I'm Listening With a Broken Ear

by Vicky Kaseorg

  Truthfully, with Honeybun's dog wariness and door charging aggression, I am not at all sure we are doing the right thing. The rally class takes us one step closer to Asherel's dream of agility contests, but are we skipping too many steps to get there? True, she has about a month to whip Honeybun into shape for the rally class, but is that enough time to overcome the many issues of aggression?

  Her jumping program on the backyard homemade course assumes a greater intensity. Several times a day Asherel takes Honeybun over the jumps, raising them so that Honeybun is sailing over two foot jumps with ease. Asherel improves the log stump “pause table” by switching to an old plastic kiddy set table she has. Honeybun hops onto the rickety table wagging her tail, and Asherel tells her to sit. Next, she goes up and down the "A frame", the plastic chair Asherel has turned upside down.

  Meanwhile, lazy dog Lucky watches from the top step of the deck. He is lying flat out in the sun, but when he hears Asherel praising Honeybun, he shifts his head and opens one eye. There is an ever so slight flicker of interest before he crashes his head back down and resumes sunning himself. But it seems that he is pondering the state of affairs. While being lazy has distinct perks, that demon dog is getting goodies for jumping those jumps.

  "Your turn!" cries Asherel, putting the leash on him.

  Inexplicably, he races at the jumps, sailing over them. He clears all but one.

  Asherel comes inside with the happy, scruffy Lucky, both ushering in a whoosh of fresh air and sunshine. Lucky glances at me, winking. Is Honeybun sparking latent enthusiasm in our somnolent dog?

  Now with stitches out, and dogs recovered, it is finally time for our vacation, the family reunion. We know the dogs will be in competent hands boarded with our doggy expert and her pack of twenty free roaming dogs, goats, cats, cows, deer, one legged duck, (and I believe a partridge in a pear tree.) I do not feel the usual angst I feel when dropping our dog to be boarded somewhere.

  We are doing well, better than expected with Honeybun, but I am exhausted, never able to relax, constantly on the alert for any hint of aggression. Growls are of course easily interpreted and quashed, but the more subtle forms of canine aggression and dominance are harder to spot. Like Honeybun’s riveting, frightening gaze. Is it aggression, as I suspect, or is it “herding instinct” as Malta claims? Honeybun has large eyes on a small head, and she rarely blinks. She stares with an unnerving stillness and is very aware of movement. If Lucky moves nearby, she jerks her head around, points her ears up as best she can with the funny broken one, and bores her eyes into him. I do not quite trust Malta’s assessment that Honeybun is a herding dog, bred to respond to movement with a stare-down designed to paralyze a herd into submission. Malta does not believe "the look" is aggression. However, every act of minor aggression like growling is always preceded by "the look." So I reprimand "the look" if it goes on more than a few seconds. Peace has been maintained, but at a cost. I am badly in need of a few days away from the dogs.

  I have no fear for their well being in Malta's care, nor for Malta's well being. She is an animal lover, but when it comes to her rights vs. animal rights, she wins.

  “Until the dog is paying the rent and cleaning the toilet, he is not in charge,” she retorts.

  If Malta walks in the room in a bad mood, the dogs scatter and run into their crates and bury their heads. I have seen Malta interact with our dogs and she can exude love and kindness, but DO NOT cross her. Malta is alpha dog personified.

  When we travel with the two dogs in the car, we always place one in the far back, where he is unable to jump over the back seat. The other one we belt in the middle seat. The dogs cannot reach each other, thus there is no way aggression can ever lead to blood and gore or inadvertent tonsillectomies. But when Malta comes to pick them up to take them to doggy rehab, she opens the door of her truck, and steers them towards the little cramped seat behind the front seats. They have never been that close together except when attempting to spill each others' guts out. She tells them to "load up". They are squished just close enough to reach each other’s jugular. Lucky hops in first, and looks a little worried as Honeybun pounces in, shoving and jostling him a bit so they both fit. They sit looking at us. Lucky’s look could not have been more eloquent. “Do you think this is wise? Have you lost your mind?”

