Bones Would Rain from the Sky: Deepening Our Relationships with Dogs (5 page)

No recipes
At work in all our intimate relationships is a
desire for harmony, for togetherness, for friendship; we
long to both love and be loved, to understand and be
understood. What is the recipe for such a
relationship? There isn't one. There can't be.
Recipes are only a beginning, a guide by which you
begin to learn the basics. Without recipes, we must
reinvent the wheel, which, though possible, is
time-consuming and not always successful. Imagine if
each of us had to learn to make a cake from scratch,
but we had no guide as to what ingredients went into a
cake. Even though we have seen cakes and eaten them,
unless we had watched someone else make one from
scratch we might stare at the cupboard for a long
time (eternity?) before thinking to blend some butter,
sugar, flour and eggs to create a tasty treat. A
recipe is a shortcut to a limited form of knowledge,
though not necessarily to experience or even success.
The basics of dog behavior and the training of dogs
Can be learned through recipes. At this simple level of
training and relationship, there are basic ingredients that
you will need to know about. This book trusts that at some
other time, through the many "cookbooks" available, you have
already mastered the basic recipes for a life shared with
animals. But there is a limit to what such books
can offer. There are only a limited number of ways
by which you can teach your dog to sit on command or walk
politely at your side, just as there are
only a limited number of ways to make an
ordinary cream pie. This book trusts that you want
to know more. While an ordinary pie is delicious,
it is possible to create something even more remarkable and
memorable, something that satisfies far beyond a basic
level.
In cooking, there is a level where the basics have
been thoroughly mastered so that recipes are no longer
necessary or even desired. At this point, experience and
knowledge become a springboard for cooking as an art, each
creation as individual as the cook herself as she
selects the ingredients and proportions that delight
her. Beautiful improvisations on a theme become
the goal. A chocolate cream pie previously
concocted of instant pudding, Cool Whip and a
store-bought crust may now be made of the finest
Belgian chocolate laced with elegant swirls
of raspberry liquer and nestled atop a delicate
crust of hazelnut and gingersnaps. Because such a
creation springs from a desire to take the experience
to new heights of intensity and subtlety, because it is
created from feel from a little of this and a touch of that, the
cook herself may be unable to offer a precise
recipe. Attempts to get such a recipe
creates the maddening scenario where a budding
cook tries to get Grandma to surrender the recipe
for her famous pie crust only to discover that Grandma
long ago lost the need for measuring cups and just puts
in what's needed until "it feels right."
It is not possible to develop a deep relationship
with an animal simply because you know and can recite the
basic ingredients, no more than you can match
Grandma's famous pastry armed only with the information that
a pie crust is made of flour, shortening, and a
splash of ice water. While you need to know these
basics, such knowledge is not enough. You're going to have
to make as many pie crusts as Grandma did, until
it feels right in your hands, until the sense of what
makes a pie crust right is in your bones. Grandma
may give you useful tips to help you as you
practice, but the experience and excellent results
will come only with time and effort. You may choose a
poorer-quality flour or a different shortening or
decide not to invest so much time in perfecting your pie
crusts; the results will reflect your choices.
In reaching for this book, you are moving toward the deeper
levels in a relationship with an animal, where
recipes are no longer useful or even possible.
The stories in this book will not help you create
predictable, Wonderful results with the
animals in your life; instead, they offer useful
tips that when combined with experience and practice,
help you get it "just right." I can tell you what
ingredients seem to be common in healthy
relationships, but it's up to you to create your own
special recipe, one that uniquely reflects
how you share your life with animals. The specific
techniques that worked for the relationships in this book
may not be appropriate or useful for you. From this
point on in the journey, you must collect your own
ingredients and brew them, stew them or swallow them
whole as it suits you and your dog and your relationship.
I do have one recipe I can pass along. It may
seem all too reminiscent of Grandma's pie
crust, but it's a good one.

