If there is one thing I have recently learned is that in a blink of an instant all we know to be true, and real, and everlasting, can go up in smoke.  Before we ever see it coming, our entire lives become different.   My aunt, a mother of ten children, lost her home and her husband to a catastrophic house fire. My father’s two cousins drowned in a lake, with their boyfriends. Dear Readers,  you know the list goes on and on because you have all lived through or been touched by something cataclysmic.  Mr. Franklin, who I would love just for being a Francophile,  hit it right on the head when he said,  “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes. ”

We live our lives like they will always be the same. We have our rituals, our routines, our beliefs; self limiting and other wise.   We go on like tomorrow we be the same as today and our whole lives are built on this structure. Then; boom.  Something happens.  Our whole lives change.  We can’t help but cling to all those old ways because they have been built into our muscle memory and we didn’t even know it.  Sometimes it takes a dog or two to show us where we are stuck, and nudge us a little toward change.

Why I talk about this, of course, is because huge change came knocking at my door.   I didn’t invite it, I didn’t see it coming, and at first, I didn’t want it.  The will of the universe however, doesn’t ask to come in, it just barges in and insists that you treat it like an honored quest.  My 23 year marriage and family life and all I thought I knew just one day ended.  Faster than it took you to read this sentence.

That’s when I started having dog problems.

Anyone that knows me knows that my dog Athos is perfect. He is the icon of absolute canine perfection. Athos loves people, he’s  great with other dogs, “obedient”, sweet, easy to live with.  I admit, I’m a show off and I love showing off my perfect dog.  All of a sudden though, things started to not be not so perfect.

Athos started to eat things off the counter.  Loafs of bread; with the bag. Ears of corn; with the husk.  Homemade cookies in steel tins (without the tin).  Bananas, apples, carrots, anything.  I had to remember to put every food item away because if I didn’t, he would eat it no matter what.   I found this extremely annoying and a bit of a problem with my whole story of “Athos as perfect”.  I went to square one.  What ever emotions we are in denial of, our dogs will pick up on and bring into physical reality in forms known to us as problem behavior. I figured it was because I wasn’t eating that he all of a sudden had to.  I said to myself, I am hungry, so he is hungry, and because I won’t eat due to trauma, he’s doing it for me. I expected the behavior to stop. It didn’t.  I knew I hadn’t solved it.

Athos has forever been content to stay in a kennel in our back yard if we need to go out, it’s too hot in the house, or whatever need arises. He sits contentedly on his dog house, in total flow with the world, never barking, or working to get out. Imagine my surprise then, when I go to get him from the kennel and he’s not there. The door is still locked, but there is a small hole in the bottom of the chain link and his collars are stuck to the side. You can see that he worked pretty hard at it and moved his head in and out of it several times before he finally “escaped”.  Panic ensued.   Where was my perfect dog? He had never done that.  He has never left the yard and now, he is nowhere.  We call and call and cry and imagine the worst until he comes bulleting up the road.  I am, in a word, flummoxed.

I start keeping him in his crate, but he busts it up and gets out of that too. I leave him in the mud room where he chews through a plastic trash can to get at the cat food and eats it all.  He starts soiling in the house.  In four words, I am loosing it!

All the while Hero was living at Kevin’s house because she easily got out of her puppy yard, which wasn’t built properly.   Kevin saved me when he came over with his son and son in law and built me a brand new secure one.  Two days after peaceful re-entry into the family, and Hero discovers not how to get out of her yard, but how to get into the porch.  This is what she accomplished in ten minutes. Handmade Amish pillow;  shredded. Antique spinning wheel; chewed into pieces.  Front of sweater I was knitting for my son; eaten. Garbage; strewn.  Handmade garbage basket; dismantled.  When I discovered her in her mess making orgy, I didn’t feel mad. I just felt like “What am I not getting?”.  I called a friend to come over and install a door knob, which solved the getting in problem.   I knew, if I didn’t get what was going on inside me, all these problems would continue.

