When I first started working with border collies and sheep – it was with Rose – I often got frustrated at my dog for not lying down quickly enough around sheep. The trainer I was working with took me aside and said “Katz, if you want to have a better dog, you will have to be a better human.” In a sense, this advice changed my life because I heard it, believe it, and acted upon it, and since then, I have worked to become a better human with every dog I have had, and they have all helped me to try and do this.

Lenore is a dog, a wonderful dog, as sweet and healthy and intelligent and well-bred as a dog can ever be. Because she is a Lab, she loves to eat things that are revolting and vomit them up in the house, or if she can possibly do it, in bed. Something gross things hang out of her butt and have to be remove – usually long blades of the meadow grass she loves to eat.  She scours the yard for chicken droppings or any other edible food, much of it containing worms, parasites or other things that can upset even the stomach of a Lab, which I think must be lined in concrete.

On our walks, when Lenore stops and eat things, I often yell at her, it is hard for me to accept that she is a Lab, because I am a human and unlike a dog, I get frustrated, impatient and intolerant. Lenore’s challenge to me, like that of Rose, is to be a better and wiser human. I am using new techniques now – especially the visualization techniques that have worked so well in the past for me with dogs and other animals. It is beginning to work, she is beginning to eat less junk and garbage without my having to yell at her or watch her.

I close my eyes, clear my head and think of what it is I want her to do – this is how dogs communicate with one another, in images and words. This is how I communicate with my dogs more and more. I will keep at this, this morning, I visualized Lenore coming outside and bypassing the chicken coop and the offerings there and sitting quietly on the lawn while Maria and I did our chores in the barnyard. And when I looked up, there she was, a great dog helping me to be a better human being and dog owner.