DogTown

by Stefan Bechtel

  After all, Ann pointed out, Meryl’s body was so powerfully packed with muscle that, as with any human athlete, it cried out to be exercised in order to be healthy and to feel good. Because of Meryl’s natural athleticism and intelligence, and the evident joy she derives from it all, Ann clearly takes enormous joy in her progress. “I have a permanent smile on my face when I’m not here because Meryl is having so much fun with it. I’m blessed to work with a dog that loves it this much. She’s looking at me like, What’s the next thing we can do? She’s enjoying life. It makes me happy to see her happy.”

  LOOKING AHEAD

  Owing to the federal court order, it’s quite possible that Meryl will spend the rest of her life at Dogtown. But a dog could do worse. “We’ll always give her a soft bed and a place to stay and great food and attention and love, and companionship,” Ann said. “So it’s not a home, exactly, but it would be the best home for her if this is where she needs to be. We’re committed to her for life.”

  Meryl has made a great deal of progress in the 18 months since she was admitted to Dogtown, Ann said. When she first came in, she was fearful, stressed, and anxious; it took two or three days to overcome her fear of a new person. Now, after having been introduced to more than 70 staff members and volunteers, it generally takes under a minute before she’s wagging her tail and asking for more.

  Meryl has a lot to overcome: the fear-based public bias against pit bulls as a breed, and her background as a Vick dog. But Meryl has come really far. She was, in fact, the first of the “Vicktory Dogs” to be moved into a permanent area with a doggie roommate. She spends time with a group of dogs and up to five people in Ann’s office. Ann still adores her and spends a lot of time with her—she trusts Ann so implicitly that Ann can do anything to her, grabbing her collar or touching her feet or even (the thing Meryl seems to fear most, for some reason) reaching over the top of her head.

  Meryl will probably always need to build a relationship with someone before the person can touch her, but her circle of human friends has grown. And though she still wears a red collar, meaning that only staff members can handle her, she’ll often greet a new staffer by licking his or her hand. Sometimes, she still acts like the high-spirited puppy she has tucked inside.

  In the end, all the breed-banning talk ignores one critical thing: All dogs are individuals. And Meryl, as an individual and not simply as a breed, has earned the right to be reevaluated by the courts so that she may one day find an owner, a couch, and a home to call her own. Although it’s not entirely clear what the courts would need to see to overturn this decision, Ann Allums and Dogtown, as Meryl’s biggest champions, are determined to stand in her defense if she has her day in court.

  “We aren’t quite there yet,” said Ann, “but I believe that time will come.”

  Positive Reinforcement

  Ann Allums, Certified Pet Dog Trainer

  I have been extremely blessed to have so many special dogs in my life, all of whom taught me something important. There was the dog who taught me not to take it personally; the dog who did bite the hand that feeds him while feeding him; and the dog who patiently waited while I learned that choke chains were not my training tool of choice. But there is one dog who taught me more than most, the one to whom I owe my dog-training career. That dog is Roy.

  Roy was an Akita mix whom I adopted when he was one year old. I had just purchased my first house, had a well-paying job, and was ready for a dog. Although I had grown up with dogs and had volunteered for the Humane Society during college, I knew nothing about dog training. Roy was a very handsome, energetic, lovable boy—a perfect jogging companion who soon became my best buddy. Despite all the fun we had together, Roy wasn’t as easy as the dogs I grew up with. He tended to get carsick. He was a picky eater. He was obsessed with chasing Frisbees and kids on skateboards. But what concerned me the most was Roy’s aggressive behavior toward other dogs and other people.

  It started small. I noticed soon after Roy came to live with me that he displayed guarding tendencies by deliberately positioning himself between others and me. (Well, it most likely started with other body language that I didn’t know how to read then. I hadn’t been around a lot of aggressive dogs at that time in my life, and their behaviors weren’t familiar to me.) At the time, it was flattering (and harmless, I thought) to see how much my dog loved me. My friends thought it was sweet how “protective” he was of me. I didn’t do very much to correct Roy’s displays of “affection,” which was my first mistake with him.

  After a couple of years, his behavior started becoming more intense and aggressive. He began growling at other dogs and other people, which I ignorantly reacted to by telling him to be quiet. Instead of paying attention to Roy when he was behaving well, I gave him more attention when he misbehaved, which probably reinforced his behavior. Even though I had the best of intentions, it was another misstep in trying to help Roy be a better boy.

  Things escalated when he started barking and lunging during our walks. I thought the best solution was to tighten the leash (which I later learned made the problem worse) as we neared other people or dogs. It only seemed to egg on Roy, and his pulling on the leash grew stronger and his barks and growls louder. When friends visited, Roy would often lunge at them if he perceived any movement toward me, even if we were just sitting on the couch together. My attempts to correct Roy’s behavior weren’t helping things—he only seemed to be getting worse.

  I didn’t know what to do, so for several years, I just kept him away from other dogs and people. If we could avoid all of those risky situations (like daily walks and visitors to my house), then Roy couldn’t hurt anybody. In the process of keeping Roy safely tucked away, I isolated myself as well, and Roy became my only companion. We were safe in my little house together, I thought.