Take one lifetime with animals. Grind it hard
against mistakes and misunderstanding. Season heavily
with the desire to get it right, and layer generously with the
forgiveness of every animal who passes through your hands.
Stew for years, being sure that gifted teachers
(animal or human) stir the mess from time to time as
needed so it keeps cooking. Serve when it begins
to get clear. Yield: a few precious
drops worth having.
Each relationship with an animal and a human is a
bridge uniquely shaped to carry only those two,
and so must be crafted by them. Though the work of a
lifetime, the building and repairs are done slowly,
in the heart's time, one beat after another. And it is
thirsty work, as work of the heart always is, for the heart
thirsts after the things that are invisible to the eye, things you
cannot grasp with your hand. Simple notions, these few
drops I've thus far distilled from a lifetime of
learning from animals. But they are surprisingly
satisfying to a thirsty heart.
Chance and Wendy have become my good friends. They live
not far from us, and happily, they share our passion for the
farm's open spaces and hemlock woods, for shaggy
cattle with horns and afternoon walks with a pig or a
turkey. Chance now has the life and freedom that
Wendy had always wanted for him. Some days when
Wendy works, Chance stays here with us, and the black
plume of his tail waving in the tall grass is a
familiar sight as I look out my office window
onto the yard and the pastures beyond. My nickname for
Chance is Einstein, meant as a tribute to this
dog's intelligence. When I call him by that famous
name, he always smiles. I know that his
namesake long ago defined the speed at which light
travels, but each day, this good black dog reminds
me of an even more amazing phenomenon-the speed at which
forgiveness travels in a dog's eyes.
Through the grace of a dog's forgiveness, and by keeping the
relationship with her dog as the defining factor in all
she did with him, Wendy and Chance ultimately
achieved more than she had ever dared dream possible.
One day, a trophy unexpectedly arrived in the
mail, accompanied by a certificate declaring Chance
the top-scoring obedience dog among all mixed
breeds in the Northeast, an honor Wendy was
unaware they had won. But how far they have come in their
relationship is not best defined by any trophy. For
Wendy, the watermark was an incident at a
practice competition. Competing at an advanced
obedience level, she and Chance had done very well.
As Wendy set him for the final exercise, the broad
jump (an exercise that requires the dog to stay
while the handler walks away and then-on command-jump
a low, wide hurdle), she was extremely pleased
with their performance. Turning to face the jump, she
noticed that the trainer who had tried to "fry his little
brain" was standing outside the ring, only a
few feet from where Chance sat. Realizing that Chance
had also seen the trainer, Wendy understood the
message contained in what her dog did next.
Chance looked at the jump, at Wendy, and then, with a
brief glance at the trainer who had been the source
of so much pain, quietly got up and walked away.
The judge, not understanding that the dog had good reason for
what he had done, was surprised when Wendy softly
called Chance to her and prepared to leave the ring.
"Don't you want to take him back and try that again?
It's a practice show, so you can try again if you
like."
Wendy knew it was impossible to explain what Chance
had said so clearly in his behavior. "No, sir,"
she said. "I think my dog has done well today, and
I am very pleased with him."
The puzzled judge shook his head, questioning her
decision. "All right," he said with a shrug. "It's
your dog."
With a big smile, Wendy agreed. "You're right.
He is my dog." And she and Chance walked out of the
ring as they had entered it-together.
I haven't seen Chance pray in a long, long time.
He has no need. All his prayers have been
answered.

dances with dogs
Folk will know how large your soul is, by the way you
treat a dog.
charles F. doran

I DO NOT KNOW WHAT THE TURTLE
THOUGHT. I hope that any fear it may have felt
quickly disappeared, leaving only a vague,
dreamlike recollection. For me, the memory is
a sweet, clear picture: It is a summer's
evening, and as I ride, the tall grass brushes in
whispers against my feet, keeping time with my pony's
steps. At the edge of the field where the grass grows
thin and short under the shade of the trees, I can see
my dog Bear sniffing at something. I turn my
pony in that direction, and as we approach, Bear
looks up, his eyes bright with excitement. "What have
you found?" I ask, and in reply, he turns
to gently pick up a box turtle.
