Emergency procedure: fail

I woke up in a panic in the middle of the night. I leapt out of bed, threw some sweatpants on over my pjs and ran for the door. I stepped into my shoes on the way out. We sprinted for the elevator, which came quickly, for once. We raced across the lobby and were out of the building in record time.

As I watched the dog disappear into the tall grass, it occurred to me that it would have been a good idea to put a leash on her. A neighbour informed me it was close to 2:00 AM.

The nature of the emergency? The dog had whined.

Shibas whine. As far as I know, they all do. They have very expressive whines which I think are meant to imitate us. Tinky-Winky whines for all kinds of reasons, but only one of them would have her out of bed and walking around at 2:00 AM: she needs out. I've said before that she never asks to go out, but that's not quite true. About three times in the last six years, she's asked. The first time, I ignored it, and spent a couple of hours cleaning explosive diarrhea off the carpet, and everything else. So now, if she asks to go, we run like the wind. It takes me about one tenth as long to evacuate the building when the dog whines as when the fire alarm goes off. And other than the fire alarm, the dog is about the only thing that wakes me. (Ok, violent crime, too.) I can sleep through almost anything, most of all my alarm clock, but also music, thunder, phone ringing, neighbours partying... but not my dog crying, barking or throwing up. Same when I had cats, the fastest way to wake me was for a cat to start heaving. And I'm active and fully operational instantly, very much unlike the alarm clock. They should make an alarm clock that sounds like a puking cat.

Anyway. A more considerate creature, having relieved herself, would have thought something like "the human got out of bed in the middle of the night to help me, I will go back in promptly so she can go back to sleep." But that would be utterly unlike Her Majesty. She was outside, she was off-leash, and the weather was beautiful. PARTY! (And yes, this means I didn't pick it up, but have you ever tried to pick up liquid off the grass in a bag? I actually have. Turns out you can't pick up diarrhea even if you try.)

2:00 AM on a Saturday night is a really rotten time for a dog to be off-leash in downtown Hay River. The bars close at 2:00 AM, and that night there was a dance, too. All the cops are out, all the drunk drivers, all the drunk walkers, everyone. It's a very busy time. And there is my dog, not only off-leash but without even her collar, which reflects some light.

Man, that was dumb.

So I went back upstairs and got some cheese to bait her. And a Ziploc bag. She can hear "cheese" from miles away, but cheese doesn't have a sound. It has to be in a plastic wrap, so she can hear the wrap. So I'm outside crinkling a Ziploc bag at 2:00 AM, with cheese in one hand, my hair all over the place, wearing my gross sweatpants that would fit a fat man on Thanksgiving, just when every eligible man in town is out and about. And did I mention every cop in town? Then a cop car drives by, then another, and I figure, knowing my dog, that's exactly when she's gonna show up. And she did, too. Luckily for both of us, she had been just around the corner of the building, not across the street, so she didn't run afoul of the cops. That was lucky.

The dumbest thing is, her leash hangs on the key rack by the door, right next to my keys, so it wouldn't have slowed us down one second to grab it and put it on in the elevator. I guess I'm not as smart at 2:00 AM as I'd like to think.

So, new emergency evacuation procedure to learn:

1. Put clothes on.
2. Leash up dog.
3. Evacuate.

That being said, she should be good for another two years or so.

Poor sad little dog

We woke up this morning and it was raining. Pouring rain. Real ugly. So I ate breakfast and then instead of going for a walk, I just turned the dog loose. I do that when the weather is ugly, partly because I'm lazy, but also because that gives her control over how much time she wants to spend in the ugly weather. Right now, on nice days, I might have to wait for her an hour after I get home from our off-leash walk, because she's happy outside. This morning, I read three pages of my book before she wanted back in.

She came in and looked mournfully out the door. I held it open to see if she wanted to change her mind and go back out, but no, she wanted in. She cried as we walked to the elevator. We got into the apartment and she was still crying. She tried to lick her soup bone from yesterday, but it didn't comfort her. I tried to towel her dry, but we both know she hates being towelled, so she stayed wet. She was so sad I even gave her cheese, which is like cocaine to her, but she ate it sadly and kept crying. She went to the window and looked out on the world and cried. Then she went to her bed and lay down sadly. Poor little dog. She was absolutely inconsolable. Her whole world was ruined by having her morning walk rained out.

I tell you, dogs live for walking.

You're lucky I love you

Ok, picking up after the dog is one thing. One quick move, tie up the baggy, and you're done. Though that's certainly one good reason to get a small dog, so you're not walking around with a two-pound bag of excrement.

