her with praise--it's always good to praise a puppy, right?--because she kept up the eye contact, and eventually honed it into a fearsome weapon that none of us can resist. Here is an example. My spouse is a benevolent but mostly uninvolved dog owner. The dogs have always been my delight and my responsibility, but he is glad to help out when I ask. Recently, getting ready to leave for the afternoon, I prepared Bisou's dinner, stowed it in the microwave, and asked my husband to feed her around 4:30. But my plans were cut short and I got home at 2:00--and found Bisou's empty bowl on the kitchen floor.

I ran into the living room, brandishing the bowl. "What is this?" I asked my husband. "You didn't feed her already, did you?"

"Well," he answered, "she stared at me and stared at me, and I figured that you must have made a mistake when you said not to feed her until 4:30."

That lesson, among others, was not lost on Bisou, who is now in her eleventh year of polishing the power of the stare. Did I mention that she's also going a bit deaf? This means that if she's busy sniffing outside and I call and she doesn't come right away, I can't get mad at her because, poor thing, she may not have heard me. So I call again, and again (exactly what I'm NOT supposed to do) until she looks up, all innocence, and says "Oh, it's you!" and trots over and fixes me with her lustrous carnelian orbs. And I praise her for finally coming, and for making eye contact...and she stores it all in her excellent dog memory for future use.

Prong

You may recall my recent fruitless attempts to teach Bisou to give up her sled-dog ways and walk nicely on leash (http://mygreenvermont.blogspot.com/2014/06/country-dogcity-dog.html ).  The only weapons in my arsenal were:  1.  treats, which I would administer during those fleeting moments when I could catch her being "good," and 2.  stopping dead in my tracks whenever she pulled (every minute or so) and "ignoring" her. 

Weapon #1 worked from time to time, but was no match for the lure of a robin hopping on the grass, or a whiff of rabbit.  Weapon #2 just made her laugh.

For the first time in my five-year love affair with Bisou, I was starting to feel seriously annoyed by her.  I found myself putting off our training sessions until it was almost dark, and looking for excuses to avoid them altogether.  And yet, because for very good reasons dogs cannot run free at Wake Robin, Bisou urgently needed to learn to walk on leash.

When my German Shepherds reached adolescence,  our obedience teachers unhesitatingly recommended a prong collar.  If you are using a flat collar, a big, powerful dog suddenly taking off after a chipmunk can easily knock you off your feet or pull your arm out of socket.  So I learned to use the collars properly, and none of my dogs ever gave signs of physical or emotional damage (needless to say, the prongs are blunt, not sharp).

After weeks of frustration, as Bisou pulled me up yet another hill and I began to run out of both patience and treats, trying a prong collar on her began to seem like a possible solution.  Given her sweet and gentle looks (Bisou is a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel), very few people realize what a tough little customer she is, driven by her spaniel genes to run like the wind and hunt the scurrying denizens of woods and fields.  This is a dog who, when she came to us at eight weeks old, met our two German Shepherds without blinking.  And when Lexi and Wolfie would get into one of their sparring matches, standing on their hind legs and flashing their teeth, Bisou would run smack into their midst, play-growling with all her heart.

After much thought, I decided that it was important to put an end to the vicious cycle of her misbehavior and my frustration, and to make it possible for both of us to enjoy our walks together. Confident that I could adjust my use of the prong collar so as not to traumatize her.  I went to the pet store and bought a small one.  At home, before putting it on her, I slipped it around my forearm and gave it a good yank.  I didn't feel much, but then I realized that Bisou would have the collar around her neck, so I pulled my hair out of the way, clipped Wolfie's prong collar around my neck, and yanked hard.  It wasn't pleasant, but it wasn't awful, either.

I knelt on the ground and called Bisou.  "Sweetie," I said, clipping the collar on her, "I'm doing this for the sake of our relationship." 

The minute we stepped outside, Bisou, as was her wont, catapulted to the end of the leash.  The collar did its work.  "Yikes!" she said, "What was that?" and ran back to me.  I took a step and she charged forth.  "Yikes!  It happened again!" she observed.  I took another step, she charged.  "Yikes! etc."

And that was that.  After the third time, she figured out what was happening and made sure that the leash stayed loose as we walked.  I watched her carefully for signs of upset, but she was stepping  jauntily, head up, tail high.  She was enjoying her walk, and so was I.  Since I didn't have to stop every time she pulled on the leash, we covered a lot more ground than on our prior outings.  I can hardly describe my relief at no longer having to constantly monitor her, to give or withhold treats, to control my urge to yell at her. 

I stopped at a spot with a view of Lake Champlain and gave Bisou permission ("Smell it!") to sniff around.  The sun was setting in a clear sky behind the Adirondacks, and my heart felt as placid as the surface of the lake.  Having deciphered the messages on the grass to her satisfaction, Bisou looked up at me.  "What a terrific dog you are, Bisoulette," I said, meaning every word.  And she wagged her tail and trotted happily beside me, all the way home.

Country Dog/City Dog

For all her posh breeding--Cavalier King Charles Spaniels were favorites of Charles II of England--Bisou is a country dog, accustomed to a daily ramble through the landscape.

In our previous house, the minute I let her out she would disappear into the woods, which in fall were her exact color, or into the tall grass of the field.  When--certain that coyotes and catamounts were salivating after her--I shrieked "Bisou, come!" she would streak back to me, her feathers encrusted with burrs and her back crawling with ticks when the weather was warm, or soaked to the skin and with baseball-sized ice balls clinging to her coat when it wasn't.

What never changed was the speed of her short legs, the way her ear curls streamed behind her head, and the ecstatic smile on her face.

In her childhood I took her to obedience classes, where we were introduced to "walking on a loose leash"--a kinder, gentler version of the strict heeling that my earlier dogs and I had been taught.  While she was not the star of the class, she wasn't a disaster, either--at least not on Wednesdays at 7 p.m., when we gathered in the same building with the same dogs and people and smells.

But whenever I took her to new surroundings, her training went out the window.  The solution was, of course, to take her to a different place every day and practice walking on a loose leash--meaning that the instant she began to pull I would stop, and resume walking only when she released tension on the leash.  This stopping and going was to be done over and over and over, day after day, until it dawned on her that, if she wanted to get anywhere, she had better make sure she wasn't pulling.

