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Riley is enthusiastic. About everything. To this immense, nine month old Yellow Lab a walk is not a walk, but a WALK! The command to heel brings a backwards leap that will knock you down if you're unprepared. "Sit" brings on a thump and "Down" a plop. He wants to do everything he does better and quicker than any other dog, than any other being, than in any time in recorded history. Riley is smart in the way of Labs and curious, but most of all he is interested in sampling the world for its suitability as food, so it shouldn't have been a surprise when, Shayne, his mom told me about his having gotten his tongue nicked by a paper shredder. Let's revisit the smart part…of the two, smart and curious, Riley is more curious. Were he tilted toward the smart side he might not have put his tongue in the paper shredder at all, but curiosity got him. (Heck, I've wondered…haven't you?...what do they taste like?) According to Shayne, Riley claims the paper shredder was the aggressor and he now keeps a weather eye on it should it try and bite him again…he swears he was just walking by when a voice called out, "Hey big fella, don't you ever wonder if the inside of this slot tastes like hamburger?" Also, two weeks ago it was the bee's fault that Riley's face swelled up like a melon, the bee he ate on a dare. I've told a few
people about these incidents and the response in all cases has been,
"Lab was it?...I knew a Lab like that once." Join me, please
in wishing Riley a happy upcoming first birthday or happy or not,
that he actually makes it to his first birthday. Kobie is one of our pet-sitting clients who also attends daycare occasionally. He's a good soul, Kobie, a Jack Russell mix (possibly Jack Russell and possum) and he's lived with a natural suspicion of all strangers until they've undergone an extensive interview. He's quick and athletic and wouldn't let Linda get near him for the first several days she visited him at home, but once she got close enough to get a leash on him and introduce him to daycare, a whole new dog emerged from the suspicious little guard we first knew. Kobie is now genial and friendly, trusting and eager to participate in small muggings, a gang romp, swim or whatever's happening. He had a vision on the road to Gaul he claims and his suspicion and life of depravity and crime is completely gone…there's now a wonderful little guy in there ready to take notes, carry your books or run errands. He's a terrific example of the socializing benefits derived from hanging with the fellas, participating in group peeing sessions and learning to be an all-round Joe. Yesterday during the group counseling session which he co-chaired with a Dachshund suffering from athlete's foot, Kobie was elaborating on his past life of crime and suspicion. He claimed his epiphany has given him the courage and patience to play nicely with others and he softly asked for a cat, a small play-cat, please, just one for a pal; you'll see. Absolutely nobody's
buying it; what, does he think we just rode up? Some of you are familiar with Mozart, the effervescent, young Standard Schnauzer tough guy, who, while he always seems dressed for dinner, is perfectly willing to Cha-Cha with you if he thinks you're out of line. I've witnessed a couple of his minor muggings in which he didn't think he was being observed and when I call him on his behavior he instantly stops and quickly looks away from me in complete denial of even having been in the room at the time when such-a-thing-as-that took place. In his mind, quick and complete denial of guilt is the perfect lead-pipe alibi; I'm sure of it. Whatever his macho
leanings toward his playmates…and he's certainly one of the high-ranking
dogs here with a rep to maintain and territory to patrol (South Bronx
through Philadelphia including East Cleveland and the entire West
Coast), he's a lover too. He's very affectionate toward me and is
one of my star training dogs who's capable of working off-leash through
his whole routine. He's quickly becoming a reliable dog to take on
a walk…reliable as long as there are no geese. Quiet early morning so far. Ruby is here, as is Dudley and that's it. Dudley is sitting bolt upright in his chair as if waiting for someone to bring him a drink and a good cigar before he calls the meeting to order and Ruby is thinking out loud about how to chew something she hasn't already worked over. In a moment, Dudley will go out to the big maple tree and scan it minutely for the squirrel he recalls running up that tree in late July. (You'd think that if they can remember some things that well, they could at least talk, vacuum, count to 300 or remember not to pee on your typewriter.) Now Alain has arrived in full wiggle and the question of what Ruby should chew on is solved. They will troop joyfully for hours indoors and out, on the bench and off the bench, in the pool (now drained) and out of the pool. Self-entertaining, this gang. Later the troop of wiener dogs will likely show up and the irreverent and beautiful collie puppy and then