You know what I don't like though? Digging out the marrow that she can't get out of the marrow bone herself. It's all soft and gelatinous and it spreads like peanut butter, and yet it sustained the life of the cow. Somehow, even though I eat meat, I just do NOT like to scoop the marrow out of the bones.

Sometimes, I think that dog is lucky to have me.

My dog, the Grinch

Yesterday, in the lobby of our building, we met a girl who was holding a three-week-old puppy. It could barely lift its head or open its eyes. She oohed and aahed about how cute my dog is. I oohed and aahed about how cute her dog is. Then I was like "Tinky-Winky, come look at the puppy!" I was gonna pick her up and hold her so she could see, but the girl was faster than me. She crouched and stuck the puppy in Tinky-Winky's face, which as you and I know, is never a good idea.

Fortunately, Tinky-Winky is cranky, but not evil. She did not snap at the three-week-old puppy. Instead she sniffed at it for about two seconds and then lost interest.

WOW. How heartless was that? I know it's not her puppy, but it's a tiny orphan and she's had three litters, you'd think she could show the slightless glimmer of maternal instinct?

Well, at least I don't need to worry anymore about her abducting a fox cub or other wild creature while she's off-leash. Clearly, the last thing she wants is more puppies. Little great-grand-mother Grinch.

Making good choices

You know how people try to teach their kids to "make good choices"? My dog makes good choices naturally.

I've said many times, and I'm sure it will come up again, that you cannot approach dog training as "conditioning", because dogs aren't zombies. Whether you're using treats or clickers or ranting and screaming, the dog doesn't obey by reflex, but because of two things: understanding and choice. Just like anybody else.

Consider the following. I'm a construction worker. If someone tells me to go "rip some plywood", do I reflexively go rip some plywood because I'm conditioned? No. First of all I understand what "rip some plywood" means, which many people don't because they don't have the vocabulary. Second, I choose to do it because I've decided that cooperation is in my best interest. I could choose, and I have chosen in the past, to walk off the job screaming insults at the boss. That was also a conscious decision based on what was in my best interest.

Same with the dog. You can see it more in Canada because of the bilingual situation, actually. One time when we were in Yellowknife, some of the roommate's francophone friends came to visit, with their kids and their dog. The kids kept calling my dog "viens, Tinky-Winky, viens!" She had no idea what they wanted. Meanwhile, in the kitchen, their dog was asking me for food and I kept telling it "sit, Pepsi!" He had no idea what I wanted. Finally I thought long and hard and said "assis" and voila, he sat. Dogs need vocabulary, just like anybody else. If they don't know your words, they can't do what you're asking. What you're doing when you "train" your dog is teach vocabulary, not condition reflexes.

Once the dog knows your words, he can choose to comply or not. That's what most people fail to realize, really. Dogs have free will. And the reason I'm on about this today is because of what happened on our morning walk.

There is a big dog in our building named Otis. He's friendly, by which I actually mean that he's a dog that other dogs can be friends with, not some spastic weirdass jumping lunatic. And he's interested in making friends with Tinky-Winky. She, being the cranky old boot that she is, snaps at him. Otis has two people, a male and a female. The male will ride in the elevator with Otis, myself and Tinky-Winky. The female would rather not, because of the snapping, but I tell her it's good for them to learn to share the elevator. A lot of the dogs here are allowed to get territorial about the elevator and that causes fights, so I always make Tinky-Winky ride with others and behave herself.

Anyway. This morning, Tinky-Winky and I were on the road, off leash, and Otis was on the trail in the woods, off leash, with his female human. He saw me from a distance and came running through the woods, not to see me, but because he knows I'm Tinky-Winky's person. His human tried to call him back, but he wouldn't listen. When he emerged from the woods, he looked around and saw Tinky-Winky. Of course I was calling her, too, and she did in fact listen to me. She looked at Otis, looked at me, and then did not come. Otis approached her politely, presenting his side instead of head-on. She let him come up to her and sniff her butt like a polite dog. While he was sniffing her, she looked at me, and she was smiling and relaxed. After a while she did give a half-assed snap, mostly to maintain her image, I think. Otis hopped about three inches, then she mellowed out and he went back to sniffing her. She was still smiling and relaxed. Then his person caught up to him and led him away. Tinky-Winky laughed and ran "to" me and right past me, and kept on in the direction of our walk. After a few yards she looked over her shoulder to see if I was following, still smiling.

And that was that. A nice peaceful interaction between two off-leash dogs.