  Asherel and I glance at each other and gulp. Lucky and Honeybun glance at each other, glance at Herr Malta, and cower. I don't know what kind of scent Malta gives off, but it is one that dogs understand and heed. They sit in their little back seat like two choir children, paws neatly to themselves. It is an hour and half drive to Malta's farm. I wonder if the truce will last. We watch them drive away, both dogs looking straight ahead as they head to doggy therapy. Before they go, I ask Malta to email me if she could while we are gone, and let me know how the dogs are doing and am excited to receive an email from her a few days later.

  "Nothing much to report," she writes, "Pretty boring actually. They just eat and sleep and go out. I will send pictures but not much excitement."

  When they return, they both have bright eyed, happy expressions, and look shockingly normal. They are also amazingly fluffy. Malta has bathed them to nearly unrecognizable softness and sweet smellingness. We have not bathed Honeybun ever, as we really didn't want to impose any extra stress on her yet. We bathe Lucky rarely since his hair is so thick and long he takes forever to dry and his wet dog smell is strong enough to remain in the air for weeks. Visitors to our home have enough to bear without wet dog smell accosting them. I have never seen Lucky as fluffy as he was after his bath at Malta's.

  She tells us the week has been largely dull. No fights, and no aggression, except towards cats. I had not known cats would be loose and available for consumption as well. Lucky despises cats. Malta tells me the cats are excellent therapists for dogs who hate cats. Neither of her cats fears dogs and most dogs learn very quickly these cats are not worth messing with. Lucky did indeed go after a cat, once. As a result, he got the "dreaded roll," a special alpha wolf maneuver that Malta employs to secure a dog's attention such that they fear they will die. She doesn't hurt them, she assures me, but they are quite sure that they are seconds from annihilation. I remember Cesar Milan writing about the roll he uses to make an aggressive dog submit. It does not look like something an untrained professional could pull off and retain all their limbs.

  In the "dreaded roll", she single-handedly manages to trip the dog, hold its head to the ground, and grip its throat with a hand mimicking a claw. She holds the victim down until its eyes stop rolling and it submits. This is even harder than it sounds. She claims she usually only has to roll a dog once, and then issue solved. Lucky never went after the cat again.

  I wonder if the “Dreaded Roll” works on children. And husbands.

  Laughing, she recounts Honeybun behaved well with all the farm creatures, and with all the volunteer victims that entered her home except for one that even Malta wants to bite. Other than that, she saw no evidence of aggression. She found them to be perfectly normal, happy, well- adjusted dogs. She admits Lucky was a grump at times with other dogs, but we know about his grumpy nature. One puppy apparently kept annoying Lucky and she finally had to separate them. Of course, the unspoken conclusion is the dogs are normal except when I am in control. I squelch this defeatist thought, but it lurks with a persistent tickle. I would hardly have described them as normal. Why am I struggling so much? What am I doing wrong? While glad they were good for Malta, I am pounding myself for my ineptitude. If I am the problem, how will it be solved? I am doing my best…..aren’t I?

  With her encouraging pronouncements, Malta drives away, and we are left with our clean, happy dogs, hoping the peace of normal dog ownership now awaits us. However, it is not to be. Every time the doorbell rings or someone walks by, the dogs still become lunatics, Honeybun more so than Lucky. She charges the door when my friends enter, her back bristling, throat snarling. When my braver friends hold out their hands, she licks them, but
the initial greeting is hardly good etiquette.