more and more…until they've reached a quorum. Now if they could just recall why they needed a quorum… I train dogs. I train them to sit when their owners stop and then stay there until they are asked to move, to sit quietly to be petted by strangers, to jump over park benches, to be joyful, to stop and lie down when they are chasing a squirrel into the teeth of oncoming cars. Sometimes the task is simply to not bite strangers (or owners) or not chase cars or to come back when they are called, but in every case, success means a job for the dog and engenders a sense of fulfillment for these pooches. They are all successful to greater and lesser degrees. There is D.J., a Yorkie who, under my tutelage, has stopped treeing and puncturing the 82-year-old next door neighbor and started biting the children in his own family…a situation the family considers an improvement. Truth-be-known, he has been shipped off to Midland, Texas in response to his excesses (there is a dire warning here). There is O'Malley, an immense Chocolate Lab, who at 10 months is already over a hundred pounds, with sneakers the size of pancakes. He can jump completely over the back of a park bench, spit flying, joy in his heart and a smile on his face. He is more anxious to please than any dog I've ever met and more pleased when does please than you'd think possible. Sadie, who bit me twice in the early going is a Tibetan Terrier or Terror, or something like that. She was so upset about having some discipline in her life that she became incontinent the first two times out. She now sits and lies down beautifully with hand signals alone and she comes to me with a freely wagging tail. There is pride in her performance and she's gaining confidence with each lesson. Jake, a young standard poodle, learned the expected performance for the first four or five lessons by the end of the first day. He'll be a dog I'll have to invent chores and tasks for to keep him from becoming bored. What a pup! He's fearless and he'd like to catch a car for me. He looks for all the world like he's misplaced his glasses and morning paper. And so forth, with about 20 dogs currently. I get up each day looking forward to seeing them, and they, me. How's your job? In 2001, Robert Smith Thompson, a fine thinker and historian, wrote a wonderful history of events in Asia and the US covering the 1930s through the end of WWII called Empires On The Pacific. It is a very good read and he was taken in by neither Douglas MacArthur's corncob pipe and squashed-hat props, nor his self-aggrandizing propaganda…Thompson tells it like it was. In 2007, Ruby, a wonderful six-month-old Black Lab, along with a Schnauzer pup named Mozart, ate the dust jacket to Empires On The Pacific…the dust jacket and most of the back cover. They did it in a heartbeat like assassins. One moment they were all asleep in comfortable heaps at my feet as I sat in a chair in the playroom and the next moment they were Furies. What happened, see, was the phone rang and I dashed out to get it. I was gone maybe 30 seconds and in that time Ruby, Mozart, Shasta and I'm quite certain some of their apprentices, worked this history over so that I had to use ludicrous amounts of Elmer's glue to continue reading at all. Then today, again during a quiet time, a new client came in and I stepped out softly to greet her, leaving the dogs sleeping, and Ruby got the portion of the Index from Curtis Lemay through Zhou dynasty and the bottom corners of pages 411 through 424. Lessons learned, I always say…they're obviously revisionists. From now on, I'm only bringing fiction. These days I'm training quite a few dogs; teaching them basic manners and making them safe and pleasant to walk with…trying to keep them out of traffic, or at least help them understand commands that will keep them out of trouble. They are all willing and cheerful, full of pride and purpose. They range from a 135 lb. three-year-old Bernese Mountain Dog with a splendid sense of the ridiculous to a sober and purposeful Chocolate Lab pup only 12 weeks old. He's stolid, but readily and delightedly sidetracked by a blowing leaf, a potential new friend 200 yards away or a new and interesting thought about international politics. And although he's only 12 weeks old, he has size 16 sneakers; he's going to be a hunk. In between, there's a Standard Schnauzer who we believe works for a foreign government, a suspicious Australian Shepherd, a further sprinkling of Labs with all their smiling enthusiasm and abilities to tow their owners like sleds, a young Golden Retriever who seems to know what I want before I finish asking for it, a Vizsla, known in the hood as Pinkie The Chicken Wing, a magnificent Collie who's smarter than I am and a Cavalier/King Charles Spaniel who can jump up on top of anything…anything. Just point to it and say, "Kennel!" and he's airborne. These dogs love their work. They see training (and performing what they learn) as a means of pleasing me and pleasing their people. These skills become their jobs, their careers and their means of getting what they want; their