Equines seem like contemplatives to me, there are moments when I see them standing quietly, as if meditating, as if pondering the world. I imagine they are sending out messages to us, Maria and I have been receiving them for some time. Usually, I just assume that I am mad, but as I get to know donkeys and horses and spend so much time writing about them, I am seeing it differently. Equines hold the mystery of the universe in their hearts, once you learn to listen to them, you see the world in a different way. I suppose I am mad, I wouldn’t deny it, but I think they hold a lot of the world’s magic in their bodies.
The truth is, training a dog well is hard work. Perhaps that is why so few people do it.
It takes an enormous amount of patience and care, it takes a very long time, and above all, a very clear understanding that dogs are not children, furbabies or piteous creatures who have been too abused to learn how to behave well and understand how to live with us. I think if one more person tells me their dogs is tearing up their house or cowering in the road or peeing on the floor or attacking people or other dogs because they were abused, I might end up abusing somebody.
Dogs can’t talk, of course, and abusers rarely tell us about it, so how, I wonder, are they always so certain? Any shelter worker will tell you hardly anyone wants a healthy happy dog, people seem to get no points for having one at the dog park, everyone wants a dog who they can has been abused. It’s the quickest and surest way to get a dog adopted. I have never had any one come up to me on the street or at a reading and brag about having a happy, healthy dog.
We have had Fate for a couple of months now, in many ways she has done wonderfully, but I know we are just getting to the hard part. Dog politics are not much better than people politics, and if you are serious about training a dog, you need to forget whether they were abused or not, or your best lifetime buddy, or how awfully precious they are, and learn something about prey drive and the politics of the pack.
Fate is a very dominant dog in many ways, perhaps more dominant than Frieda, surely more dominant than Red. And he is a very strong dog. Fate is approaching her adolescence.
Yesterday she just about drove me to the wall. First, she just completely blew off Maria when she told her to come, she ran in the opposite direction and pretended she didn’t hear her. Border collies hear everything, even noises in other states. Maria handled it very well.
She came over to Fate, got close, told her to lie down, which she finally did. Lie down is submissive position, dominant dogs hate it and if you teach them how to do it and make them do it regularly, they will accept you as their leader and pay attention. If they don’t, they will ignore you, blow you off, even get neurotic or aggressive. Most dogs do not wish to be in charge, they want to understand what is expected of them and do it. Most often, they don’t have any idea what is expected of them.
Using the lie down, Maria brought Fate back under her control, made her come a few steps, then lie down, then get rewarded with praise and treats. Then the process was repeated four or five times. By the end of it, Fate was accepting Maria’s leadership and doing what was asked of her. I saw her bring the dog back under her control. But it will happen many times before Fate finally gets it.
Two hours later, a friend came over with a small child, and Fate, who gets very aroused around new people – everyone loves to think that this is affection when dogs do it, but it is not, it is most often dominance, sometimes arousal. Fate jumped on the girl so repeatedly and intensely that the child got frightened and began to cry. Fate would not get off her. I rushed over and told her to lie down and she blew me off until I grabbed her by the collar and made her lie down. When she jumped high a fourth time I kicked her in the stomach with my foot, the girl was still frightened but settling down.
I apologized to the girl and asked her if she wanted to pet Fate, she nodded yes. She liked Fate, she just wanted her to get off. So I stood close, made Fate lie down – she was trembling with excitement – and the girl patted her. This was not aggression, it was arousal and excitement. But it has to be confronted, and seriously or it will become a life-time habit. Fate was blowing me off too. I won’t have it, it makes me crazy to see a dog frightening a child and ignoring a command I know they understand. It’s a dignity thing, I will not treat my dog poorly, I will not be treated disrespectfully. Fate knows better.
Then I called her to the house, and she blew me off again, running towards the child and the car she was getting into. She seemed not to hear me, always a sign that a dog is aroused and profoundly distracted. I was angry with her, always a mistake on the trainer’s part. It isn’t personal, she was not defying me, I was failing to train her as clearly and thoroughly as I should. I got to work.
We have been doing lie-downs and obedience and calming training last night and this morning, we will stay at it until she is completely under our control. As I got serious, she got responsive. There was absolutely no trouble or confusion this morning, if you really mean it, the dog will almost always do it.
All dogs are pack animals and Fate is trying to figure out who the leader is. Because I bring her to sheep and work, she accepts my authority most of the time.In the pasture, she sees me as the pack leader. Maria is gentler than I am, she has no temper to speak of us, she has an artistic head, and is as easily distracted as Fate. When you are training a dog, distraction doesn’t work, they will see that as a hole to run through. Maria never yells unless I do something stupid, like fail to see some birdshit on my shirt, which happens frequently.
Maria doesn’t shout or glower, or convey anger. She doesn’t care to make animals do things they don’t wish to do, although she is very good at it when she wants to do it. She asserted herself beautifully over Fate yesterday. Fate is trying to figure out her place in the family. She defers to Red by instinct, she sees me as being big and loud, which I am. She is trying to figure out where she and Maria fit. Maria understands that she has to win this contest. Every dog I have ever had has, at some point, challenged me for pack leader position, and I always do what I call “the bear,” I find a way – as positively as I can – to assert my authority.
Dogs do not naturally know that they must do what people tell them, this is a learned behavior. It is tricky to do this forcefully and positively. Food and praise. I never give a command I can’t enforce, if I tell Fate to come, and she ignores me, which she does a few times a day (even Frieda didn’t do that), I do not shout the command ten times, I wait a few minutes, make sure I am close enough to enforce my command, then I give it again.