You can guess what happened.  The training was so mind-numbingly repetitive and frustrating that I wasn't very disciplined about it, especially since Bisou needed a lot of exercise and she could get it in fifteen minutes running full tilt out in the field or in ten minutes retrieving balls.  The stop-and-go walks may have exercised her patience--they certainly did mine--but they provided neither of us with physical exercise.  So when the classes ended, though I continued perfecting her recalls and her stays, I hardly ever leashed her again.

Although we're not actually in a city--it's nothing but verdant woods and meadows around here--the rules for dogs are city rules, and dogs must be leashed at all times.  I agree with and observe this rule, but oh, I wish I'd persevered when Bisou was a pup.

She only weighs eighteen pounds, but she has the heart of an Iditarod champion, and she would gladly pull me all up and down the hilly Wake Robin paths.  So I'm teaching her to walk on a loose leash all over again.

I had taught my previous dogs to heel the way everybody did back then:  by the "jerk and release" method.  And because they were big dogs, I was advised to use a prong collar, which the dogs didn't seem to mind much and which saved my arm from being wrenched out of its socket.  But Bisou is a sweet- and innocent-looking dog, and people would call the SPCA if they saw me using a prong collar on her.

So instead I use positive reinforcement, which is about as challenging to my physical coordination as playing the violin.  Here is how it works:  with Bisou on my left, I hold the leash in my right hand.  My left hand holds both a clicker and a tiny piece of mozzarella.  As we set out the door, I carol "with me!" and the minute Bisou lurches ahead, which happens right away, I halt.

I stand there like a statue while she, her nose in the air and her front legs practically off the ground, pants "I see a bird!  I smell a mouse!  I feel the grass!  Let me go!"  After many minutes, she eventually turns her head towards me; the leash loosens a tiny bit;  and I spring into action.  I click the clicker and deliver the mozzarella in a single, instantaneous, fluid motion, thus giving Bisou  immediate reinforcement for loosening the leash.

This happens maybe ten percent of the time.  The rest of the time, I forget to click, or I drop the treat, or I treat first and then click.  The thing is, Bisou knows exactly what I want her to do, and what she will get if she does it.  But even for a devoted cheese lover the scent of cat or bird or squirrel sometimes takes precedence.

We've been practicing with this technique for three weeks now.  Is she getting better?  Maybe a little bit.  A tiny little bit.  There are miles of trails around here--every inch meticulously maintained by the residents themselves--and Bisou and I have years of potentially pleasant walking ahead of us.  It is important that we work this out, and I'm not ready to give up yet.  But sometimes, in the dark of night, I despair.

Bisou And B.F. Skinner

I have been avoiding clicker training for years.  This is a method, heavily based on the work of behaviorist B.F. Skinner, that gives the trainee--dolphin, horse or dog--immediate positive reinforcement for performing a desired action.  The reinforcement consists of a metallic click followed by a treat.

It sounds simple, but it isn't.  The idea is to not force or lure the dog to do anything, but to simply click and deliver a treat.  Thus, by a patient game of "hot or cold," you can train Bisou to jump up onto a cane-bottomed rocking chair.  This is remarkable because dogs are not fond of jumping onto moving surfaces full of little holes.

I sneered at clicker training when I first heard of it.  It seemed amoral to my Catholic soul (all that bribery!) and abhorrent to my minimalist preferences (you have to have with you a clicker and a bag of treats in addition to a collar and leash every time you want to train).  And it is complicated, at least at the beginning.  Delivering clicks and treats at the precise moment they are required, plus holding a leash with a wiggly dog at the end of it while staying upright and listening to the instructor can feel overwhelming.

But I signed up because Bisou's brain needed stimulation and the only class available was clicker-based.  At first, it was a disaster.  Not only was I late and sloppy and endlessly fumbling in my clicking and treating, but Bisou, who would weigh eighty pounds as opposed to seventeen if I gave her all the food she wants, went completely to pieces whenever she saw the treat bag fastened around my waist.  Her eyes would bug out of her head and she would jump and twirl and yip and act like a complete idiot.  This from a dog who will be four this summer, and who had, albeit in her earliest youth, gone through obedience and agility training.

It took a couple of weeks for the sight of the treat bag to stop driving her into a frenzy and for me to become more adept at clicking and treating.  And things began to change--the clicker seemed to work.  I have to say that on paper clicker training seems, despite the complete absence of negative corrections, somewhat heartless and inhuman.  Maybe I got that impression because, when you're training a new behavior, you're not supposed to speak to the dog, just click and treat the correct action and ignore the incorrect.  And for me speech is so tightly tied to the mechanics of affection that to do without it seems cold and impersonal.

But I am not a dog.  And Bisou, once she stopped going into hysterics at the sight of the treat bag, has taken to the clicker like a duck to water.   She cannot wait to train;  cannot wait to get to class;  and once there, cannot wait for her turn to perform.  On command, she touches her nose to my hand, walks on top of squishy pillows, drops to the ground from a walk.  Last week, when the instructor put out some agility obstacles that she hadn't seen since she was a puppy, she threw herself at each one--the tunnel, the ring, the teeter--as if she'd been practicing all along.  All I had to do was stand there and point.  One that she had never seen before, the ladder, she did perfectly from the very first attempt.

What can I say?  She has a lot of drive stored in her DNA.  When I was first considering buying her and was told that her father was an agility champion, I thought that this boded well for her general health, which is a huge concern with this particular breed.  But I had no idea what this would mean for her temperament and needs.

Now I know.  It means an irrepressible joy in doing, and endless energy.  Some dogs in the class have to be motivated to do stuff.  Bisou has to be slowed down.  I am not good at that.  Her eagerness makes me hyper, which in turn excites her more, so that the two of us are forever in danger of spiraling off into the stratosphere. 

Bisou's DNA is a source of some guilt and regret to me.  What is a dog with this kind of breeding doing, going to class once a week and chasing balls in the front field the rest of the time?  Isn't a dog's mind a terrible thing to waste?  Shouldn't I be devoting my life to taking her to agility trials all over the country, amassing ribbons?