  Many friends have taken to ringing the doorbell and then backing off twenty feet, peering warily around a tree. I convince my good friend Andi to be a guinea pig, having her march into our house after Honeybun is muzzled. Honeybun charges at Andi, jumping on her and growling.... even though she has appeared to like Andi in prior meetings. The muzzle falls off in her frenzy and she lunges at Andi. I grab her in time to prevent damage to Andi and our friendship. For the first time in my many prior attempts, I successfully employ the "dreaded roll", holding her down for several minutes. When she is allowed to stand up, and leashed, she greets Andi politely. However, there is no doubt she would've bitten Andi, had I not grabbed her when the muzzle slipped off. Having grown cocky with our prior success, I find this set back even more disheartening than the ones before it. Aggression towards dogs is one thing, but to threaten people clearly diminishes our chances of winning Neighbor of the Year Award. I don’t mind if she does this to solicitors at the door, but she cannot do it to my dwindling supply of buddies. And it is puzzling, this initial response of fearful attack followed by humbled gentleness.

  The phone rings and I grab it, knowing with the garbled butchering of my last name that it is a telemarketer.

  “No,” I screech, “Take me off your list!!!”

  “Mrs. Kaseorg? This is just the Financial Aid dept notifying you that all your son’s loans are approved….” I hang my head and apologize for biting their heads off. Honeybun blinks at me.

  Disconsolately, I email Malta. Remembering the advice of the obedience class trainer, I ask if pairing the strangers with treats is a better tactic than using the whip and the roll. After all, the other trainer had suggested just that. Is Honeybun indeed learning strangers only mean bad things, loud whips, dreaded rolls, angry owners....?

  Malta is having a bad day. She has just rescued a pit bull used as a fighter dog. It is wounded in body and spirit, and she is furious at humanity and their stupidity with dogs. This is a dog scheduled to be euthanized, and someone called Malta in a last ditch effort to save the dog. She storms in her house with the scarred and traumatized dog in tow and her pack scatters. It is not the day to email Malta whining.

  She bullets back an email, “If treats would've solved the aggression, why has it not worked when you tried it before? Does the trainer who suggested you use treats have a pack of twenty rescued dogs living in her house loose under near perfect control? Does she have twenty years of dealing exclusively with aggression issues? Treats work with a normal dog. Treats don't work with a dog that has had to scrap for its life and food for a year or so. You are too nice and too worried. Bring Honeybun to me, and I will keep her, and trade you one of my nice dogs whose worst trait is licking you to death. Call me tomorrow. I have a wounded, hurting, aggressive dog I need to start healing right now.”

  I slump, stunned at the computer. First of all, I cannot recall ever being called "too nice" before....rarely even "nice". Worried, yes. Secondly, trading up for a trophy dog sounds like a good deal. This will solve everything! Lucky can have a real playmate that he isn't afraid of. We will not have to cringe whenever strangers or even friends are coming to the door. We will not have to live on high alert anymore.

  I joyfully begin to type my response realizing salvation has been offered. Who are my choices? Can they visit with Lucky first to see how they get along? Do you have a dog that will be good at Agility? Inexplicably, I feel a growing unease as I picture the wonderful dog that will soon replace the trouble maker at my feet. Honeybun diffidently looks up at me, and lowers her head, hoping I might pet her. This is new. She didn’t use to want me to touch her, but now she occasionally nuzzles my hand, and shyly asks me to stroke her silky ears. I hate the treacherous thoughts that strangle my escape.

  It is this little dog we had wrested from the jaws of death. This dog came to us flea bitten, tick encrusted, weak, dehydrated, emaciated, and dying, teats still dripping from puppies newly born and gone. Through our care and love, she is now sleek and soft and smooth with a glorious rich golden coat, her ribs no longer visible, her attitude towards us and even Lucky now sweet and submissive, following us peacefully wherever we go and lying at our feet, demanding nothing more than our presence. However misguided, she is charging the door because she loves us and wants to protect us. How can I throw her out now? And what will this little dog think, who has been so misused, and finally come to trust us, if we abandon her to a new home? Whatever her faults, it is clear she now considers us her "pack". I am not brave, and hate stress. Patience is not my virtue and I don’t like goals that take too long to reach. These are all clearly character requirements for redeeming troubled dogs. However, sadly, I love this dog, and it is this dog sent to almost die in front of me.

