Finally Home-Lessons on Life from a Free-Spirited Dog (12 page)

He walked over, introduced himself
,
and
simply said “M
ay I?”
before grabbing hold of the
leash. He
whispered
a few words to Buddy
,
and
we could
have sworn that Buddy was
an award-winning show dog,
and that he and our neighbor were long-lost pals.

Our
neighbor even wondered if he had met this dog before.
Buddy
strolled
calmly, right
by
his
side, and
did not pull one bit.
It was amazing.
We were in disbelief
as we
had been
struggling
for months to get this dog to listen, and it took our neighbor
all of
five minutes
.

“
So, h
ow did you do that?”
In the months that we had
owned
Buddy, we ha
d
never been able to keep him five feet in front of us,
much
less by our side.
To make us feel a little bit better, it turned out our neighbor was a dog trainer.
He
demonstrated once again, explained
what he
’d done,
and then handed
me the leash
.
I finally felt confiden
t that I could
control this dog.
It was all so simple
.

As fast as that thought
had
entered my mind was as fast as that thought subsided.
Somehow, I don’t think I
appeared
quite as graceful.
As
I stood up straight,
I
grabbed the leash and began my walk with Buddy.
I tried mirroring my neighbor’s walking technique, but
Buddy pulled me without any effort.

He pulled so much that within one minute my sneaker flew off of one foot
,
and I was chasing him down the road with one sneaker on and one sneaker off.
I had both hands on the leash, trying to gain some type of dignity and composure
. I’m sure it was quite a comedy act for anyone watching.

I did not find it so funny, as m
y face was blushing with embarrassment and my hands were raw from the crazy dog pulling me.
I would not dare show my hands. I felt like a complete failure and knew that Buddy was just laughing in the only way
that
dogs could.

While I mumbled curses under my breath, Michael and our neighbor kind of chuckled.
Our new friend proceeded to talk us out of the good old choker collar
and
turn
ed
us on to the harness instead
. This
was like a skit from a magic show to put on, but
it yielded great
result
s
.
I think Buddy knew how to put th
e
thing on better than we did.

To our pleasant surprise,
Buddy pulled
much
less.
We learned to
hold the leash midway to keep him closer, loosening the leash when he was being good.
We tried to make him focus on us instead of us focusing on him.

The leash actually served as an extension of my arm, so if I was tense, the dog would sense that by the tension of my grip on the leash. Ideally, according to my neighbor, we wanted to be able to be in command of the dog while there is still plenty of slack in the leash.

Since our neighbor was a trainer, he was very
resourceful and recommended some helpful strategies
.
We told him about our desperate attempts to be in command of Buddy.
He
explained that we should
not mix two commands, such as “Sit down!”
“
Sit
”
means sit
,
and
“
down
”
means lie down.
When
we
mix
ed
the two, the dog
would get
confused as if to say
,
“What is it that you want?”

We were also
advised
to change
the tone of
our v
oice and speak clearly when we we
re
issuing
a command, so it would get Buddy’s attention and he w
ould
know
that what we were saying was important
.
Well, with this, our voice somehow sounded like the beginning of the Black Sabbath song “Ironman.”
All that did was send Michael and me into a fit of hysterical laughter while Buddy cocked his head at us as if to say
,
“
I
diots
,
” and kept on doing his thing.

We learned
that yelling at any dog
wa
s not going to
yield the
desired results
.
For a dog to obey their master
they need
ed
to trust that the master
wa
s sane enough to give the
precise
commands.
No amount of yelling
wa
s going to portray that type of
leadership
.
All it
did was
depict instability
.
It
may
have
cause
d
them to fear
their owner
, but they w
ould
not recognize you as the Alpha dog.

If a dog
wa
s going to listen, they w
ould
obey a quiet voice.
No yelling or screaming was necessary.
It was all starting to make sense.

We were lucky in one particular aspect, as d
espite all of his issues, Buddy
demonstrated quite
impressive etiquette.
During our walk
s he never stopped
to relieve himself on someone’s
property
or in the middle of the street.
He
always waited
until we were near a vacant area to take care of business.

In addition, as
bad as he was during these early years, he
managed to practice
great table manners.
He would lie down without crying, begging
,
or jumping while we
were eating
our meal. We decided to give him table scraps if and only if he was good. It was the one thing that worked out to our favor.
Nine
times out of ten, he learned to behave
at dinner
knowing he would soon be rewarded with
a treat.
Brandi caught onto to this
,
too.
They never made a peep.
Even at
their
food bowl, we trained them to both sit and wait until we
gave the command of
“
ok
ay
.
”
Then they could eat.

Buddy
was
always the little gentleman at dinnertime
; he actually waited until Brandi had food in her
dish
before he would
begin his meal
. We never even had to tell him to “wait.”
He just did it on his own.

If
both of them
were
exceptionally
good, not only would they get table scraps but they would also get
rewarded with
one of their favorite treats.
For Buddy, it
wa
s one of the following:
carrots, peanut butter, Chinese fortune cook
ies, or cheese. For Brandi, it wa
s mostly bananas or
a small taste of
coffee.
Although coffee is not good for dogs, we always let her
sip
a
very small
drop or two.
She would stare us down if we did not
.

While things were definitely not eas
y
by any means, we were starting to understand what strategies worked or w
hat tactics merely wasted time. His bad habits were slowly disappearing.