passion, if you will. Some, of course, will go far beyond obedience training to actual careers as companion dogs, or special-needs dogs, hunting dogs and such, but most will serve the high office as Constant Joy of Their People, and no meager calling, that. I'm a very fortunate fellow to have these mutts in my life. One hundred eighty-four miles from Portland, in country endlessly built and scoured by lava and biblical floods, wind and heat; country where even today the old white settlers can point out long forgotten Indian burial grounds, lies a ranch stretching from the tops of the basalt shelves, down across the creek bottoms and beaver meadows and back up and over the canyon walls; a ranch with spring-fed Poplar trees aflame, with swans, elk, deer, cougar and birds; my God, are there birds…a ranch on top of the world and as picturesque as any in your best dreams. It is the ranch of a friend who invited me to join him and two other friends last weekend to hunt Chukkar. My friend and his wife are dog people. They bought this ranch nearly two decades ago in order to have a place to shoot, to train gun-dogs, to hold hunt tests and field trials. Chuck has two wonderfully trained adult dogs and Kara has decided to raise and sell English Setters, or perhaps more accurately, raise and love English Setters. There is currently a complete litter of big-sneakered, half-grown puppies caroming around the place. When they're not in the turkey house where they nominally live, you can find all seven of them sleeping on the living room couches, or stacked up in front of the stove, raiding the trash barrel and spreading its contents across the yard of an evening, plotting small robberies, coups, insurrections and the murder of bugs. The idea seems to have been to breed the blooded bitch and sell puppies, establish a regional presence and niche as a resource within the gun-dog community in order to draw the community to Seven Springs Ranch, this perfect and magnificent place along Butte Creek. Then, along came these puppies, each with its own marvelous and unique qualities and how could one think of selling any of them? Well, one couldn't. The answer, of
course is to move…move from our fussy little community full of
unreasonable prohibitions against keeping ten or twelve dogs in the
backyard, move East into the mesas and coulees, meadows and beaver
ponds where there is room for dogs and birds and the people who love
them. Hollit's people are athletic. They run to work, run to the store, run seven miles before dinner. And Hollit, of course, goes with them. As a result, he's an ingot of a dog with muscle tone like a block of mahogany. He's also thoughtful and carefully considers what he's going to do next; he's never rash. If he decides to bite you, it's a carefully considered bite, starting slowly and building up to machine-shop pressures. You remember Hollit, probably; he's the parti-colored Blue Tick Coon Hound with one bloodshot eye. His mom says that's par for Blue Ticks; however, I suspect he may be a drinker. Jill came in with him on Friday for a romp day with the fellas, saying that she would be out late at a Halloween party, so I invited Hollit for a sleepover. He packed his stuff and came right along. A sleepover with Hollit might be more aptly called a takeover, as he's not into sharing the bed and he growls like a werewolf if you try to move him in the night, that, and he shivers if the window is open. The whole effect is like the opening seconds of an earthquake in Transylvania, but he's charming and our friend and we're happy to have him come over. Before bed, though, we went out in the boat for dinner and took Hollit with us. I launched the TRIXIE BEA and drew her alongside the float. Linda put our picnic aboard and said, "Come on Hollit." "No way, it's moving." "Get in Hollit." "You two go ahead; that thing looks unsafe to me." "Get in Hollit; it'll be just like the bayous back home." "Bayou! I'm freezing my butt off and there are no alligators"…and so on until I coaxed/lifted/pulled him into the boat, his nails fully extended against near certain catastrophe. We noodled down the canal into Lake Oswego, turned the motor off, ate shrimp and planned our next five years. On the way down the canal, Hollit commented on the architecture, various neighbor's cooking, the evening in general and whatever is in that Tupperware deal underneath the seat. It was a good evening even without alligators. Then, early this morning, after we'd come to a midnight accommodation with Hollit over the sleeping arrangements (me on one edge, Linda on the other and Hollit spread-eagled over most of the center of the bed), Hollit started moaning to go outside. Of course one can't ignore that call with impunity. I put on a robe and rubber boots and out we went. Out to no action, nothing. He didn't have to pee; he wanted to go for a five-mile-run. I dragged him back inside and we all went back to sleep until sunup, although I fully expect Hollit to report us as sluggards. Gone
to the Dogs Home
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