But I don't think that a trunk full of ribbons would make her tail wag any faster.  I figured out at some cost, years ago, that just because one can do something well is no reason that one should do it.  I think I will apply that lesson to Bisou.

If you'd like to see her sire, Denzil, covering himself with glory, click here (scroll down for videos): http://daisylanecavaliers.com/daisylane_paws/denzil

Is Wolfie A Moral Being?

Despite his fierce looks,Wolfie  is the sweetest dog I've ever had.  He has caught many an errant hen for me without ever drawing blood.  He has declined to decapitate goats who butted him.  And at the vet's, though he complains loudly (he is anything but stoic), he never growls.  I can pick up his food dish while he's eating, brush his big white teeth, call him off a rotten deer haunch in the woods.  He has never challenged me.

Except for this:  when I throw balls for him, after a few throws he lodges the ball tightly among his back teeth, and no force on earth can make him let go.  He is not nasty about this in any way.  He just...refuses to let go of the ball.  If I throw any other object for him--a rubber bone, a frisbee, whatever--he brings it back and hands it over without any problem.  But not the ball.

So why do I insist on throwing the ball?  I like efficiency, and throwing the ball (which comes with one of those arm-like "throwers") allows me to exercise both dogs at once, since Bisou runs after it just as fast as Wolfie, though she wisely lets him have it.  Now Wolfie doesn't have nearly the stamina or craziness that Bisou has, so when he gets tired after several throws (I suspect he's never fully recovered from anaplasmosis, a tick-borne disease) I would like to take him inside and then continue throwing balls for Bisou.  But he won't cooperate by releasing the ball.

I could beat him over the head with the thrower.  I could zap him with the electric collar which I used in his youth to "proof" his recalls so he wouldn't run out into the road.  But I find those methods abhorrent and counter to the spirit of ball throwing.

This afternoon, when he lodged the ball in his mouth and got that stubborn look in his face, I took him by the collar and put him in the feed room which is part of the chicken shed.  Then I got another ball and threw it for Bisou until I (but not she, never she) was exhausted.  After a while I went to check on Wolfie in the feed room.  He still had the ball in his mouth, but this time I was able to pry it out.  Thinking to make this into a teachable moment, I offered him the ball (Take it!)  and then asked him for it (Give!).  Again, I had to pry it out.  At the third attempt, since he still wouldn't give it willingly I let him keep it, shut the door, and left him in there to think about it.

Back in the house, it was dog dinner time.  While I fed Bisou I kept wondering what was going on in Wolfie's mind.  The part of me that has read piles of dog training books kept saying:  he has no idea why he's out there;  he's not able to make the connection between holding on to the ball and banishment to the feed room;  he hasn't the foggiest notion of how to redeem himself.  But another part of me--irrational, faith-based, possibly intuitive or perhaps just prone to wishful thinking--thought, Wolfie knows exactly what's going on.

I went to the feed room again.  Wolfie was at the door, ball in mouth.  "Wolfie, give!" I said, and the ball dropped into my waiting hand.

There was much rejoicing on my part, and an extra good dinner for Wolfie.  The lost sheep, so to speak, had come back into the fold.  But I was left with an uneasy feeling. How much more complex is Wolfie than I give him credit for?  The chicken shed episode seems to show that he knew what he was being punished for, and what he should do to get back into my good graces.  Moreover, he held all this in his mind for a good couple of hours.

Is my dog a rudimentary moral being?  What does it mean that my tiny betta (fish), whom I bought strictly for his decorative potential, has emotional needs and demands frequent petting?  What is the limit of one's responsibility to these beings who hang out at knee level or swim around in a glass vase on the kitchen counter?

It's a tiring business, having pets.  Rilke thought so too, who said:  "Anything alive, that makes demands, arouses in me an infinite capacity to give it its due, the consequences of which completely use me up."  I know what he was talking about.

(I  apologize for putting you through that aggravating word verification before you can comment.  I have done my best to avoid it, but last week, after spending hours getting rid of almost 200 spam comments, I cried uncle, waved the white flag and threw in the towel.  It was either write posts or deal with the spam--there was no room in my life for both--so I made my choice.)

In Memoriam: The Grand Fiasco

After Lexi's wild behavior in agility class, we never tried agility again, despite her obvious talents for it, as demonstrated by her walks on the perilous pier.  But I kept taking her to obedience, in hopes that she would settle down.

Lexi made a friend in that class, Balder, a Black Lab.  His owner had trained many dogs before, and one day, having watched Lexi do one of her fabulous distance recalls, he said to me, “She's so good you really should go for a CD (a Companion Dog degree) with her.”  He added that there were “fun matches” often held in the area.  These were practice trials to allow people and their dogs to prepare for the real thing.  “I'm taking Balder to one this weekend," he said.  "Why don't you sign Lexi up too?”  he said.

The minute those words left his mouth, it became my sacred duty to pursue the highest degree of obedience that Lexi was capable of.  After all, this was no mere pet.  She was an intelligent, extremely driven member of a working breed, who needed mental stimulation as much as I did.  If I couldn't give her a flock of sheep to herd, at least I could put her through the series of trials that would result in an obedience title.  Besides, taking tests was simple:  you put in a certain amount of work;  you took the test;  you got a good grade. 

What I found out at that first fun match, however, was that taking tests in partnership with a dog was quite different from taking tests in school.  Suddenly I, who from first grade had been a relatively  unruffled test-taker, became utterly stressed.  Lexi did not help.  She did everything I asked, but she did it with such intensity, with such barely-controlled excitement, that I feared that at any moment she might explode, which made me feel like I was about to explode. 

During the group down-stays, the dogs are supposed to lie in a row, with the owners twenty feet away, for four minutes. Lexi never moved, but her ears were pricked so high and her muzzle somehow became so pointy and arrow-like and her eyes were so intensely focused on mine that she looked like she was about to levitate.  By the time the judge said “return to your dogs!” I was shaking.

