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.)

In Memoriam: How I Found Her

It was four years after I was diagnosed with CFS, and I was still mourning the professional life that the illness had forced me to abandon.  I wanted to do something meaningful, to make a mark in the world, no matter how small.  And that is how I conceived the idea of getting a dog--not a dog from a breeder, but one I would rescue from a shelter and rehabilitate.  A female, preferably of a large breed.

Why rescue a dog instead of, say, tutoring school children?  A dog, as I saw it, would not involve specific time commitments like most volunteer activities.  I would work with her at home, on my own schedule, as my symptoms allowed.  I could space bits of training throughout the day, and even on a bad day, we could practice down-stays.

I thought I could help some neglected, frantic girl dog become calmer, better behaved, more secure around people, happier.  I could see myself welcoming the poor wretch into my peaceful home, introducing order and structure into her life, grooming her and feeding her properly.  I would take her for walks, to obedience, and to play dates with other dogs.  As a result of all this mental stimulation, her natural intelligence would blossom and she would bond to me in gratitude and affection.  I could see her in my mind's eye, shining with health and vitality, going everywhere with me—the perfect companion of my lonely days.

I called the animal shelter and told them what I was looking for.  They said they would keep me in mind and give me a call if any prospects turned up.  I didn't have to wait long for the phone to ring.  A man who fostered dogs for the shelter was bringing several of them to the nearby pet store for an adopt-a-thon the next day.  Among them was a four-month-old sable German Shepherd puppy.  A female.  Would I like to see her?

That morning I used my newly-acquired smattering of meditation techniques to prepare myself for the encounter.  I thought that if I met the puppy with a clear mind and a spacious heart, the right decision might become obvious.

It was a Saturday morning, and the store was teeming with people.  I found the man with the dogs.  Like a salesman inviting me to take a used car for a spin, he handed me the end of a leash and said, “This is Lexus.  Why don't you walk around while I take care of these other dogs.” 

“Lexus?” I asked.

The man rolled his eyes.  “The kid who had her was really into cars,” he said.

Even on a temporary basis, I refused to call any dog “Lexus.”  Instead, I patted my thigh and said “Come on, puppy.  Let's go for a walk.”

 When she heard me talking to her, she looked up into my face, and I got my first good look at hers.  It was a clever little face, well marked with a dark muzzle and Nefertiti eyes, a black widow's peak and big, upright, bat-like ears she'd have to grow into.  Her body was compact, and her cream-colored hind legs did not have the exaggerated angulation of American show-bred German Shepherds.  Her tail, alas, curved energetically up over her hips.

I mourned the tail's departure from the breed standard (German Shepherds carry their tails low), but was taken by the puppy's intelligent, intense look.  She was by no means leash trained, veering from one side of the aisle to the other as the smells of kibble and treats and toys called out to her, but whenever I spoke to her she would look at me.  Underneath that puppy craziness, I felt, was a really good dog.

That afternoon, the man brought her to the house.  He told us that Lexi (as I had decided to call her) had been picked up by a teenage boy who lived in a cabin with his parents, somewhere in the Maryland woods.  The puppy had spent her life outside, by herself, not abused but hardly clasped to the bosom of the family who, when they had to move away, surrendered her to the shelter.

My first memory of Lexi in the house is of her jumping all over the furniture. I left her with my husband and went back to the pet store to buy a large crate, which I put in our bedroom.  Lexi slept in it uncomplainingly that night, and for the next few days, whenever I left the house, I put her in it.  It soon became obvious, however, that she didn't need the crate.  She, who had never lived in a house, house-trained herself instantly—I can only remember a single accident.  As for jumping on the furniture, I only had to mention it once.

The hard part was taking her places.  The combination of manic excitement on the one hand and lack of exposure to cars, trucks, bicycles, strollers, skateboards and roller skates on the other, turned Lexi into a whirling dervish—an alternately frantic and cowering dervish—whenever we left the house.

I knew that this lack of exposure was the major problem with her upbringing, and it was my job to fix it.  This was, after all, the challenge I had been looking for, the service project that would make my life feel less of a wasteland.  Dutifully, every day or so I would put Lexi in the car and drive to a nearby mall.  There I would walk her around the outside, encouraging her to follow me past noisy trucks, allowing her to go up to people of all sizes and colors to make friends. 

It was daunting, and exhausting.  Even at just forty pounds, she was a powerful dog, and I, with my CFS-impaired balance, was not too steady on my feet.  A couple of times she was startled by a passing car and wrapped the leash around my ankles.  The next thing I knew I was picking myself up off the sidewalk while she leaped around me, excited by the view of my face at eye level.  It seemed to take forever, but the day when I finally got her to hold a sit-stay next to an armored truck, I knew we were making progress.  (To be continued.)

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.)

Calling Lexi

It's 8:30 in the evening, and Bisou, who knows that she will get a treat when she comes in from her last outing of the day, starts agitating to go outside.  She jumps off my lap, plants herself at my feet and gives me a meaningful stare.  She wags her tail.  She gives her signature sound--half moan, half whine--which is next to impossible to ignore.  But I'm familiar with her tricks, and do.  So she goes over to my spouse and repeats the  sit, the stare, the wag, the imperious moan/whine.

"I think she really needs to go out," he says.

"No she doesn't.  She just wants to get a you-know-what," I respond.

Sit, stare, wiggle.  She adds a tremolo to the moan/whine.  The spouse caves, "I don't think we should ignore her signals," he says.

