by Jean Gill
Training them to walk properly was a lot easier. After the early weeks of full pack hunts, Christine gave up on walking with us because she had ‘Things to Do’. Marc and I adjusted to being the whole pack but he had so much to learn. I accepted the collar and harness he put on me but in return I expected some understanding and so I was hard on him. If he didn’t stop straight away when I wanted him to, I jerked him sideways. If he walked too fast or jerked me, I sat down and wouldn’t budge until he gave me a treat (I was very partial to the brown ones that smelled of rotting fish). I tried to socialise him by yanking him across to say hello to every human or dog we passed. And I encouraged him to stick up for himself more. If a dog hurled insults at us, I returned them, hoping that Marc would join in but he just wasn’t that sort of male, so I did it for him. Then, when I’d had enough walking, I’d just turn right round and Marc quickly learned that it was time to go home. One time, he wanted to walk further than I did but I really wasn’t having this sort of insubordination so I just lay down and let him jerk away on the harness, which wouldn’t have had any effect on a flea, until he got the message. Lead work became much easier as I grew bigger but by then Marc was pretty well trained anyway.
Another great success was food. I was not just a growing dog but a growing patou, putting on between one and two kilogrammes a week, according to the box Marc stood on, holding me. I was permanently hungry. I suffered an initial setback in food training when Christine decided to stick with the amount of food suggested on the packet of dried food and no amount of salivation over an empty bowl convinced her to give me seconds. ‘It doesn’t even look like real food,’ she said, ‘but the vet says it’s good for you.’ However there is always another way for a determined puppy. My masterstroke was the pleading look when Christine and Marc ate. I didn’t say a word, I didn’t bat a paw, I just looked at what they were eating and reminded them of what I had been given to eat. ‘I feel guilty,’ Christine said. ‘It wouldn’t hurt to give just a little scrap...’
‘No,’ said Marc. ‘We said we wouldn’t’ But I kept at it, and I didn’t have to act because when I sniffed cooked chicken, freshly baked bread, cheese sauce... the taste buds were feeding the brain all right and the lust in my melting brown eyes was genuine enough. ‘Just this once,’ by now my favourite words, and from then on I passed from Christine to Marc under the table, nuzzling for the goodies that didn’t always come but often enough for me to keep working for them. And sometimes I was lucky enough to have extra Humans at the table. Little Humans were the best to scrounge off – even if they didn’t give me something at the table, they would smear food on their clothes for me to tuck into afterwards. ‘He’s wonderful with children,’ Christine said. ‘He’ll lick them all day if they let him.’
And bark-training was just a doddle. I applied what I’d learned that first night when we’d sung together. Someone went past the gate; I barked. If I kept on barking, Christine or Marc, or better still both of them, would shout and there we were, all three of us barking. If a dog went past the gate, I’d bark loudly and fiercely, they’d shout louder and there we were, all three of us suitably defensive of the pack and I’d hardly had to work on it at all. Teaching them to respond to the play-bark was equally easy. I’d bark and drop the squeaky ball at their feet. No go. I’d bark for longer and drop the squeaky ball at their feet. ‘I don’t want him barking because he wants to play,’ Marc told Christine, so I had to be patient. I barked and barked and dropped the squeaky ball until, ‘Oh all right then’ was followed by the ball being picked up and from then on, they’d got the message. Sometimes I had to bark longer than others but they always understood in the end.
But I had some failures. There was a convenient spot in the corner of the room I had first slept in, the kitchen, so I continued to use it as exactly that - a convenience. It smelt just right and made it easy for me to squat and piddle. But as soon as Christine or Marc saw me start to squat they grabbed me and rushed me outdoors. Why they thought I wanted to go out of the house at such a moment I don’t know. Of course I would have to hold it all in patiently until they took me back inside do I could dash to my corner and oooooooh, the relief! But then they’d start up again with taking me outside. The only good thing about all of this is that sometimes I did fancy going outside to play in the garden, have a sniff around, so of course all I had to do was squat, or pee, and hey presto! they’d take me out.
They did try hard. Christine even made my corner smell even more inviting, like someone else had been piddling there too. I heard her telling Marc, ‘I’ve put enough bleach down to disinfect a pigsty but it’s not working.’ I wish I could have put her mind at ease and told her that it was working really well, if only they’d stop taking me outside all the time.