  What I didn’t realize was that closing us off from the world hurt Roy—and it hurt me. We missed the exercise and excitement found on our daily jogs together. We missed the friendship of other people and animals. We were cut off from the exciting and interesting things found in the everyday world because we couldn’t take the risk. Roy could hurt someone. I thought it was safer for everyone if we just stayed away.

  But even remaining in our house wasn’t a foolproof solution. Every so often, Roy would crash through the screen door to chase down a skateboarder, or to attack a loose dog in the yard. I became more and more uncomfortable, realizing that I could not just lock us both away from society forever, and that despite my best efforts to keep him out of trouble, I couldn’t control everything. I had a permanent anxiety knot in my stomach, worrying about friends coming over, listening for skateboarders going down the sidewalk, keeping my eyes peeled for other dogs on our outings. I was also full of shame because I had an aggressive dog. I felt like Roy’s behavior was all my fault, that I had let him get out of control. Worst of all, I felt helpless to change it.

  The turning point came when Roy finally did bite a person. One of the neighbor kids came over to borrow something, and when I turned my back for one second, Roy cornered the boy and bit him on the arm. The image of my dog growling at the kid crying in the corner is seared into my brain. I shamefully took the scared boy, who now had a puncture wound on his arm, back to his mom. For me, I knew I had to take action; feeling ashamed of Roy and his behavior wasn’t doing anyone any good, least of all Roy. I wised up and realized I needed to be proactive about his issues. During the next few years, I got an education on different positive training methods that I could use to help Roy overcome his problems. I read as much as I could online, eventually grasping the advantages of reward-based training over punishment-based methods. I visited an animal behaviorist for a consultation. I joined online discussion groups on dog-training topics where other pet parents shared their dog behavior issues. I read the recommended books of those online groups. I attended seminars given by trainers whose techniques I liked. The more information I got, the more I knew that I had so much to learn!

  The co
ncept that resonated in my spirit was that of training to build a relationship with a dog, rather than to dominate and subdue a dog’s spirit. I thought I had a loving relationship with my dog—we were best buddies, after all—but I never realized training could be relationship based as well. My previous attempts at training had been to just tell Roy what to do and then expect him to do it. I gave the commands, and he was supposed to obey. When that didn’t work, I tried avoidance and shut the two of us away in my house. I saw training as something separate from my relationship with my dog. Training had taken place outside our friendship, but now, based on all I had learned, I knew that training should be a big part of our friendship. Roy and I would share the goal of being able to behave in all kinds of situations. We could resume our daily runs, we could have friends over, and we could both rejoin the outside world. We would be a team.

  For the first time, I really saw results with Roy. I marveled at how effective the positive training techniques were! For instance, I began carrying treats at all times and fed Roy the treats in situations where he had normally lunged at other dogs or people. I learned how to pay attention to and understand Roy’s body language, so I could read him like a book. When I spotted the signs of early aggression in him, I tried to help him relax. I also trained myself to relax the leash and sing happy songs in those same situations, to reduce tension in both of us. (I started with “Row Row Row Your Boat,” and as I got better at relaxing, I made up my own hit training songs like “There’s a Person, and We Love People!”) I rewarded Roy with treats and praise whenever he was successful and tried not to react to behavior I didn’t like. It was working. Roy and I were on our way.

  To be clear, Roy didn’t learn to love other people or dogs, but he did learn to relax. Now he could choose to ignore rather than aggress in more situations every day. I still remember everything about one morning after several weeks of feeding Roy treats as we passed a particular dog on our walk. As we were approaching the dog, I broke out in a happy song and offered Roy treats, but today he declined them. I instantly worried that he was planning to try to attack the other dog. Instead, Roy just charged on—right past the other dog! It was like he was saying, “I’ve got it now. I can ignore the other dog, and it’s OK.”

  I realized right then that positive reinforcement was powerful. I saw how it worked to change Roy’s emotions. It wasn’t about food for him anymore—it was about helping him relax. It was about helping him learn to make good choices. Working with Roy was fun—for him and for me! Using praise, treats, and songs helped me engage Roy and shape his behavior for the better. Roy was a happier dog—he could go for walks without all the drama. Training would remain a valuable part of my relationship with Roy—it made life easier and more enjoyable for both of us.

  The training experience with Roy was inspirational to me and set me on a new path in my life—one where I would work with dogs. I had always had a passion for dogs, from my earliest memories of growing up with them, but I had not realized that passion extended to training them until I had started training Roy out of necessity. As my work with Roy developed, I decided to work toward becoming a professional dog trainer. It wasn’t because I was unhappy in my current job as a computer network administrator, or because dogs can be so forgiving and people so cruel, but because my true passion was helping dogs and helping other people. Seeing how dogs and people can help each other and grow together was more rewarding than just about any other work I’d done.

  As a dog trainer, I am learning constantly from the individual dogs I work with, but the lessons I learned from Roy are ingrained in my life as if they are part of me now:

  If you ignore it, it won’t go away. Behavior gets worse if treated incorrectly, or not at all.