By now it's ten til nine, so I take a breath preparatory to standing up and the three dogs go out of their minds, as if they hadn't been out in a month.  In his excitement, Wolfie bumps Lexi, whose hind legs buckle, but she recovers and they're off!  into the outer darkness where I hope no bear or coyote has wandered inside the confines of the electric fence or, if so, that Wolfie will defend Bisou, who is right at his heels.  Lexi, meanwhile, has disappeared into the woods.

I go into the kitchen to get three treats out of the treat jar by the stove.  Bisou is already at the back door, putting nose prints on the glass.  I let her in, throw her a treat.  Wolfie comes careening around the raised beds, gets his treat.  But the third treat is still in my hand.

"Lexi co-ome!" I carol into the dark.

"Lexi, treat!" enticingly.

"Lexi, komm!" in my lowest growl.

 I put the treat between my teeth and clap.  I replace the treat with the dog whistle and blow.  Then I click the  yard light on and off, on and off (the spouse swears that this never fails).

But it fails with me.  I hear Lexi behind the trees, barking her wheezy, half-hearted, old-dog bark: woof...woof.  Does she know I'm calling her?  Does she care?

I close the door, replace the treat in the jar.  I return to the spouse, shrug my shoulders, sit down.  Bisou, at peace now, curls into my lap with a final moan.  But Wolfie is still at the back door, ears straight up, eyes piercing the outer darkness, waiting for Lexi.

"Woof, woof," she barks in the woods.  "Could you try to get her in?" I say to the man who never wanted a dog in the first place.  He goes to the door, claps his hands.  Lexi comes inside.

At close to fourteen years, she has become an enigma.  Can she hear?  Sometimes.  Can she see?  Not well.  Has her enfeebled brain forgotten what "come" means?  Possibly.  Or is she, sensing our reluctance to discipline her now that she's old and pathetic, making up for all those years when she thought she had to obey?

She's a good dog, but also a clever one.  I wouldn't put it past her to take full advantage of this chink in our armor.

I will not pretend that I don't find her failure to come when called extremely irritating.  It is a real pain to have all those years of patient training washed away by age, or by an old dog's wiliness.  But my irritation is tinged with sadness, because I know that before too long there will be no need at all for me to stand at the back door, shouting "Lexi, come!"

The Story of Jesse, My First German Shepherd. Part The Third.

By the time he was a year old, Jesse was a delight. He slept across the threshold of the girls' bedroom at night. He howled charmingly when they practiced the violin. He was so submissive towards my husband that he would roll over on his back in the front hall and produce a fountain of pee when Ed came home in the evening. It eventually occurred to me that this was related to eye contact, so when I would hear the key in the door I'd rush out of the kitchen yelling at my husband, “Keep your eyes down! Don't look at him!”

For all his macho demeanor, Jesse never growled at any of us. When I had him neutered and he pulled out his stitches and I had to put antibiotic on the wound, he let me do it, with only a long-suffering look on his face.

At the vet's, it was a different story. He continued to be plagued by hot spots, and tests revealed him to be allergic to everything: trees, grasses, the air itself, and most of all, dust mites. He was put on weekly allergy shots, and that became a problem.

His yelp as the shot was given became a little growl, then a bigger growl, then a growl as soon as he saw the syringe. The technicians were understandably nervous of him, and I was by turns alarmed, embarrassed, angry and despairing. We ended up muzzling him, but those weekly shots were nerve wracking for everyone.

And they weren't working. The hot spots continued, and his eyes turned red. He knew I didn't want him to scratch, so he would discreetly leave the room to do it. He spent a lot of time banging around the house with one of those “Elizabethan” collars around his neck.

By the time I was able to enroll Jesse in obedience, he weighed over 90 pounds.

It was a large class, some 20 dogs from mastiffs to lap dogs, most of whom, when Jesse and I entered the building, would growl at him. I couldn't figure out why. After all, he wasn't doing anything. He was just standing there, surveying the scene. I didn't know then the power of the canine stare.

This was an old-fashioned class: no treats, no clickers, no psychoanalysis. Just sits and stays and heeling in a circle until the dogs capitulated, out of sheer boredom if nothing else. Jesse learned all the moves, and so did I.

Then came the day of the final exam, with an outside judge, just as in a real obedience trial. At this time, having spent the first part of my life making good grades, I made a living teaching and grading college students. So final exams and grades and doing well in general were much on my mind.

But I was confident. After all, I had a clearly intelligent dog from an intelligent breed. And I had done more difficult things in my life than train a dog.

When we walked into the building that day, nobody growled. But somebody whined: Jesse. I felt stupid, with this big, powerful dog whining at the end of the leash. “What are you doing? Stop that,” I said, giving the leash a yank as I'd been taught. He stopped for a second, then whined some more.

What was this? Jesse had never whined in his life, not even as a puppy. And now, on the day of the final exam, he was whining non-stop. He whined through the heeling. He whined through the sit-stays, the recalls, and the stand- for-examination. When it came time for the long down, a thoughtful silence settled over dogs and trainers, broken only by the endless, incredible, appalling whining of Jesse. When it was over, I drove home in humiliated silence (the whining had stopped the moment the test was over).

As I announced to my family that we had FAILED THE TEST, I saw the merest hint of schadenfreude pass over my daughters' faces.

How, I wondered, looking at Jesse scratching a hot spot, do you go on after you flunk?