It wasn’t Kevin this time, but his wife Agi that helped me to see what was going on.  Athos’ counter grazing isn’t about hunger, it’s about my food rules. I don’t eat potatoes. I don’t eat sugar. I don’t eat dairy. I don’t eat gluten. I don’t eat nuts. I don’t eat…………you name it. So many restrictions! Athos breaking out of his kennel isn’t about his need to run away; it’s about my need to break out of my own rules. “I don’t do this, I don’t do that, I always do this.” Agi pointed out, even Natural Dog Training comes with it’s list of restrictions. The puppy doesn’t come in the house. Don’t sweet talk the puppy.  Just do nothing.

I realized that I have so many, many rules and restrictions I have put on myself simply to survive.  Now that my life has changed, I must too. I must break out of the kennel of my mind if I am to thrive in the world. I must let go of old rules that no longer serve me. It’s the new me. I can’t stay stuck.  My dogs won’t let me!! The are telling me; “Break out!”.

Ben Franklin also said, “All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move“, so here is my new years resolution; to move out of those old rules.  The rules that are like that antique spinning wheel, quaint, but outdated.  I will break some rules that once kept me safe, but now no longer serve me.   It’s been a whole week and not one weird thing has been eaten, no one has broken in or out, and all seems well.  I’m breaking an old rule by not knowing for sure, I’ll just have to wait and see what they do.

Hero is now six months old and I am no longer the center of her universe.  She has discovered life beyond her puppy yard.  She is especially fond of cat poop.  It is her favorite delicacy. And who can blame her? It’s readily available and puts up no resistance to be taken into her mouth.  She is  also unabashedly courageous;  she will go where ever her nose leads her.

The popular model would tell me she has hit the adolescent faze;  she is rebelling, she is testing the boundaries.  But since she is not disobeying any commands for the sole reason I have never given her any, this just doesn’t make sense.  The only thing that does make sense is that as it stands, cat poop is just more attractive than me.  What can I say?

I think most dog owners are surprised when one day their dog all of a sudden prefers another dog, a car, a squirrel, to them.  It used to surprise me. It makes us mad; it touches our ego and it touches our heart. Wait a minute, I thought he/she loved me!

The reason this happens is because there is something much more profound than love that our dog needs from us.  Our dog needs to trust us.  Missing this; we miss everything.

If we scold our puppy for getting in the garbage, she doesn’t trust us. If we teach sit for the food bowl and hold back basic sustenance from her hungry belly, she doesn’t trust us. If we take him everywhere and put him in situations that saturate his being with fear, he doesn’t trust us. If we our honest with ourselves, we do these things because essentially; we don’t trust him.

So what to do? Back to Hero’s new culinary desire.  The first thing I do is going into puppy owning knowing that someday, should I do nothing, other things in the environment will begin to out weigh me as objects of desire.  (And  when I get mad that she is driven to the “place most frequented by cats” it tells me something important. ) When this begins to happen, I know the real work must begin.  Something bigger than having her love me,  because her love for me is like oxygen; it just is. I must earn her trust. That takes work.

I begin to carry food when ever we go for a walk.  She comes outside and boom! I zing her with some food.  I use Kevin’s pushing technique to deliver her breakfast as we move  past the “cat place”.   She pushes for food all the way into the woods. She pushes HARD.  She is learning that she can give me all her energy and not get in trouble.  Trust is beginning.

As she runs through the woods doing all things doggy; I watch her closely. If she leaves my orbit, I quickly hide behind a tree.  I sit patiently until she notices, comes to find me, and I zing her again with more food.

I take her on walks with my children and we play hide and seek through the woods.  One boy holds her as I run away and hide. He lets her loose and the game begins. She finds me and I whoop in joy! I give her more food to add to the joy. We do this back and forth for a good fifteen minutes.  This begins to be what a walk in the woods feels like; orbiting me, hunting for me, and with the pushing technique; expresses her deepest energy in my presence and giving it to me.