After a couple of these fun matches, which to me were anything but, but which she passed with points to spare, we were ready for a real AKC-sponsored trial. When the day came, I asked my husband to stay inside the car in the parking lot, out of sight of the ring.  I was afraid that if Lexi caught a glimpse of him during the test she would lose all self control.  Despite my nerves and her excitement, she got through the group stays just fine.  When it came time for our solo exercises, she performed better than ever.  Tail high and eyes shining, she heeled sweetly by my side, not rushing ahead, not lagging behind, sitting neatly whenever I stopped.  She was a beautiful young dog, alert and excited but, for the moment, completely controlled.  I heard appreciative murmurs from the crowd as we worked.

I was looking forward to the last part, the distance recall, because Lexi had always done it perfectly.  This is how it works:  you tell your dog to sit and stay, then you walk thirty feet away, turn to to face her, and call her.  The dog is supposed to come straight to you, and sit in front of you.

At the judge's instruction, I asked Lexi to sit and stay.  I walked away from her and turned around.  She stared at me, trembling with eagerness.  "Lexi, co-ome!" I caroled.  And she catapulted towards me.  Then, when she was about ten feet away, she gave a big grin, did a play bow, turned right, and leaped out of the ring.

A groan went up from the spectators as Lexi made the rounds, greeting man and dog, then disappeared into the crowd.  Would she take off for the hills?  Would I ever see her again? 

"Lexi, COME!"  I shrieked.  From wherever she was, she heard me and she came running.  She leaped back into the ring and sat neatly before me, wagging her tail, showing off her perfect recall. 

Never have I received so much sympathy from so many strangers.  The judge came towards me with an apologetic smile.  “I hate to do this, because she was so perfect,” she said.  “But leaving the ring is a disqualifying error.”  I assured her that I understood.

We made our way to the parking lot--Lexi triumphant, me holding back tears--where my husband had witnessed the disaster. “Please take me home,” I said.  And that was the end of Lexi's obedience career.

Years later, when  I was taking Wolfie to obedience classes, I thought that nine-year-old Lexi might enjoy it if I signed her up as well.  I used to do each exercise with Wolfie first, and then put Lexi through her paces.  I hadn't seen her so happy in a long time.  She pranced and strutted and demonstrated her mastery of everything.  I could see her thinking, "I'll show these benighted fools a thing or two..."

After class the instructor, who did not bestow praise idly, called me aside.  "You know," she said, "you could put Lexi in a show tomorrow, and she'd come in first."  For once in my life wisdom prevailed.  "Thanks, but I don't think so," I said.  "We're in this just for the fun of it."

In Memoriam: Lexi And The Long Pier

The minute I found an obedience class, I signed us up.  The class was taught by a painfully thin, gravelly-voiced instructor who chain-smoked during the break.  She knew dogs, and she knew people.  She had seen everything, and almost nothing shocked her. 

Lexi, who found being in the company of twenty strange dogs and their people overwhelming, could find no better way to deal with her emotions than to let out a high, continuous, unremitting whine.  She whined as she sat, she whined as she stayed, as she heeled, as she came when called.  I tried shushing her.  I tried ignoring her.  I tapped her muzzle.  I growled.  Nothing worked.  The instructor pretended she didn't hear her, but I could tell that she was dying for a cigarette.  So, for the first time in decades, was I.

The class lasted six weeks, and so did Lexi's whining.  Miraculously, however, when we showed up for the next six-week session, the whining stopped.  So did the panics at bicycles and skateboards and trucks.  Overnight, the puppy had grown into a self-assured, agile and fearless adolescent.  An adolescent girl-dog with an automatic adoration for human males, particularly my husband.

Never mind that I was the one who fed and brushed her, who took her to class and on walks--my husband was the one whom she adored.  One look from him made her day.  A word, a touch would literally fling her down on her back.  Perhaps he reminded her of the boy who was her first owner.  Perhaps she was captivated by his remoteness.  Or maybe it was pheromones.

From the beginning, Lexi hated water.  She never failed to walk around instead of through a puddle.  We used to take her to a certain beach on the Chesapeake Bay where dogs were allowed.  Invariably, there were flotillas of black Labs chasing sticks amid the waves, but Lexi would stand on the beach and concentrate on staying dry. 

There was an old, broken-down pier jutting a good fifty feet out into the water.  To get on it you had to scramble up some half-rotten pilings and then balance on a narrow plank laid on top of them.  My husband would climb onto this thing, and Lexi, left behind with me on the shore, would start to whine.  Then she would tremble.  And then she would go after him.  She would cling to the pilings with her nails and somehow clamber onto the planks and follow him, the waves crashing below her, to the very end.  There, with much anguish and whining,  she would manage her four feet so as to turn around on that one narrow plank and follow him back to dry land.

Despite her progress in obedience and her excellent house manners, she was quite a handful.  It was her intensity that I found so difficult to deal with.  Twenty times a day, while I was napping, or cooking, or painting, she would come to me, nail me with her piercing eyes and ask “What now?  What else can we do right now?”  Mentally and physically, she was exhausting to be around.

Try as I might to make her life interesting, Lexi was bored. She needed to be out rescuing lost hikers, or guiding the blind, or making arrests.  I was in a perpetual state of guilt and agitation over this.  When she was about a year old, I decided that agility might soak up some of that energy.  This was before agility had become as popular as baseball.  Classes were practically nonexistent, so I was glad that there was a group that met at a nearby park.

It was a beautiful day, and I was hoping that Lexi, who had, by dint of my signing us up month after month, become quite the star of her obedience class, would do me proud.  The minute I let her out of the car, I knew that this was not to be.  The fact that she attended an obedience class with a large number of dogs every week, and that she was used to paying attention to me in the presence of those dogs did not mean a thing.  This was a different class in a different place, and these were different dogs.  The time of day was different, too.  And because of that, every bit of work I had done with her went out the window.

Gone were her sits, her stays, her heeling.  She tugged at the leash;  she lunged, in the best of spirits, at other dogs.  The training collar, which I would snap and release to get her attention, made not a bit of difference.  But it did get the attention of the event's organizer, who told me in no uncertain terms that choke collars were prohibited in agility, and asked me to remove Lexi's immediately.

