July 4, 2013
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The Weekend Goal
And here we are on the Fourth of July.
I used to love the Fourth. I love holidays. And a holiday in the middle of summer? Well, about half-wasted on a school kid, but we always DID something on the Fourth. Went to the lake, went to picnics, eventually went to the fireworks. I have oohed and aah-ed over fireworks with the best of them. And I love my country. I love freedom, baseball and apple pie. Well: apple pie, really–never having finessed the fine art of baseball, I equate it, personally, with watching paint dry. Paint that spits and scratches itself. Nonetheless, I made a special compartment in my mind for fireworks and loved them.
I was sitting on a not-overly populated lake up north, watching fireworks, when I realized the loon that had been floating on the lake was terrified. And (I am a slow learner) it belatedly dawned on me that we celebrate the birth of our nation with the sounds of war. Watching that poor bird fly around the lake, looking for a safe place, took some of the fun out of fireworks for me. It appears to be permanent.
And then Murphy came to live with us. Murphy is terrified of fireworks. Murphy shivers and shakes and burrows under things and goes wall-eyed when the fireworks came out. It hurt me to see her so frightened. And she was ten the first time we went through the fireworks together, so it was unlikely there was anything Ranee or I were likely to do to change the situation.
Noomi was terrified of fireworks.
Riley and Annie are not. Annie, however, is excitable, and loud random explosions over the course of a long weekend just wind her up. She is prone to barking bursts and hysterical house-galloping anyway; after a weekend of fireworks–and today, on the Fourth, we are going into the second weekend of fireworks this year–Annie is wired. Our lives are pretty much devoted to keeping Annie from getting wired.
(Yes. Dogs bark. Annie barks at people who walk past our house, dogs that walk past our house, dogs that move in their own yard on our right, dogs that move in their own yard on our left, dogs that move in their own yards behind us, dogs that move in their own yards across the street from us. Annie barks at our neighbors when they talk on their own deck. Annie barks at wagons, pull toys, baby buggies, car, trucks or boats blowing sirens. Annie barks at squirrels, cats, aggressive birds and the occasionally dragonfly. She reports, although she does not necessarily bark about, any unusual activities from The Ladies. If none of these things occur, Annie barks at the wind, the rain, leaves that move, and sometimes I simply lack the imagination to determine what Annie is barking at. This is not a terrier: this is a hyper-reactive dog responding to every known stimuli in the universe until calming Annie has become our singular goal in life. The bark machine helps. Training helps. Vigilance on our part helps. Sheer emotional exhaustion does not help.)
Recently Riley bolted through the front door during a guest greeting and Annie bolted after him. He stopped four cars before we caught him: Annie chose a different adventure which reminded us that the stakes for her (and us) are even higher. We need to get this behavior under control. We have now posted a sign on our door which says:
We are in training. Please ring our bell and wait patiently while our women catch us and get us under control. Please do not open our door and let us out because we will run and up down the street like idiots and our women will be surly and short-tempered all evening.
The Dogs
I believe a very real part of the problem is that our training methods are not the training methods Annie experienced the first year of her life. I doubt that anyone would argue that’s a bad thing. She remains terrified of raised hands, sticks, canes, even random boards. While Nancy was recovering from her hip surgery Annie had a terrible time getting into the truck with her because the cane from hell was in there. Neither of us have ever hit her with a cane. Or a stick.
Still, she is either very, very smart, or she was trained to do a number of things that we are diligently re-training her to do. One of the things that continues to vex me is a behavior she exhibited from the day she came to us that I don’t recognize, but understand has some meaning for her. She would come up to me and sort of bop my hand with her muzzle. It’s very distinctive: her mouth was closed–in fact, in the beginning, I couldn’t treat her because she wouldn’t open her mouth. She would bump my hand with the flat of her nose or even the bottom edge of her chin. Recently looking through a dog book I found a description of something similar to this in something called ‘target training’. Unfortunately having read through the process, I still don’t know what the ultimate goal is.
So what we are working on this weekend is recall and de-escalation. Annie runs outside. Fine. Annie trots around outside. Fine. Annie finds something to bark at hysterically, Cheryl shakes the treat bag and calls her inside. When she comes, Cheryl gives her a treat. We praise and reassure. And start all over again. Either the dog will (ideally) learn to come when I call her no matter what is going on, or she will learn she gets a treat for barking at other dogs or she will eventually weigh 212 pounds and I will be able to out-run her. We are employing ’leave it’, and ‘Annie come’ and shaking the treat bag until we run out of treats. Non-stop. My hope is this will help her spend a weekend as a dog instead of as a Militant Perimeter Guard. My hope is to keep her in a calmer, more controlled mental state. I don’t know what else to do.
In the past few days I have trolled the internet looking for stories and videos about the Michael Vick dogs. Michael Vick had 49 fight dogs. Two were destroyed; one was too aggressive, and one was too sick and injured. Twenty-two of those dogs went to Dogtown, two mandated by the courts to remain permanent residents there. Seven of these twenty-two were adopted out to families. I think Bad Rap got a few of the other 27 dogs, but I’m still researching that. What I’ve seen so far is endless videos of pit bulls wagging tails and licking their handlers with unreserved joy. Which I find interesting, because Annie wags her tail so hard it sometimes knocks her over, but she has never kissed me. (Well, once: yesterday. It makes her uneasy.) I don’t think Riley has ever kissed me. Once, perhaps, very politely.
I woke up this morning cocooned in my blankets and pillows, barely able to move, and as I looked around to figure out the obstacles to a turnover, I spied two little black pop-up ears in the hollow between Nancy and me. It is her safest place. From the time we go to bed at night until we wake up in the morning, Annie is burrowed in between us, just as tightly as she can get. She doesn’t bark. She doesn’t run frantically around the room. She doesn’t growl (unless we dislodge her.) She will sleep as long as we sleep.
We continue to struggle to find ways to make the world a safer place for Annie.