How many of us has seen our dog chase a squirrel, a deer, a turkey, or anything, and had the instant judgment that somehow that is bad? I know I did.  That is why our dogs don’t trust us.  They express their deepest desire; to hunt, and we say; bad.  When we do that, they don’t trust us, and love becomes irrelevant.

This whole situation is avoidable and rectifiable if we just begin to see the dog’s hunting drive as a powerful and awe inspiring  expression of the heart’s desire.  We can easily channel it to us where it becomes a powerful tool in forging a bond with our dog.  First we must get comfortable with it.  We must trust it.  It really is just desire.  Doesn’t it make us feel really good when we see someone with a lot of desire use it as drive and achieve something amazing?  Like Michael Phelps perhaps.  What would have happened to him if his mother had judged his drive? “My God Michael, what is wrong with you, all you want to do is swim?”  And who did the camera show after every single race he won? His mom. Because she trusted his desire, nurtured it,  and made all his dreams come true. Dog training should be just like that.  All dog training is;  trusting your dog’s desire and  making your dog’s wildest dream come true.

Trust outweighs love in my book a million to one.  Many people love me. How many can I trust? How many people can I expose my heart’s desire to and have them hold it safely, not judge it, and not take any of my power away? Not many.  It’s a hard road to trust and it’s much harder than love, but what else do I have to do? I will work hard to earn Hero’s trust and I will be worthy of hers. I hope this will give me the courage and ability to be trustworthy with those I love because I know;  dog training isn’t about dogs at all.

Hero has spent a lot of time lately playing madly at Kevin’s farm.  Her best buddy forever is Pablo;  a tiny white dog easily confused with an old cotton mop.  They go at it for hours and Pablo always looks relieved to finally be put in a crate and given a rest.

Hero has also spent a lot of time around other dogs.   The other day, Hero got too close to a female shepherd in heat;  she really got a whooping.

She hadn’t been around her big brother Athos in quite some time.  The history between them was that she bugged him relentlessly, and he avoided confrontation.   After Hero got her “whooping” , when she was with Athos, it was like I was watching two very different dogs.

Hero was “submissive”.  Her hackles were up, she was backing away.   Because of this, Athos was “aggressive”;  he was pushing in on her space and overwhelming her.  I had the “ah-ha” moment.  Hero wasn’t seeing Athos, she was seeing the female in heat.  She had carried that experience with her in her body; physical memory, and transferred it to the next dog she encountered.  She really was feeling and reliving the experience from the past and it was influencing her present emotional state.

When ever I see things with dogs, I always wonder what it means to me. As I stood watching this incredible display of physical memory, I remembered something very similar that had happened to me.

I had a dear friend many years ago who was truly one of the most amazing people I had ever known.  She was talented, intuitive, spontaneous, and all around lovely.  She had also endured years of trauma as a child at the hands of her father.  Throughout the relationship with her, strange things kept popping up.  She would fiercely defend her children against me for the oddest things.  She would be unable to see and respect personal boundaries.  She would twist compliments payed to her and see them as hurtful.  Slowly, I began to see that she cast me, a person who loved her dearly, in the role of the parent who so terribly hurt her.  In our interactions, because I was such a central, loving person to her, I became that parent and she reacted to me just as if I really was that parent.  Physical memory.  The emotional body. All making sense.

These musings bring up the one central core of Natural Dog Training that comes up time and time again.  Dogs are here in our lives for one reason;  to help us become more conscious.  Watching Hero reliving her past and bringing it into the present, the only place for me to go is inward.  What do I do that is a product of physical memory and not an authentic expression of the moment?  I can see it in others,  but how can I catch myself when my emotional body is being controlled by physical memory?  How do I heal that physical memory and move to a place of greater awareness?

The dogs are part of the answer. I can watch them and pay attention. I can place myself around people who aren’t afraid to tell me the truth about myself and I can be open to that truth.   I can be grateful for the gift of physical memory and my capacity to understand it.  I can just welcome it all;  the hurt, the joy, the love and the pain of being on planet earth.

