Bud has been together with us for 10 months now. His arrival was, for me, something very new and very different. I’ve rescued some dogs, but never in this way. Bud had an awful two years in the world, he was a wild, almost feral dog when he came to us.

I didn’t know what to expect. I had never had a small dog before, never had a dog that was so untrained and mistreated, or so sick, and was unprepared for the drive and personality of the Boston Terrier breed, small dogs in name only, not in ego.

So Bud taught me a lot. He taught me about acceptance, the patience course, and he reminded me that training is not a three-week course from an expensive video or a slick TV show, or a book, some training sessions.

Training is our commitment to our dogs, a lifetime commitment, a conversation that never ends. Professional trainers know how complex a process it can be.

Bud was left outdoors day and night, in all kinds of weather. His pen mate died of exposure and neighbors notified a rescue group.

The Friends Of Homeless Animals, appropriately named, rushed to Bud’s defense and bought him from his scumbag owner for $150. (Thanks to Carol Johnson).

The group put his photo up on their website and I saw the photo, showed it to Maria, and had that familiar feeling you get once in a great while: this is my dog. I was soon up to my neck in the fraught and sometimes insane world of animal rescue groups. I was lucky, I found a good one.

Bud, now in foster care,  began a painful and rigorous series of treatments for heartworm, exposure, malnutrition, and trauma.

He was terrified of men and trembled when spoken to.

Three months and $1,000 later – we ended up paying for his treatment – he came up north on a truck and it wasn’t until he was dragged off shaking and cowering that I realized just how bad it was.

And it was bad.  More than once, Maria and I looked at one another and wondered what we had done. This was not in our long dog experience.

Bud marked every piece of furniture in the house for months, along with dog bowls, he wolfed down donkey and sheep manure, his own feces and those of Red and Fate whenever he could. He wreaked havoc with my shoes, socks, and sweaters.

He was beyond disobedient, he didn’t understand the concept of training at all, made no eye contact, and was obsessed with every moment and sound.

There was no command that he responded to, nothing in the house that was safe from his marauding and destructive chewing.

He was out of control, answering only to his own instincts.

Bud had no idea where to go to the bathroom no experience with going outside, in the wind or rain or snow, and was eating so much manure and feces he was dumping six or seven times a day, often in the house.

What I want to say is that Bud gave me some hard lessons about training. After all this, I still needed to be more patient, to listen and watch more. I’ve learned this with a dozen different dogs, but I had to learn it again and in a different.

Being patient with an alert and eager border collie is not the same thing as being patient with a wild and impulsive hunting animal who was over two years old. His bad habits were deeply ingrained in him now.

He was very eager to please but he was wary of men. Yelling at him was counterproductive and cruel, given his frailty and anxiety and history. Since he didn’t know his name, I had to begin teaching who he was and how to communciate with me. He was not familiar with listening.

Hundreds of dollars of liver treats helped.

I began slowly – sit, stay, come. Bud loves food and treats, he is very responsive to them, so I had a foot in the door. I was positive in our training, praising and rewarding him, working in short bursts. I went over the commands thousands of times, taking care to be upbeat, clear and consistent.

You get the dogs you need, and you get the dogs you deserve. You get out of them what you put into them, almost all of them want to please, that’s how they survive. If they don’t get what I’m saying, then I need to try again, I need to be clear.

I was more patient than I had ever been, moving slowly, watching carefully, experimenting with different voice commands, distance, and treats. Slowly and deliberately things began to change. To train a dog, I need to take the long view, and I’m not famous for the long view.

Bud no longer marks on furniture in the house.

He has stopped eating feces and manure. I’ve learned that given time, a dog like this – basically sweet and eager to please – will change.  I watched him closely, afraid he might run off into the woods. Sometimes I shouted out for him, sometimes I got frantic. I hated the thought of him running loose or getting lost in those woods. There were bobcats and coyotes out there.

I  decided to trust him, and this has paid off. When we go out, he makes his rounds of walls and woods where he has spotted rabbits or moles or mice and then comes back. He never goes far, I realized,  and he always comes back. Bit by bit, he has crept into the rhythms and patterns of our lives.

He goes into his crate happily, sleeps in a crate near our bed at night, is let out to cuddle with us in the morning. He naps when me when I take a nap, usually curled up on my lap snoring. He rides with me all over town. He is a good-natured soul, full of love and affection.

And he is a happy dog, he loves living on a farm.

Bud lies next to me when I write, or next to Maria in her studio when I’m away. He loves everyone in his family, people and dogs. He is generous with Red as he weakens, generous with the pushy Fate, surrendering his treats to her when she asks.

Bud taught me that patience is more than I thought it was.

He taught me to wait. To trust. To listen. And suddenly, I looked up one morning, and we have a great dog we love and trust, and who loves and trusts us. No more trembling.  He taught me to bend and take a long view. Believe me, he is not afraid of me.

Bud is, despite all of his trouble, a generous and forgiving spirit.  I’ve never subscribed to the idea that dogs who are mistreated can’t be trained.

Training is not about obedience for me, it is a spiritual experience, a dialogue between human and dog.

It was not easy watching Bud eat feces and manure day after day, and dump all over the house.

I sensed he would grow out it, I knew he deserved some time, in a sense, we were starting from scratch, he was like a new puppy.

I knew he survived in that pen in part by eating feces. His life depended on it. So he had to work his way through it, adjust to a new reality, and he did. I held my breath when he tore off into the woods and had faith he would always want to come back, and he did and does. He doesn’t run too far anymore.

Sometimes, you just have to let a dog be a dog, and give them a chance to sense what you want. It is in their nature to make us happy.

Bud is a good dog now, a very good dog, despite his insistence on annoying the chickens and the barn cats and the donkeys. And he actually can herd sheep in his own inimitable style. Bud is no angel.

As good dogs do, he made his human better, he has grown into our lives.