I often yell at my dogs, and if you are one of those people who can live a life of dogs without every yelling at them, then bless you, you are perhaps a saint or an angel. I am neither, and while I try hard to train my dogs in a positive manner, I do not always succeed, in fact I often fail. I have great dogs, obedient and sweet and trustworthy, but if you live with labs or border collies, your patience and positive nature will be challenged, tested.

Lenore loves to eat s— anywhere she can find it, in the woods on the road, in the house – coyote and chicken and cat droppings, weeds and tall grass, rotting and foul garbage, dead animal parts. Labs were first bred in Newfoundland, not Labrador and fishermen used them to help haul fish up the cliffs from their boats to their homes. The fishermen did not believe in feeding their dogs, the dogs were on their own and Labs – named by an English noble far away – ate dead and rotting fish and other awful and smelly detritus, they eat awful stuff to this day. That is why Labs are such garbage hounds.

Normally, I would take a Zen approach to her eating crap, or border collies eating sheep droppings, but since much of what Lenore eats is rotten stuff (lots of grass and stems too and flowers), it tends to come out in one form or another. Sometimes she throws stuff p – in bed, preferably – sometimes I have to pull grass right out of her butt. So I sometimes yell at her, and have for years – “leave it,” “drop it,” “get off.” This is about as successful as demanding that politicians be rational, or that ideologues listen.

I am getting better at this, I know it is hopeless, I know it is about me, not her, I know it doesn’t work. So I am doing it less and less and, of course, any trainer knows the less you yell at them, the less they’ll do what you don’t like. Life with dogs is full of conundrums like this, we know better, we cant help ourselves. This morning I walked two miles with Maria, Red and Lenore and she ate a lot of s—, I was fine until she went out into the meadow and found something dead and started chowing down. I yelled a few times and she came out reluctantly.

She tried to lick my hand, but the smell was too foul, even for a Lab lover. ‘Yuk,” I said, “get away from me.” She looked shocked, the Hound of Love denied. Do not feel bad if you yell at your dog. There are people who admit it, and people who don’t, but my guess is there are very few of us who don’t do it.

Life with dogs can make you a better human being if you work at it. Tomorrow I plan on not yelling at Lenore even once. I’ll report back.