Just do nothing

The other day I was sitting with Kevin and Agi at their beautiful farm house underneath a huge maple tree.  We were sipping coffee and chatting away.  Kevin was holding Hero on a leash and no one was paying her much mind.  Without a thought in the world, I got up to get something out of the house.

Hero lit up like a match hitting a pile of kerosene soaked rags.  As I walked away, she jumped up and barked like crazy.  She barked while I was in the house and never took her eyes off that front door.  When I came back, she settled right down and began chewing a stick again.

What’s amazing about this is that it was the first time I really understood the connection I have with this dog.  All I have ever done, ever, is open the crate door, put a food bowl down, and walk her in the woods.  No praise.  No intense petting, no whistling , no talking, no nothing.  I have just stood there and done nothing.  I have just been there.  That has been enough,more than enough, to create an unbreakable bond.

We all know dogs love us unconditionally.  Still, we all try to do things to make them love us.  We don’t need to.  All the things we do;  doggie day care, treat training, behavior modification, praise, punishment, lavish collars, they just get in the way of allowing a dog to freely express their unconditional love for us.

It’s the same with people, all we need to do is just be there, it’s always enough.

This clarity came to me the other day when a guest was in the back yard with my children.  He had left a travel mug on the ground and as I walked by with little Hero, after she had jumped on everyone a few times, she grabbed the lid and started chomping away.  My friend bent down to grab it from her and in my over tired brain this is what I saw.  As he bent down and started moving towards her to grab the lid, it was as if he had picked up a little bubble wand, dipped it in some soap, and started to blow a bubble around her little body.  With time, with numerous grabbing of her and things she chews upon, I could see how this bubble would strengthen and grow and some day be really hard to get through.  I could literally see how with “teaching her not to jump”, by pushing her away from my body, I would create a bubble around myself which would make her repulsed by me, instead of my goal of being a magnet to her.

I told my friend that if it was on the ground, it was free game, and he backed away, so of course no damage was done.   It was though, illuminating.  I want to be able to be in her physical space, I want her to be free to jump into mine.  This is how the bond of trust will grow.   There will be no trust if we are each in our own little bubble. Isn’t this what being in any relationship is about?

I need to be wake up a little more everyday and make sure nobody leaves anything on the ground that can’t be chewed.  (I have three boys. What do you think the chances of that are?)

Bubbles are pretty when they carry Glinda the Good Witch of the North to us, or on a sunny day when are children are playing carefree in the yard.  But they’re not good when they insulate us from our dogs, or maybe more importantly, from other people.

One thing my eldest child can not reconcile is the “purity” of his childhood compared to that of his younger siblings. He is incredulous that he saw his first PG13 movie at age 13.  He didn’t watch television;  we had puppet shows instead. He used beeswax crayons and played with wooden toys imported from Germany.  Nothing non-organic or of questionable nourishment ever passed his lips; the first sweet he ever had was a marshmallow at age 10.  All this diligent purity was tossed into the wind when he found himself the proud brother of twins.

I think the twins’ first food was pizza. They saw the Lord of the Rings Trilogy at age 6.  Their favorite toys were plastic Batman and Robin they got from the flea market.  “You’re feeding them that!!”, my eldest would yell.  “You’re letting them watch that!!!”, ” You’re letting them do that!!”.  “Why did you torture me!”

Staying pure in a world full of  opposition is a difficult thing. Especially when you have twins;  sleep deprivation, exhaustion, nursing two babies, carrying two babies and more sleep deprivation.  It reminds me of the part in the Odyssey where Odysseus is traveling past the Sirens; if he hears their voices he will follow their call.  He has his men tie him to the ship’s mast and tells them that no matter what he does, they are not to release him.  This is how Odysseus makes it past the Sirens and this is in part what all parents must do who are attempting to raise children in a way different from the popular culture. Where is this long winded preamble going? To raising a puppy of course.