"Give it to me," I tell him, leaning down from the
saddle, and he strains to offer me this gift. I cannot
reach that far, and seeing this, Bear stands on his hind
legs, bracing his front paws against the pony's
shoulder. I take the turtle from him, thanking him for

this lovely surprise. As I examine the
intricate tracery of colors and grooves, the
size and the wear on the shell tells me this is an
old turtle who has seen much, though I suspect
his brief journey in Bear's mouth was a new
experience. As my pony stands patiently waiting,
I hold the turtle level on my hand, hoping he
will peek out. Cautiously, the wrinkled head
appears, and for a moment, the tables are turned-one
deep orange eye unblinkingly considers me, the
color shocking against the dull brownish gray of the
turtle's head. Finding me of little interest, the eye
snaps shut and the turtle closes into himself once more.
"We need to put him back now," I tell Bear,
and once again he rears to stand against the pony.
With surprising delicacy, his
powerful jaws close on the turtle, and with infinite
care, he places the turtle on the ground right
side up before stepping back to stand watching for what
might happen next. Impatient, Bear gives it
a little push, his wet nose cutting a trail through the
dust of the turtle's back, revealing a splendid
dark tapestry of color. But the turtle doesn't
move. I turn the pony away, and calling my dog, we continue on our way.
When I think of Bear, it is memories like this that
fill me with joy. But our journey together was not always
as uncomplicated as that summer's evening ride that
had no purpose but to move through the fields on
an old gray pony with a dark wolf of a dog beside
me. It would be nice to report that all my moments
with animals were sweet and good ones, that from the day I
was born, people mistook me for the sister of Saint
Francis of Assisi, or perhaps Dr.
Doolittle's daughter. I would prefer to write
a self-congratulatory tale of how I
instinctively treated all animals with the utmost
respect and tenderness. I wish that I could claim that
I cannot fathom how or why people who say they love
animals are nonetheless willing to use horrific
techniques in the name of training. But none of that would
be true, though most of my mistakes and selfish
acts went largely unnoticed, private affairs
between me and an animal.
Here's a memory that is not a beautiful one: I
am fourteen and-desperate for a dog of my own-I
spend so much time with the neighbor's Collie that
everyone considers me his surrogate owner. I have
taught him many tricks, some so subtly
signaled that gullible onlookers believe the dog
has magical powers. Frustrated that I don't
own a dog, I have trained Brandy to jump the weird
assortments of chairs, broomsticks and lawn furniture
that I drag from the garage and
arrange in some semblance of an Olympic
show-jumping course. He is an athletic dog, and
willing to please me in anything I ask of him. One
afternoon, after he has sailed clear over my head on
command, I cockily inform kids from the neighborhood
that this dog could probably jump anything-even my
Bother's Buick station wagon. When they scoff at
my boast, I point to the car and tell Brandy
to jump. He flies joyfully through the air, his
sable-and-white fur flowing, and then he lands hard on
the car's hood. As he scrambles for some purchase
on the slick metal, he spins slightly
toward me, and I see his eyes, surprised and
afraid, silently questioning me. I am sick with the knowledge
that I have betrayed a trust.
Becoming truly humane in my relationships with
animals has been a slow and painful evolution that
required me to look carefully at the darker
corners of my soul. Unlike the external
evolutionary pressures on a bird to grow
extraordinary feathers in order to attract a
mate, the selective pressure on the soul comes
only from within. You can hear this force at work if you
listen closely. It may be what the psalmist
meant when he wrote of "the small still voice
inside you." But it can also be quite easily ignored.
