July 18, 2013
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The Rewards of Good Training
We turned on the AC last weekend. We acknowledged that this summer is nothing compared to last summer (or even the summer before.) We bowed to the high lords of heat. We spread out honeycakes and sacred tennis balls to appease the gods. Closed all of the windows and flipped on the comfort machine. In our defense (because I am always defensive about AC) the temperatures were supposed to(and did) soar into the 90s and stick there all week. So we caved. We played the Ilah card (‘we are responsible for the healthy and well-being of one of the elderly, now…’)
“My room gets a little hot in the afternoon for about an hour or so,” she reported yesterday.
Her room has been 86 degrees since the day she moved in.
We noticed (eventually) another change: Annie stopped barking.
Not altogether, of course (she remains a terrier) but mostly. Noticeably. Apparently when you erect a weather barrier around your house (not unlike hermetically sealing yourself in) the evil that lurks on the public sidewalk is no longer worth reporting.
This amazing change in behavior, coming as it did on the wake of my treat campaign to change just exactly that behavior, filled me with an overwhelming sense of pride and accomplishment. I had succeeded! She got the point! She was a changed dog!
Even more amazing, I discovered that I could control what few barking spells that endured with (get this) a dog treat I never would have thought of, by myself: frozen green beans.
I kid you not: the dog will run half-way across the house and wag her tail in anticipation for a frozen green bean.
“I think,” I said solemnly to Nancy, “that we’ve gotten through the worst of it.”
Wednesday the doorbell rang.
I gathered dogs by the collars in one hand, opened the door, and found this vaguely familiar-looking man standing on the other side. Ilah’s doctor. He seemed to think I knew he was coming (I did not.) further, he is afraid of dogs and not afraid to admit it and asked if I would ‘put them up.’
“Oh, they won’t hurt you,” I said because…well, they won’t.
However he said, “I’ve heard that before, and I’ve been bitten.”
I still had both dogs by the collar in my left hand. Both are leaping and lunging (Riley is choking because he’s prone to that) and I said, “Okay, fine,” and exactly as I said that Annie gave a twist and I then had three dog collars (Annie wears 2) and one dog in my hand, and a hysterical black streak racing wildly around the house to push her loving little nose directly into this man’s crotch. And he’s not very big and her aim is really, really good, so as I stand there with three collars, one choking dog and a blank look on my face, my loving little terrier has buried her nose in his most intimate place.
This appears to have made my point, however: as she is nudging his future children with loving abandon he apparently comes to understand neither he nor they are in any direct danger, and he goes on about the business for which he came.
Annie, however, had a trauma. I said, “Annie, come here,” and showed her her collar(s) and she said:
Oh, my God, you’re going to beat me.
I have never beaten this dog.
Truly. I haven’t.
There is, unfortunately, some perverse twist in my basic nature that allows me to understand why someone might, and one thing that triggers that understanding (like an adrenalin rush) is a dog cowering in terror because I showed her her own collar.
“Annie,” I say firmly, “come.”
Because 35 years ago someone told me to be stern with my dog, to issue commands like I mean them because (apparently) 35 years ago dogs were made of sterner stuff. Now I am supposed to issue commands as if they were lovely, charming ideas that just occurred to me and I am wildly excited about following them myself.
So I sternly commanded Annie to ‘come’ and she bolted into the next room, yelling, you’re going to hurt me, I know it, you’re going to beat me–run, Riley, she’s lost her mind and we’re going to die….
Which he might or might not have done, had he not still been choking half to death from being held by the collar.
(Yes. I know. You are not supposed to grab your dogs by the collar to let a stranger into your house. You are supposed to make them sit, stay, go to their place or otherwise calm themselves, then calmly let in the stranger who should completely ignore them. The last time we did that Riley took a runabout and Annie bolted up the street and tried to eat a neighbor dog. So I’m back to grabbing them by the collars.)
Anyway. Annie is panic-struck. Her life as she knows it is about to end, her only survival technique is to run. So green beans don’t work. Calling her doesn’t work. Grabbing for her doesn’t work. (In terms of texture, she’s like grabbing a greased pig.) Riley can’t help me because he’s still choking (he probably has some long-term esophageal injury from before we found him.) I am panic struck because the doctor rarely stays long and I have a naked gate-runner bolting around the house and he is trying to discuss Ilah’s meds and I am trying to grab Annie and he keeps saying, “She’s okay–it’s fine.”
But it’s not because when he wants to leave I need some way to control my dog.
And I’m pissed, which I am trying to ignored. I’m pissed because the dog has lived with us for almost a year now–half of her life–and we have NEVER BEATEN HER. She requires three times the face-to-face time that Riley EVER has and we give it to her, both Nancy and I. We touch her, we feel her, we massage her, we talk calmly to her, we love on her, we feed her damned near the most expensive dog food made just to keep hair on her body, we have taken her to one class or another almost every week we’ve had her, we have her signed up for not one but TWO classes beginning the end of July, one with Holly to teach her (still) to behave and one with a new trainer who deals with reactive dogs (often describes as those who bolt out the door, run down the street and attack the neighbor’s dogs), I have gone through five–FIVE–bags of treats in the past two weeks at $7 a bag PLUS half a bag of frozen peas and a bag of frozen green beans and she can’t come on command because suddenly she’s afraid of me.
And ultimately I resort to the only thing that ALWAYS works. Peanut butter. In a Kong, because peanut butter on a spoon is still suspect and can’t be trusted.
I put a teaspoon of peanut butter inside the Kong and throw the Kong in her crate.
And in goes Annie. Oh thank God–I have peanut butter.
I should probably mention that in normal times if I take off Annie’s collar she pesters me–literally pesters me–to get it back. Unless, of course, there’s someone in my house who is terrified of dogs and I need a way to control her.
Twenty seconds after the doctor leaves there is a report from the cage in the Conservatory. Cheryl. You forgot me. I’m in the cage. I don’t have my collars. (The books have a rule for that, too: loud, noisy, complaining, barky dogs cannot leave their crates. Silence and good behavior must precede release. And I try to follow that rule, I do, even if it involves my sitting on the couch, collars in hand, and quietly explaining the virtues of silence and good behavior.) As I let her out she is all over me, wriggling, cuddling…and, I realize eventually, looking for her frozen green beans.
I have not been blogging recently. (I’ve been writing.) But I love to blog, so next week I need to figure out where I’m moving to do it. I’ll let you know.