I work with Fate on her “stay” command a score of times each day, she is just beginning to get it.
This is not bullying or intimidation. It is not cruel, it is the essence of love. Dogs desperately need to know what their position in the pack is, the world makes no sense to them if they don’t, and they can get neurotic, destructive, even aggressive with other dogs or people if they are confused. Failure to train a dog is the leading cause of death – over-eating, running in the street, tearing up the house, biting people, getting returned to shelters that have no room for them.
In this new period, Fate is approaching adolescence, and she is a dog with a lot of drive and a fiercely dominant instinct. This is why she will be a good farm and herding dog. That is my responsibility, she is a dog, she can’t make moral decisions, there is no such thing as a good dog or a bad dogs, only dogs that reflect the work we have done in thinking about getting them, learning what they are like, loving them enough to make it stick.
It is also why she needs to know that she is not Queen of me or Maria, the house is not the pasture. She has her reign out there, she needs to be assertive and dominant. Then she has to follow our rules. We have amped up training. More time in the crate to be still, more obedience work – sit, stay, come and lie down. We do this four or five times a day for four or five minutes.
Before Fate comes in or out of any door, she must sit, stay and lie down. Same when going to the car, heading for the pasture, leaving the pasture. She gets absolutely nothing for free. She is smart, but I am smarter. She is stubborn, I am more stubborn. I hold all the cards – food, work, access to the world.
When people tell me how cute and dysfunctional and abused their dogs are, I want to shake them. Never mind that, I want to say. Do your homework. Don’t get a dog only because it’s cute or because you need to rescue something, learn something about the dog and the breed. Learn about prey drive, arousal and instinct. Learn about your place in the pack and your role in the pack. Be patient, it takes at least 2,000 repetitions before a dog really learns a behavior.
There are all kinds of reasons beyond abuse and mistreatment why a dog might be anxious or aggressive or needy – genetics, the mother, the siblings, the first weeks of life, human behaviors.
No excuses for Fate or for any dog, I don’t care if the dog was mistreated or not (and by the way, American dogs are generally the best treated animals on the earth, there is no evidence that abuse is as common as people seem to want or need to believe), and the dogs don’t care either. They do not introduced themselves as abused animals.
I love Fate, she reminds me every day that great dogs are made, not just born. If I do my part, she will learn to do hers, and live with us in harmony, love and joy.
This is my gift to her, to us, I will show her how to live safely in our world. She will live with me and Maria in harmony and dignity and mutual respect. That is the contract. More later.
The last baby swallow has taken up residence on Chloe’s bridle, Maria was not pleased. This morning, we encouraged him to move across the barn, which he did. Chloe’s stuff is being cleaned. We think he might want to hang around here a bit, his sibs are all gone. Even his mother isn’t dive-bombing us any longer.
I came into the barn this morning to do some chores, and I was startled to see Chloe, our pony, leading on a gate and staring at me. I am just getting to know Chloe, I have not spent much time alone with her. I am surprised at her independence. I thought she would be like the donkeys, but she is not. She is far more independent, headstrong, eager to engage. When she hears me or Maria, she whinnies loudly and comes running. She walks with Maria around the pasture, loves apples, corn cobs, oat cookies. She loves to be brushed and attended to.
I went and got her a cookie this morning, I thought that was what she wanted, but she stayed at the gate, watching me, talking softly to me, calling me to come and pay attention to her, scratch her nose, speak with her. That seemed to be what she wanted.
I am surprised by her affection. She is not like a dog, she doesn’t live to please. But I am learning to talk to her, and learning to listen. Horses are spirit creatures, people are important to them.
I got a message from J today, she is 62, lives alone on a horse farm in western Maryland. It was the kind of message that humbles and affirms me. She thanked me for the blog and for my insights into my life. She said she survived open heart surgery last year in part because of my writing about my own experience. She said she was alone without friends or family when she had her surgery, and also for the last three years after her divorce.
“At age 62,” she wrote, “I have come to realize I am a resilient woman with strength of character and enough optimism to keep myself independent and happy. The dog and I share a pleasant life as tenants on a small farm. Your writings have made me laugh as well as cry, your wisdom touches me profoundly and I am grateful for the technology that enables your writing to reach me and touch me every day.”
I was grateful that the same technology sent her message to me, especially at the end of a week when I got many different kinds of messages. I was thinking about her message all day, it put me in a reflective mood. I wonder what J is like, I think I would like her, I think we could be friends. She has learned who she is and accepted who she is, she has been to the other side of the world and back, she has found herself and her own strength, she seems at peace with her life. A rare and beautiful thing, she is ahead of me, ahead of most of us.
She is a strong woman.
I hope she does not ever give up on life or love.
Her message reminded me of another message, this one from a book on mythology. It said we cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.
People sometimes watch the bad news of the world and tell me they don’t wish to bring children into it. I wonder if they have read their history, when has the world ever been free of sorrow and trouble.
When we talk about the world’s problems, we are asleep, we are looking in the wrong place for answers, we are searching in the wrong direction.
The world is perfect, the world is a terrible mess.
I am not going to speak ill of it, or change it, or even a small part of it.
I can only work on my own small existence, straighten out my own life.
The world has always been a mess. It will always be a mess, that seems to be the nature of human existence. I never lose hope, but I hope I never run from the reality of the world. Acceptance is the key.
I think J has discovered that as well, I think that is her message.