I was twenty-one years old with a whopping three
years of experience as an animal professional
already under my belt when I acquired Bear, my first
German Shepherd. Though my enthusiasm for training
animals far outran my skill, Bear managed
to figure out what I meant. In our daily life,
he was a wonderful companion. Whether walking through
dense, hectic crowds at a concert in Central
Park or exploring nearby woods with me, I had
but only to say a word or give a hand signal
to get a quick, happy response from Bear. He was
as comfortable lying quietly in a department store
dressing room as waiting outside the local post
office. He was a very good dog.
The problems began when I decided that we should enter
obedience competitions. It seemed a simple matter
to meet the requirements; after all, he'd
handled much more challenging situations in real life.
Ever the perfectionist, I became unpleasantly
focused on the importance of precision in performance,
worried about the points that might be deducted if his
response was a hair slow or his sit a wee bit
crooked. I began to nag at him, bemoaning his
stubborn refusal to practice the same thing over and
over again. At times, during practice of heeling
off leash, Bear would veer away from me to lie on the
porch ignoring my pleas, impervious to my demands.
I grew frustrated with his lack of desire for
retrieving the official wooden dumbbell. How
could this be the same dog who would fetch sticks or
balls until my arm grew weary? This was the dog
who would voluntarily retrieve turtles, but my
commands to fetch a simple wooden dumbbell were met
with reluctance or even downright refusal.
Had anyone asked, I would have confidently insisted that
Bear and I had a wonderful relationship. But there was a difference
between our relationship during training and what we had when
he lay at my feet watching the sunset or
happily galloped along next to my pony. At
a level I could not yet define, training
served to push us away from each other. Somehow, it
weakened our relationship; we were out of synch,
frustrated and even downright unhappy at times. There
were times when I decidedly did not like
Bear-specifically when he refused to do what I
wanted-though I never stopped loving him. I know there
were also many times when Bear did not like me very much, and for
good reason: Our communication became a one-way
street that went my way or no way. This bothered
me a great deal-but not enough to let go of my goals and
pay attention to what my dog was telling me.
Sure that technical knowledge was the key to what I felt
was missing, I devoured books on training and
behavior, attended seminars, read more, watched other
trainers at work. Along the way I acquired new
training skills and a deeper understanding of dogs. This knowledge
was useful; in learning a more structured,
analytical approach to unraveling the mysteries of
behavior and training, I became a better trainer.
As the Royal Air Force motto says, "Every
handler gets the dog he deserves." And through
diligent effort, an endless desire to know more and a
passion for becoming an ever-better trainer, I began
to deserve and thus received more of Bear's willing
cooperation. Proud of my mastery of both
jargon and technique, I did not realize that much of
what I had learned had clouded the clarity of my
connection with animals. Though increasingly technically
proficient, I had lost (or more accurately,
misplaced) something I could not quite define, something that
had existed before the adult me knew more, knew
better. Unable to articulate just what was lost, I
was still uneasy enough to need to account for this uncomfortable
feeling. In the end, the only explanation I could
offer myself was that it was not so much a matter of something
missing as changed. My previous experiences had
been due to a childish view of dogs and training, and
now, I assured myself, I had a more mature,
adult perspective of the matter, which included
sometimes unpleasant but necessary realities. Earnestly
trying to follow the example of the trainers I
admired, I turned my focus to an
intellectual mastery of my chosen profession-and
away from my heart.
In time, people began to seek me out for help with their
dogs, and a dog training school was born. In
retrospect, I shudder when I look back,
well aware that though I had proclaimed myself a
trainer (and had made serious efforts
to educate myself in a number of ways), I was really
little more than living proof that a person with a little knowledge can be
of some help to those with even less. Often quite uneasy
with many of the popular training techniques I read about
and saw used by other trainers, yet not totally
satisfied with the results I helped people achieve,
I kept searching for more-more kindness, more harmony, more
joy between dog and human. Always nagging at the back
of my mind was an awareness of the gap between training and
how I lived day to day with all my animals. I
wanted a way to bridge that gap so that there was no
sharp distinction between real life and a training session.
I needed to find a way to the point where moving between
daily life and formal training was only a shift in
my focus, not in the relationship between me and the
animal.