  No, I write instead to Malta, we don't want a normal dog. We want this dog. Tell me what I need to do, and I will do it. Oh how the “delete” button tempts me, but instead, gritting my teeth, I tap “send”.

  Malta writes back the next day, in a better mood. I am to begin the "dreaded roll" therapy. Every time strangers walk by and Honeybun barks, roll her. Every time she growls at a dog, roll her. Every act that is even a hint of aggression, roll her.

  I reread my Cesar Milan books with pictures of the roll and the "wolf claw grip" that accompanies it. Fortunately, we begin the rolling therapy on a day when I teach my homeschool art classes. Many opportunities will be marching into our rehab center. Ten students come in one by one. Honeybun barks and lunges each time a new student enters. She is tied where she can’t quite reach them, but each time she tries, she gets rolled- ten times in ten minutes. I don't seem to be making a huge impression on her.

  “Look Mom,” says Asherel, “She is smiling.”

  Panting for breath with all this exertion, I gape at Asherel and then Honeybun. I don’t see a smile. I see wasted effort, ambiguous progress, broken dreams and disrupted plans.

  After the tenth student and tenth roll, she puffs out her cheeks with a final bark, and then she curls up to sleep. She is blissfully quiet till the end of class. As the students rise to leave, she stands and wags her tail. The braver students each throw her a biscuit to reward her not biting them, and the suicidal ones who know dogs, pet her as I hold on to her collar. She licks them and wags her tail.

  This is progress and I am ecstatic, but Malta warns me this is not a problem solved in a day. It will take months and hard work- be consistent and firm and do not let up. But Honeybun will be cured she assures me. Though weary of all the work involved with this dog, I have invested so much in her by now that I have to see it to the finish. Lucky watches all the rolling with a smirk under his terrier beard, but when we finish, he goes to her and licks her ear, the broken one. She touches noses with him.

  I buy a "coupler" leash for the two dogs, so both can be walked with just one leash. The coupler connects them with about two feet of slack between them, and then snaps onto a single leash. When I first start using it, they are newly arrived at their peace treaty, and détente could give way to all out war at any moment. I carry the whip with me whenever I walk anywhere with them. At first, they tangle in the coupler, and glare at each other. I wave the whip and sort out legs from leash, and then we walk a few more steps before some paw ends up in someone else's ear. Amazingly, neither dog ever seems overly upset with the tangle of tail and limb. They stand quietly while I weave the leash out of whatever knot they have managed to tie, and then trot on. As we all march forward, our ears and eyes on the road before us, eager to see what lies beyond the next hill, we are remarkably in sync. Our legs move in tandem; our heads turn to the same sound as though choreographed. The tantalizing smells overcome their fledgling obedience as they careen in unison towards them. With a little time, Lucky settles into the right position, next to me, and Honeybun takes the outer edge of the coupler. Our walks become purposeful and peaceful.

  When we pass people, Lucky wildly wags his tail, and begs me to let them pet him. Honey
bun stiffens, her tail jutting ramrod straight in warning, ears back. When we pass dogs, Honeybun cowers warily, and Lucky growls and lunges in his cockeyed manner of asking them to play. The best way to keep control is without exception, every single time we pass dogs or people; make the dogs sit. They invariably remain calm and controlled. Neighbors begin to talk about that lady with the whip that makes her dogs sit when they pass by. Other people with wild lunging dogs begin to demand their dogs sit too. Sometimes it is a contest to see who will have their dog sit FIRST upon seeing me in the distance. Then it is a stalemate, and someone has to pass the other dog or we will all sit there until the stars twinkle on. I appear to have sparked a movement, a movement of stillness in the neighborhood. Dogs everywhere are calmer, more controlled. Harried people are pausing with slack leashes and sitting dogs, watching the fireflies.