July, 2009

The Oxford English dictionary defines nuclear as relating to the nucleus; the central and most important part of an object. Engineer is to skillfully arrange for (something) to happen. Working with Natural Dog Training is to be a Nuclear Engineer. One is always in touch with the central core of a dog; it’s energy. One is always conscious of how one’s behavior; body movement, voice, manipulation of a prey object is effecting the inside of the dog.
Sometimes this idea can seem esoteric; talk of energy can seem elusive. Most of the time I struggle with it myself. Thank goodness for ah-ha moments; those little dark light bulbs that once and a while flash on.
I had a wonderful light bulb moment the other day with Hero; the one that lead me to decide I am a Nuclear Engineer. Usually I walk her in the woods. The woods has sticks, leaves, mushrooms, running water; a whole myriad of things to absorb her energy. I do mean literally absorbing her energy by being bitten by her. Hero shakes, rattles and rolls herself through the woods. Anyone in the Northeast knows how rainy it’s been, so the first beautiful sunny day I decided to take Hero into the big open field to get some sun. Big mistake. Big nuclear energy mistake. Here’s what happened.
We walk into the field and all is good. Hero runs through the tall grass and bites some goldenrod. She finds an old fire pit and chews some coals. After catching some rays, I head back home. I’m in the middle of the field and guess what? No sticks. No mushrooms. No fire pit. Just me and my legs. My legs: there the only thing around that are; a)moving and b)crunch able. Uh-oh. The first words that come into my mind are “I’m dead”. I’m unprepared. I have nothing to give her to bite. Hero starts in to her “shake, rattle and roll,” bit. On my legs. A few things are going on inside my head but I see it; I see that she is a bundle of energy literally. There is no intention behind her biting frenzy; she’s not trying to show dominance, she’s not misbehaving , she’s not learning something bad. She is simply expressing her deepest energy; bite, bite, bite. She’s really going at it and I have no idea how to get out of it. Then I realize there is a God after all; I’ve left a gardening glove in my back pocket. The thoughts go through my head very fast; this glove was $7, is it worth $7 to get out of this? No question. I pull out the gardening glove; (the kind with the rubber coating) and hand it to Hero. Oh ecstasy! A rubber coated glove that she can sink her teeth into. She gets practically the whole glove into her mouth, she’s chewing it and running and I can see the whole body sensual pleasure she is feeling. I can see the glove literally absorb the energy radiating out of her center into her mouth.
Standing there in that field while Hero expressed her prey instinct visa vi my legs was a real eye opener. She was like a little hurricane, a tiny nuclear explosion; it was like watching a small sun being born. I had to engineer that energy, I needed to find a place for it to go. Thank God for gardening gloves that get left in pockets!

Enjoy!

Do you have any weird reaction to something that you can’t explain? For me, it’s goatees. I don’t care if you are George Clooney, Brat Pitt, or Johnny Depp, get that goatee away from me! They freak me out! Now something must have happened to me as a child, but I can’t remember. So what would Freud say? (He didn’t have a goatee did he? Now that would really be weird.)

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.