The important thing here is the difference between this morning and the Evil Giant Chihuahua incident. Otis is about six times the size of Evil Giant Chihuahua, yet Tinky-Winky chose to come to me to avoid Evil Giant Chihuahua, but let Otis come to her. Both times, she clearly understood the situation: there is another dog and I'm calling her to come to me. But she made up her mind what to do, according to which dog it was. She doesn't like Evil Giant Chihuahua, so she came to me so I could deal with it. But she's comfortable with Otis, so she interacted with him on her own terms. And she seems quite satisfied with the outcome of the interaction. In fact, in both cases, she was clearly happy to come to me. When she needed help with the chihuahua, she came TO me, and when she was done with Otis, she came BY me, but either way, she was happy to acknowledge that I had called her. So you can see that she clearly knows "come", she just makes decisions whether to come or not.

So that, essentially, is the difficulty in training dogs. Or employees. Or horses. Or anything else. First of all they have to understand what you're asking. This is the easy part. (Except with employees. Employees are f'ing dense.) The challenge is in getting them to choose to do as you say, and this depends on more or less three things: the trainee's personality, the trainer's leadership, and the trust between the two. When I had my horse, I could make her back up into a narrow, dark space, just by pointing. Most horses don't like to go into a dark narrow space even forward, let alone backward, but she always assumed that if I said so, it was safe to do it. Tinky-Winky trusts me to manage interactions with other dogs for her, so if she sees a dog she's not comfortable with, she comes to me. On the other hand she knows that when I call her, she's likely to get the leash, so she doesn't come TO me unless she needs my help. She comes by and stays out of reach, so I can't leash her up. And that also is a form of trust, in my opinion. Generally we think "trust" means we expect a positive outcome, but I think it just means we can predict with confidence what someone is going to do.

In summary, dogs are not zombies, you cannot "condition" them to obey orders. You teach them vocabulary, then they choose whether to do as you ask or not, depending on what they perceive as their best interest. Just like people.

I'm glad we're together

On our afternoon walk today, we saw a woman with a Welsh springer spaniel. The spaniel pulled toward Tinky-Winky. Tinky-Winky pulled toward the spaniel. The woman yanked on the leash and said to her dog "move" and kept him motoring forward. When they were past, I let Tinky-Winky make a wide curve to go sniff the other dog's trail, as is our custom. And as we were doing that, I heard this ugly hollow "thunk". The woman had kicked the spaniel in the ribs.

WTF?????

I was completely speechless. I didn't know if I should even say something, because the dog never made a sound or looked upset. Was the dog ok with getting kicked in the ribs? Dogs have incredible pain tolerance; maybe it didn't hurt him. Then I remembered, I've seen her do that before, too. And I couldn't believe it the first time either. And I still can't think of what to do about it. It seems like anything I say would just make her angrier and then she'd take it out on the dog again.

It's so bizarre. I can understand hitting your kids, first of all because it was perfectly acceptable from the dawn of human evolution until about 15 years ago, and second because kids are often deliberately rude and difficult and you're stuck with them anyway. But dogs? Dogs are not being deliberately difficult. If your dog is difficult, it's either a health problem or your own fault. Either way, if you don't like it, you can just get rid of the dog. Especially a beautiful little dog like that. Lots of people would be happy to take that dog off that woman's hands. And yet she keeps it around so she can kick it. What a witch.

Also, a dog can kill you. Even a spaniel. He could rip out her throat and eat her face and there's nothing she could do about it. He could bite her hand and break every bone. If that little dog chose to defend himself, that woman wouldn't stand a chance. And yet she kicks him and he doesn't even make a sound.

What an evil witch.

So Tinky-Winky and I got home and she lay down on her comfy bed and looked at me with a big smile. So I was glad that she's with me. No matter how vile people are, at least this is one little dog that no one will ever kick, because she's with me. Anyone tries to kick her, I will make them rue the day they were born. So no matter what, I can keep this one little dog safe and happy and completely oblivious to the fact that people are evil. And she knows that she can count on me to make everything right for her.

I'm glad we have each other.

You may be a dog person if...

I don't really bother to look at men on a regular basis, and they return the compliment. (Vice-versa, actually, they started it. But that's beside the point.) Tinky-Winky, however, likes to check out men. Not male dogs, male humans. She just loves to stare at men. She has lousy taste, too.

Conversely, when we meet a dog we like, if it's walking with a male human, I always ask myself if the human might be single and if I should try to bond with him so we can spend time with his dog.

You may be a dog person if you pick men by whether you and your dog like their dog, rather than whether you like the guy.