 When Lexi realized that she was only wearing her leather buckle collar, she lost the last shred of restraint.  I might as well have put a leash on a wild stallion for all the effect it had.  She flew over jumps and dashed through tunnels of her own accord, oblivious to my commands.  She had a wonderful time.

When the class was mercifully over, the organizer came to where I was putting the training collar back on Lexi, gave me a look of pity mixed with contempt and said, “We don't allow hyperactive dogs with no obedience training in our group.”  (To be continued.)

Tough Love For Wolfie, Part The Second

Things really went to hell in a hand basket when Bisou joined the household.  Just as big dogs want to greet you by putting their paws on your shoulders, little dogs want to greet you by putting their paws on your knees.  The difference is, that a big dog with his paws on your shoulders is way more offensive than a little dog with her paws on your knees, so nobody looks askance if you correct the big dog by a yank on the collar or a knee on the breast.  But it is physically impossible to knee a little dog on the breast, and as to yanking by the collar...by the time you've got your hands on it the entering guest is squealing sweet nothings at the miscreant, which makes the little dog jump even higher.

Plus, I now had three dogs to contend with:  an old and formerly well-trained but clever one who was ever on the lookout for chinks in my armor (Lexi);  an in-his-prime lover of all mankind who couldn't tell the difference between appropriate behavior in the sheep pasture from appropriate behavior in the house (Wolfie);  and a relative innocent whose purpose in life was to leap into people's arms or, at any rate, at their knees (Bisou).

I knew I was in trouble when I found myself wishing that people would just stay away from our house.

But I was reluctant to give up all intercourse with the human race in favor of my dogs, so I analyzed the problem.  And when I was done, the finger of blame pointed at Wolfie.  Lexi was too old and slow in her greetings to upset anyone.  Bisou was more annoyance than threat, and I could always pick her up in my arms and spare the guest.  But I absolutely had to get Wolfie under control.

Hence my tough love, boot-camp initiative, which I put into practice last week.  I reread a couple of books, among them one by an errant former monk of New Skete, and thought back to some of the stuff I had seen and heard in my years of obedience classes with various dogs.  I put Wolfie on a diet--not a food diet, but a psychological one.

I began with down-stays--one in the morning while we ate breakfast;  one in the evening as we watched TV.  These take effort on the part of the trainer as well as the dog, since one absolutely must get up and put the dog back in its place every time it gets up.  Also, every time he wanted to be let out I would make him sit and I would wait by the open door, letting the cold rush into the house, for as long as it took him to stop sniffing the great outdoors and look at me, whereupon I would release him.  Every single time.

In addition--and this seemed a bit mean to me, but I did it because the errant monk recommends it--I stopped stepping over him when he was lying in my way, and instead made him get up, every single time.  According to the monk, stepping over a dog is not a big deal to us, but it is full of significance to the dog:  it tells him that we consider him superior.  I would not have adopted this so readily had it not been that every German Shepherd we have ever owned has adored my husband, who has neither fed nor played with nor trained them, but who has always made them get up when they were in his way.

And I cut way back on the petting and the treat-giving.  A breeder who lives in harmony with a houseful of German Shepherds says, "I never give my dogs too much food, or too much love."  I thought that, at least temporarily, this was something I could do.  Finally, even though Wolfie is good about coming when called outdoors, I made him walk on the leash instead of letting him run free.

To my amazement, his response was immediate.  He paid attention.  He curried favor.  He followed me around the house.  It touched me, but I didn't let him know it.

For reasons that I will write about some day, recently groups of guys have been tromping through our house.  Guys whose boots and jeans are redolent of their own Labs and Shepherds and Pit Bulls.  Guys--the most dangerous kind, for training purposes--who like dogs.  Before they arrive, I put Wolfie's collar and leash on him.  When the guys knock on the door, I tell him "Down!  Stay!"  And when they walk in I say, "I'm the dog trainer."  They understand.  I tell Wolfie  "O.k." and let him greet for about ten seconds, then put him back on stay, and there he lies, as the guys wander through every inch of the house, often stepping over him to peer at some window or wall.

Triumph!  Success!  And, as if this weren't enough, Bisou--whose training I'd decided to postpone until I had Wolfie in hand--put herself in boot camp on her own.  I noticed that, when I would give the down-stay commands to Wolfie, she--who had never gone down unless enticed with a treat--would get a serious look on her face and lie down like a little statue until I released them both.  Now, when the guys in boots come tromping through, she holds her stays like a champ.  And she has done this while getting as much petting as ever--I cannot keep my hands from this dog--and without having to wait at the door until she makes eye contact, because she always makes eye contact.  But then, she is a Cavalier.

I hope that, as the good behaviors become automatic with Wolfie, I will be able gradually to ease up and then dispense with boot camp.  In the meantime, however, it's working well for us and, if he's as attuned to auras and energies and subtle things as I think he is, he must be happier, knowing how much better I like him when he's like this.

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.)

How I Became A Dog Pusher

My spouse calls me a dog pusher because he says I'm always pushing dogs on people.  I think of it more as inter-species matchmaking, and it's true that I delight in it.  For example, I "pushed" Bisou's brother Theo onto my daughter and her partner, with terrific results.  I am presently "pushing" one of Wolfie's relatives onto dear friends, who would be perfect for the dog, and to whom the dog would, I feel sure, bring years of happiness.  How do I know this?  I've watched my friends around my own dogs and...I just have a feeling.

My most daring instance of dog pushing happened many years ago, when I air-mailed a dog to my newly-widowed mother.  My mother had never owned a dog, and she firmly believed that dogs, being basically "dirty," belonged outside the house.  The very thought of house training a puppy, and cleaning up the occasional mess, made her feel faint.

At that time, my husband and I had a young Lhasa Apso, named Alexandra, whom I had successfully steered through the chewing and house-breaking stages.  Then we got an Irish setter puppy, and Alexandra contracted a serious case of sibling rivalry.  If I so much looked at the new puppy, Alexandra would jump up onto my lap and bark at ear-splitting decibels to get the puppy to go away.