  Training is lifelong, especially for dogs with aggressive tendencies.

  Praise and rewards bring results. Positive reinforcement methods do work and are ideal for working with dogs with aggression issues.

  Because of my experience with Roy, I became a much better trainer. I now can empathize with clients and other owners in similar situations. I remember when I first adopted Roy and how bad I was at reading his body language; now I know to stress the importance of understanding how dogs communicate, so that owners can understand what their dogs are “saying.”

  I also understand the feelings of fear and shame that an aggressive dog can stir up in his or her owners because I experienced that firsthand. I try to help people get past those feelings so they can take action and start helping their dogs. There is nothing like success to make those negative feelings go away, and the sooner an owner begins training, the closer that first big breakthrough will be.

  And last of all, Roy taught me that nobody’s perfect, least of all me. I loved Roy with all my heart, but I know failed him in many ways. Once I realized that I had the power of positive reinforcement to help me, I did my best to improve our friendship and to give Roy a better life. It is because of him that I am at Dogtown today, where I get to live my passion, and I will always be grateful for the life lessons and changes he effected in me.

  Johnny’s problems with housebreaking made people question his intelligence.

  12

  Johnny: Lessons in Learning

  “Here, Johnny! C’mon, boy!”

  Johnny just stands there.

  “Hey, Johnny! C’mon, big fella!”

  Johnny looks up slowly, like a crestfallen cow. He doesn’t move to the left or the right. He doesn’t act as if he’s even heard the command. Then—one, two, three, four beats later—he stirs, shuffling toward his trainer, Pat Whitacre, tongue lolling out, with a sweet, dopey grin on his face.

  Johnny is a beautiful dog—a purebred golden retriever with such an extravagance of lush blond fur that the groomers at Dogtown line up to brush him. But you don’t have to spend much time with Johnny to suspect that he might be a little slow on the uptake. When he first arrived at the sanctuary, the Dog Admissions Report that’s filed for each arrival told a tragicomic story:

  Johnny was raised in a puppy mill…owners thought he was deaf due to unresponsiveness…he does not seem to comprehend or respond normally…working with him is similar to working with a mentally handicapped child…. He is clumsy and when walking by you will walk over you…. He loves people and other dogs, is respectful of other dogs’ signals, but he doesn’t understand when he’s done something wrong or something is expected of him…he is a sweet, loving, continually happy dog, a “perpetual puppy”…he mouths, like a puppy, no aggression…he lives in his own world, and it’s a happy one….

  Johnny had been bought at a pet store, which meant, unfortunately, that he undoubtedly had been born and raised in a puppy mill (essentially a factory for mass-producing puppies, where breeding adults are often kept in tiny, filthy cages and forced to bear an endless stream of salable offspring).

  But after a couple of months, Johnny’s frustrated new owners were overwhelmed by Johnny’s problems. They complained that Johnny was so dumb he couldn’t learn anything. He couldn’t be housebroken. Johnny was so slow to respond that they thought he might be not only deaf, but also even partially blind. As a result, he was kept in a kennel, where he would roll in his own feces, making himself both odoriferous and unapproachable. Despite his owners’ best intentions, Johnny was not much better off in their home than he’d been at the puppy mill.

  The family gave up on Johnny and surrendered him to a golden retriever rescue organization. The breed rescue group, after trying to work with Johnny, also concluded that teaching a slower dog required more time than they could give him. “We’ve worked with him on ‘sit’ and it’s really hard—he just looks at you,” one of the rescue staffers said. The rescue group turned to the first place they thought could help a boy like Johnny: Dogtown. They appealed to Dogtown in the hope that there would be someone there willing to work with Johnny, who had struck a chord in their hearts: “He is in his own world and it’s a happy one! He has a way of looking at you that is so innocent
and so loving. We hope that you will consider taking him in.”

  A SWEET, SLOW BOY

  Johnny’s file at Dogtown shows that he arrived on November 28, 2007, that he was an 11-month-old neutered male, and that all his shots—parvo, rabies, distemper—were in order. Johnny also showed up with something very few Dogtown arrivals possess: a complete certificate of pedigree, going back four generations. Unfortunately, his file also came with a Dog Admissions Report that basically described him as having flunked out of the elementary school of life. Despite the detailed history, the Dogtown staff would conduct their own assessments to form their own opinions of Johnny’s case and what kind of plan was needed to help him learn.

  But dog trainer Pat Whitacre warmed up to Johnny right away. He liked him as soon as the big retriever came bounding out of a breed rescue van parked in front of the clinic—a big golden bundle of doggie energy. Pat led Johnny into the lobby and was given the dog’s short, unhappy history by one of the rescue staff. “He was this beautiful, happy puppy, who unfortunately had no place to go and a pretty bleak future,” Pat said. “His future wasn’t too bright unless he could change his behavior enough to be placed in a home somewhere.”

  Bred as a hunting dog, the obedient golden retriever grew to become a popular pet and show dog. Today, the golden retriever remains one of the most popular dogs in the United States.