With my first dog raised using Kevin’s methods, I was beyond pure. I was the picture of perfect execution.  With my second dog, Hero, I kind of did the same thing I did with my second and third children; I relaxed.  And boy did I get busted!

Kevin had both dogs for a week. When I picked them up I of course did not even acknowledge Athos, I was taught not to make a fuss over him.  But the puppy!! ” Oh puppy puppy snuggle bo bo oh how I love you smoochie puppy” were about the first words out of my mouth, all said in the Alvin the Chipmunk voice.  I even did this more than once.

We took the dogs into the woods for a walk.  First Kevin said “You know, she didn’t bite my legs even once.” (Meanwhile the kindergartner in my head is saying” OK Mr. Smarty Pants, Glad your boots aren’t ripped”) Then I do the Alvin the Chipmunk voice again. Kevin says ” You really shouldn’t do that, it’s frying her circuits.” Then I get the previous reference to the lack of biting. I say “Okay, I’ll try.” Silence. The heavy kind. Then I say “I’ll try really hard.”  The sound of silence. Alright, I won’t do it then! (Said while pouting) “Good”, he says because it’s all he has to say. I’ve slipped and starting doing something that serves me but hurts my puppy.  Gratefully, I’ve been tied back to the mast.

By the way, using magic marker instead of beeswax crayons doesn’t seem to have done any damage to my twins. Their diet is admittedly horrible, but the early film watching has turned them into film buffs. They are the only 12 year old I know who think it’s weird not to know who Franco Zeffirelli is.

Hero hasn’t bit my legs in 5 days.

The same thing can sometimes happen with dogs. It’s often really hard to connect what the dog is having a reaction to to the original experience. Dogs who don’t like men, dogs who bite the mailman, dogs who “hate” children, dogs with separation anxiety. Sometimes, try as I may, I can’t find the connection, but I know there’s one out there.

I was extremely perplexed one day while I was with Hero in the puppy yard and I asked my son, who was just inside the kitchen door, to get me a glass of water. He filled a glass, opened the door to hand it to me, and then closed the door behind him. Hero went nuts. She started barking, yipping, whining, and digging. Furiously.

What was that all about? Maybe it had nothing to do with the door, so I asked my husband to recreate the experience. Once again, the opening and closing of the door sent Hero into a frenzy. Okay, I thought, I’ve had this puppy a whole five days and I need to call Kevin. (Better than last time, I only had Athos 10 minutes before I put in the call.)

Once Kevin explained it to me, it started to make sense. The breeder had probably inadvertently created this imprint by taking the mother out of the kennel through a similar door or by some other action whereas the puppies felt a conflict in connection with that place. My puppy unconsciously “relived” that moment when my kitchen door opened. The good news is that Kevin suggested we feed her while someone walked in and out of the door, opening and closing it, over and over, though it only took one time for her to get over whatever she was feeling. Maybe this will also influence Hero to bark at the door, unlike some other dog I know who is suppose to be so intimidating but won’t bark and just wants everyone to pet him! (Athos is just too nice.)

My one mistake with Athos was that I had his crate in the mud room where the cats would walk back and forth; big, fluffy Maine Coon cats, the ones with the really big tails sticking up. Because of this, Athos developed a real magnetic charge for those cats. It took a lot of work to channel all his attraction to the cats into me. Now he peacefully coexists with them, fluffy tails and all.

So I guess that even though I’m doing everything I can to make Hero’s puppy hood as stress free as possible, no one can know or predict every little thing that might create an unwanted imprint. So what I’ve taught myself to look out for is anything that causes her to make any kind of noise; growling, barking, yipping. If I hear a sound, I fix the problem. If I see the puppy scared, overwhelmed, or holding back, I stop what’s going on. If I see conflict of any sort, I get her to focus on something positive. Assuredly, there will be something. Some weird, seemingly inconsequential thing will happen and cause Hero to react in some strange and unpredictable way, and the chances are I will have no idea why it’s happening.

And that’s when I’ll pick up the phone.