I read all the dog books I could get my hands on (there weren't many in the 1970s) and tried the stuff they recommended, but nothing worked.  Alexandra was losing weight;  the puppy was becoming withdrawn;  and we were going crazy with the tension and the barking.  What to do with this intransigent but charming, perfectly house-trained purebred dog?  Then it came to me that, on my mother's previous visit, I had come upon her petting Alexandra as they sat side by side on the sofa--the first time in my entire life that I had witnessed my mother touching a dog. 

I'm not sure that I would now have the nerve to do what I did then, which was to buy Alexandra an airline crate and a one-way ticket to Alabama, where my mother lived.  I sent my mother a telegram instructing her to be at the air cargo terminal at a certain date and time, but I gave no information as to what was coming to her.

Long story short:  my mother was utterly surprised and completely charmed by Alexandra.  She could not believe that a dog, a mere animal, could be so civilized and well-behaved.  And so clean! 

Alexandra lived a long life as a petted only dog, and she gave my mother a lot of joy.  As for me, I was pretty proud of my gambit.  Sure, it could have been a disaster, but I had had a feeling that it would be a good thing for Alexandra and my mother to be together.  And it was.

And that is how I became a dog pusher.

Bisou At Seven Months

Bisou has two trainers, and that's about ten too few, since she could use a trainer for every waking hour of her day. As it happens, both of Bisou's trainers have also worked with Wolfie, one in obedience and one in herding. Bisou is studying neither obedience nor herding, but agility, in hopes that she will learn to pay attention to me while she uses up some energy running through tunnels and leaping over jumps.

In the past few weeks, both trainers had taken me aside and said: "Don't tolerate anything from her that you wouldn't tolerate from Wolfie. If you don't watch out, she's going to run your life. Just because she's little and cute doesn't mean she doesn't need discipline."

They are right. When Wolfie was seven months old he was so big that every time he wouldn't lie down the minute I asked him to I would go into alarm mode: omigod, this dog is turning into a monster, this is dominant behavior, if I don't do something someday he'll start growling at me. And right then and there I would give him a short but brisk obedience lesson.

With Bisou, it's a different story. And it would be a different story even if she were as big as Wolfie, because of the temperament difference in the breeds. For instance, I've always had to work hard to get my German Shepherd puppies to make eye contact with me, because by nature they are oriented outward, to watch the flock and scare off wolves. Whenever Wolfie, who is quite a cuddly dog, lies down by me, he can be pressed against my body, but his head is turned away, scanning the horizon for malefactors. Bisou, on the other hand, gave me full eye contact from the first day I had her, and when she and I lie down for a nap she drapes her head sweetly over my arm, and falls asleep facing me.

Still, I have watched dozens of TV programs featuring pathetic people who have turned their small dogs into babies who in turn have taken to terrorizing the household. I know that, despite her floppy ears, Bisou is a kind of wolf. I know that next spring, if she happens to find a nest of baby rabbits, she will murder every single one without a second thought. I know that she needs discipline, and I believe I give it to her.

But clearly her two trainers are seeing something that I'm missing. Maybe she is pulling the wool over my eyes...Achtung, Bisou! A new era is about to begin.

English As A Second Language

I spent a lot of years teaching Romance Languages to English-speakers. Now I'm teaching English As A Second Language to my Cavalier King Charles puppy, Bisou.

She came to us at the age of nine weeks already fluent in Dog. Despite looking like she belonged to a different species from my two German Shepherds (pendulous ears, shortish nose, red coat) from day one she fit seamlessly into their society. She understood the (to me) invisible and inaudible warnings from Lexi that told her not to trespass in certain (to me) mysterious areas of the living room. She knew she could leap up endlessly to bite Wolfie's muzzle, but that at certain points in the dialogue she must flip over like an omelette and lie very still on her back. She understood, without the need of a single growl or snap, that she was never to wander over to the big dogs' feeding bowls at dinner time.

Dog is mostly a silent language, composed of signs and subtle moves. A few gifted humans understand a small percentage of these. In Dog, I am at the phrase-book stage—about the same level as Bisou's grasp of English As A Second Language.

She is making progress though. She knows “waitttt!” and “sitttt!” and “outside” and “inside” and “do your business!” followed by “good girl!” and “treat!” She knows “come!” but sometimes pretends she's forgotten. She knows her name, with variations: “Bisou, Beez, Bisoulette.”

As in all elementary classes, I try to keep things simple. “Toy” for the moment must stand for “bone, ball, and tiny bear.” Discriminating among bone, ball, and bear will come in the advanced stages. Her vocabulary right now is composed mostly of nouns, and of verbs in the imperative.

Given the nature of our relationship with dogs, the verbs will continue to be mostly in the imperative. (Most of my utterances to Wolfie are imperatives: get in the car, bring me the sheep, find Bisou!) There will just be more and more of them.

But we won't stop there. Soon I'll throw in some subjunctives (if you were to have a bath you would smell better) and interrogatives (why did you jump on the sofa with muddy feet?) and she'll look at me with her big eyes and act as if she understands every word.

And she will understand every word—just not my English words, but the other ones, the ones that I transmit by posture, tone and smell, and that reveal what I really mean. The ones in Dog.

The Wolf In The Sheep Fold

Today I took Wolfie for a “herding instinct” evaluation.

I did this because his intensity around the goats has been driving me crazy, and I wanted to find out whether he was just harassing them or trying to be of help.

By “intensity” I mean that when I have the goats out of the pen, he keeps his eyes on them every second. If one of the three gets separated from the others, he lunges after her. And when I'm trying to get the goats either out of or into the pen I have to tie him to a tree because he simply will not hold a stay. Even when the goats are in the pen and I'm, say, weeding the garden, he will lie down next to the fence, and stare at them for hours.

Also, there is the little spot on his front leg. This little spot serves as a barometer of Wolfie's state of mind. When he is bored or frustrated, he chews on it. When he is fulfilled, he ignores it. I've been noticing that on days when I don't take him out with the goats, the little spot gets chewed on.

I felt a bit silly making the evaluation appointment, since German Shepherds are not highly regarded in herding circles these days, despite their having been bred to do just that.
Driving to the farm this morning several dire scenarios ran through my head: of Wolfie killing a sheep; or yanking the trainer's arm out of its socket as she tried to restrain him; or otherwise disgracing himself and me.

The trainer put him on a long line and led him into a pen that held three big, savvy-looking sheep. Then for the next several minutes she gave him permission to do exactly what I'd been trying to stop him from doing at home: run after the sheep. Not an uncontrolled run, of course. She would let him go, then have him stop and sit, then tell him to “walk up” to the sheep. And sure enough, pretty soon he had the sheep bunched into a corner, whereupon he lay down and stared at them, saying “Sheep, don't you dare move from where I've put you!”

The trainer turned to me and explained that, true to his heritage, his instinct runs more to “tending” (keeping the sheep together in one place) than to “herding” (moving the sheep thither and yon). And immediately a vision swam into my head of myself sitting in our field playing the recorder, while Wolfie keeps track of the goats.

Apparently that vision may come true some day. According to the trainer Wolfie has the right amount of drive, the responsiveness to commands, and the basic instinct to do what needs to be done. I must say that I have never, in two years of obedience and agility training, seen him as serious and focused as he was in that pen with the sheep. I could see his brain working as he absorbed this new reality, in which he gets to do what he desperately wants to do as long as he observes the rules. That look on his face was completely thrilling to me.

So Wolfie and I will do some homework with our goats this week, and go to our first herding lesson next week. He will get the mental and physical workout that he craves. The goats will get protection. As for me, I will eventually get to say those quaint commands I've always wondered about: “away to me!” and “come by!” Some day I may even have a shepherd's crook.

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.

November 30, 2008 "Grrrr..."

That's me growling, not my dogs. But I'm growling at my dogs, or rather at the mysteries and ironies of training dogs, living with dogs, trying to figure out dogs.

Last week, when our housekeeper, Vanessa, arrived to help keep household chaos at bay, not only had I made the bed and straightened up the kitchen in advance, but I had the dogs on stay, ready to enact our visitor-greeting ritual (see my November 18 post).

Wolfie and Lexi are wildly fond of Vanessa, so it is especially important to me to keep them in check when she comes. When Vanessa came in, I put her on stand-stay by the door, then released Lexi to say hello. By the time I told Lexi to stop the love-fest and leave the room, Wolfie was whining with excitement. I called him to me, but while I was doing that, Lexi went back to steal more kisses from Vanessa. This made Wolfie upset—I could not blame him—and while I was correcting Lexi, he rushed over to Vanessa, without permission. I scolded Lexi, retrieved Wolfie, and made him walk calmly (this took three tries) and sit in front of Vanessa to be petted.

As the dogs finally left the room Vanessa said, “Gosh, this is so much easier when you aren't here.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You know, when you're gone, and your husband lets me in.”

“Yes?” I said, my voice rising. “What happens then?”

“He just puts the dogs on stay, and then releases them.”

“And they mob you, right? Smash into your kneecaps, knock you over?”

“Not at all. They just come and say hello and then they go away.”

“On their own? They go away on their own?”

“Sure. It's over in a minute. It's a lot easier than what you're doing.”

I am aghast. I have been training dogs, our dogs, since 1980. Every dog we've had since then I've taken to obedience classes—some of them, like Lexi, for a full two years. I have sat at the feet of eight different trainers. I have read every dog training book, watched every dog training TV program and video I could lay my hands on. I have done everything I could to bond with my dogs: fed them, groomed them, played with them, worked and exercised them. I have dedicated major areas of my brain and my life to them.

And now it turns out that my husband—who tolerates dogs only for my sake, who doesn't feed or exercise or otherwise interact with them unless I specifically ask him to—is more successful in implementing the visitor-greeting ritual than I am.

What's going on? I can't bear the thought that he has some innate gift, some pheromone-related thing that causes dogs to pay attention to him and not to me. There has to be an intelligible reason behind this, something I can grasp, and emulate.

After days of mulling this over, here is all I can come up with: when someone comes to the door, my husband's main concern is with who it is, whereas mine is with how the dogs will behave. The dogs, bless their hearts, feel this intense focus of mine, and that makes them excited, and they do the very things I don't want them to.

I guess I just care too much, am too invested in their behavior. I am convinced that people will judge who I am by how my dogs act. Strangely, I never felt this way about my children, and they, in consequence, never let me down. From an early age, I trusted them to do the right thing.

Maybe it's time for me simply to trust my dogs.

November 18, 2008 "Dog Woes"

When Wolfie was seven months old, one day a bunch of people came to the house for a meeting followed by dinner. I put him and nine-year-old Lexi on down-stays in the living room, and they lay like statues until, at the end of the evening, the guests begged to pay their respects to them. My dogs, they exclaimed, were the best trained they'd ever seen.

Those were the good old days.

Wolfie's second birthday is less than two weeks away, and I'm sorry to say that, in the matter of greeting guests politely, he's acting like a two-month old puppy who happens to weigh 90+ pounds.

Here's how things are supposed to work: somebody knocks on the door. The dogs rush to see who it is, making an impressive noise. Since they're both German Shepherds, the noise is quite impressive, and they know it. I put them on down-stays several yards from the door, then let the person in. I put the person on stand-stay by the door. I go to Lexi (rank hath its privileges) and say, in a calm, almost indifferent tone, “Would you like to say hello?” Lexi walks over with her ears back and her tail wagging and gets petted by the guest. When I say “Enough!” she goes away and takes a nap, or whatever.

Then it's Wolfie's turn. I call him to me and have him walk quietly and serenely by my side until we reach the guest, whereupon Wolfie sits and gets a bit of petting. Again, I say “Enough!” and he goes off to do his thing, leaving us humans alone.

For weeks we practiced this ritual whenever anybody showed up at our door, and had it pretty well in hand. And then last week various people showed up three days in a row and, out of the blue, the dogs' behavior was abysmal.

The trouble started at the point where Wolfie was supposed to walk calmly and serenely towards the guest. Instead, he would plunge forward, mobbing the person and saying, to all effects, Where, oh where have you been all my life? Pet me, touch me, take me away with you forever!

While I was correcting Wolfie and hauling him back so we could start the guest approach again, Lexi, who wasn't born yesterday, would circle back and sneak in some extra petting from the guest, who so far hadn't been released from his stand-stay at the front door. This petting bonus would of course strike Wolfie as grossly unfair, making him all the more determined to reach the guest before the supply of affection ran out. It was chaotic, and, for me, humiliating. My two dogs were out of control. When the last set of people showed up, I shamefully abdicated: I shut the dogs away, and answered the door.

What's with my dogs? German Shepherds are supposed to be one-(wo)man dogs, polite but aloof with strangers. Yet Lexi and Wolfie have never met a person they haven't adored. We used to blame this on Lexi's unknown ancestry (she was a pound puppy), but Wolfie's father came straight from Germany, and there are serious Schutzhund dogs all over Wolfie's pedigree. The only good thing I can say about Wolfie and Lexi on this subject is that they have never jumped up on anyone.

Since the dogs are so friendly, why not, you ask, just let them have their way with guests? That might work if they were, say, Pugs. But two big specimens of what Cesar Millan calls a“powerful breed” bounding forward with the chummiest intentions can be alarming, even to dog lovers. I've got to get the guest-greeting ritual under control.

As a good (former) Catholic, before considering the situation I did an examination of conscience. And all became clear. Over the last several months, Wolfie, once a callow adolescent, has become unbelievably charming. He's big, he's sweet, he (finally!) clearly loves me. He minds beautifully inside the house, and pretty much outdoors. He lays his big head on my knee and looks into my eyes. He sighs, and throws himself at my feet. Who could resist? He's so tall that I can, without bending, pet him whenever he's at my side, which means that he gets a lot of “unearned” petting. Which, according to some schools of thought, makes him think that he can get away with anything. That he is, heaven help us, the boss.

I recall reading something about a last spurt of rebelliousness as a dog reaches the age of two. But that's just an average, and German Shepherds don't reach true maturity until they're at least three. Is there no end to this? Can't I just relax and “Let go, let Dog”? Is eternal vigilance the price of dog ownership?

I'm afraid it is. Otherwise, it wouldn't be so interesting.

November 9, 2008 "Puppy Advice for the First Family"

A working couple with two daughters, a new job and a major relocation has decided to get a dog. What were they thinking? But promises are promises, so to ease the integration of the First Dog into the First Family, I offer the following:

--Appoint a Dog Nanny. You can't just entrust the puppy to some aide who's running around putting out fires and calculating her next step up the political ladder. Dogs love routine, and life in the White House is anything but (that's probably what finally got to Barney). The girls will give the pup fun and affection, but it is a rare child under voting age who can be relied on to fulfill a dog's needs on a daily basis. A Dog Nanny is the answer.

--Move the residence to the first floor. This might make the Secret Service nervous, but with a puppy, you have to have quick access to the outdoors. When he gets that worried look in his face and starts walking in circles, you should be able to sweep it up in your arms, run to the back door and deposit it on the grass in a matter of seconds. Not only does this avoid a spot on your rug, it gives the pup a chance to succeed and get some well deserved praise—an important component of training. You don't want to be rushing down the corridors of power with a leaking puppy at 2 a.m.

--Get a smallish dog. Big dogs are murder on floors. No matter how disciplined you are about trimming their nails, they still manage to score the floors, giving them that rustic, distressed look. A small dog doesn't weigh enough to do any damage, even if you occasionally forget to cut his nails. Also a large, young, enthusiastic dog is bound to jump up on an occasional guest before it is fully trained. You don't want your Rottweiler jumping up on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Little dogs jump up too, of course, but they are not likely to create an international incident in the process.

--If you get one of those hypoallergenic breeds—a poodle or poodle-mix—make sure that the dog can see you. These dogs have adorable curly fringes hanging down over their eyes, but remember, if you can't see the dog's eyes, the dog can't see you. A good dog learns to read her people like an open book, mostly by interpreting their body language, but she can't do this if her vision is obscured by a curtain of hair.

--Get a really good trainer (this may or may not be the same person as the dog nanny) and have him or her work with the dog AND the President every day. Impossible, you say? Not if you want to avoid the spectacle of the President running after a dog who would rather chase a squirrel than obey the Commander in Chief. If the First Dog does not acknowledge the President as alpha, the opposition leaders may start getting ideas. So don't skimp on the training: the entire planet is watching, and so are its dogs.

Who's the Alpha?

November 1, 2008 "Feeeeed Meeeeeee!"

I can “hear” Wolfie and Lexi saying it all day long. But I'm starting to grow inured to their pleas. I'm feeding them four and a half pounds of food every day, for crying out loud. How can they still be hungry?

This afternoon I took them out, one at a time, to work and exercise them, but first I let them watch me fill the treat pouch with pieces of mozzarella and tie it around my waist. Wolfie did some nice stays and recalls and was delighted with the cheese rewards. Then I brought out the ball thrower, which he is addicted to, and made him stay while I waved the thrower around. He was o.k. with that. I ratcheted up the challenge by actually throwing the ball past him, and he held his stay. But when I tried to reward his self control with a bit of cheese, all he cared about was the BALL! He wanted to CHASE THE BALL!!! That's why he'd done all that silly stuff I'd asked of him, so he COULD CHASE THE BALL!!!! It was clear that even the ripest Camembert would not have distracted him, so I put the cheese away and let him have a rip-roaring session of chasing THE BALL!!

(As I threw balls for him with all my might, I remembered, two years ago, with the snow deep outside, locking myself in our guest room with eight-week-old Wolfie and a little ball. I would throw the ball and he would toddle after it, but would get distracted by the fringe on the rug. Eventually he'd remember the ball, start to bring it to me, drop it, go after the fringe again, find the ball, chew on it a while...tempus fugit.)

Then it was Lexi's turn to work. This is a dog who's been through years of obedience training, and has all her commands down pat. But she was so focused on cheese, the presence of cheese, the possibility of cheese, that when I put her on sit/stay and walked away in order to do a recall, she kept getting up and following me. It was as if there were a string from her nose to the cheese, and she couldn't not follow it. It took a few tries, but eventually she recalled what recalls were all about, and ran to me to snatch her reward, almost taking off my fingers as she did so.

The dogs have just had their dinner, and are lying down, momentarily sated. In half an hour, though, they'll be thinking about food again, like this:

Wolfie and Lexi 30 minutes after a meal