Another major failure was in getting them to take me everywhere. I loved my Masters. I wanted to be with them. And they kept leaving me. Believe me, I worked on it. Every time Marc went to the bathroom and shut the door on me, I scrabbled at the door and whined until he came out. I could tell he felt the same anxiety at our separation because when I jumped all over him, he showed the same joy at seeing me again, cuddling me and telling me everything was all right. Sometimes one or both my Humans went completely out of my awareness, shutting me in the house when they left it. ‘There, there, Izzie,’ they said. ‘You’ll be all right.’ No-one tells you that you’ll be all right unless there’s something bad to reassure you about so I started panicking before they left. Without me to look after them, anything could happen. And you could tell they were scared because as well as all those reassuring words, they lingered, cuddling me, afraid they’d never see me again. By the time they actually went out, I was in such a state that I had to chew something to calm myself down and just when a chair-leg or a chunk of skirting board had restored my Zen, I started thinking about them coming home, how they’d jump around with excitement when they saw me and that made me want a pee and then I needed to chew again.
But it was all worth it when they came home. We exploded with the pleasure of seeing each other and I customised Christine’s back or Marc’s shirt-front with pawprints. ‘He’s just so excited to see us,’ Marc said, ‘you can’t tell him off.’ And I ran twice round the garden with excitement, crossing a new mudhole before returning to thump my masters in the chest with my front paws. I never did get them to take me with them but at least the homecomings became more and more spectacular, to the point that I could knock one of them over while the other ran into the house and gave me the fun of the chase.
Ah, the innocence of youth. I look back on my puppyhood with so many mixed emotions. So many pleasures for teeth and tongue to discover; the firmness of oak (a table leg), the pleasing give of pine (the bottom stair), the sharp prickle of splinters against your gums when you manage to suck a wooden corner right off; the chalky dust of plaster when you’ve scraped a long hollow down a wall after the pleasing crackle as you strip a little torn wallpaper with your teeth; the way fabric goes gooey when you suck it, especially wool. And if the fabric had that spring-flower-and-female-sweat smell of Christine, sheer bliss. If the weather was fine, Christine would hang some clothes up on a line for me to help myself to something I fancied. I remember spending a happy morning with a very chewy dress that she said was one of her favourites. It was wonderful that she could share this with me and I made it last as long as I could, but that’s difficult for a full-blooded male. The instinct to gulp your pleasure turns your brain to a wasp mid-sting, unstoppable.
I became discriminating. I discovered underwear, preferably worn underwear, but even washed underwear still carried the scents dogs dream of. I taught Marc and Christine to play chase. Just to see their little faces as I flirted a pair of knickers just out of reach round the bushes in the garden was worth the effort of timing my break-in (I wasn’t ‘allowed’ in the bedroom during the day), and sneaking my contraband outside. And I’ve always believed that it is a dog’s duty to give his masters exercise; what could be better than runn
ing around outside, chasing your underwear? Humans generally don’t run round enough.
Another advantage of this game was that it could easily be extended to visitors. Christine enjoyed making the game more difficult to add to the pleasure. ‘Watch out for the dog,’ she told New Humans. ‘If he can get your underwear, he will.’ Never one to duck a challenge, I’d listen for the way they shut the guest room door. Click meant no go. No click and that meant All systems go! The door might look shut but all you had to do was apply some Pyrenean muscle in exactly the right spot and hey presto, lingerie-on-the-field day. Obviously a break-in was puppy-play if no-one was in the house but me, especially as I could by now open the door of any room they shut me in by using my front paws to push the handle down, but where was the fun in an underwear chase on your own? No, the sport was in the show, ‘Here Humans, look what I’ve got,’ and the chase. I hardly even chewed my trophies and mostly they re-appeared on the washing line to play another day.
My serious chewing, I saved for my one big weakness. I needed a high fibre intake. I needed roughage. I was ranging the kitchen, licking worktops and investigating smells when I noticed an appetizing odour blending bread, cooked beef and stale milk with soap-and-vinegar. There were actually dozens of scents stewed over time to an irresistible temptation that I tracked to a square sponge that Christine had left for me right by the sink. I didn’t have to be asked twice but as it was too good to chew, it went down in one. That was the start of a puppyhood addiction that lasted a year.
‘Oh no,’ Christine shrieked. She was a very loud, high-pitched Human. ‘He’s had the washing-up sponge again.’
‘You’ll have to put it higher up.’ That was Marc, raising the game once more, to make sure I kept learning and improving. Of course after that, I had to stand on my back legs and look higher up for my fibre supplement. ‘It’s dangerous for him to eat things like that. It could block his stomach, cause an occlusion.’ He needn’t have worried. What went in, came out, looking much the same actually. This became such a routine that Marc would clean up the garden, then go into the house and say, ‘Pink,’ or ‘Green’ and Christie would acknowledge the re-appearance of yesterday’s missing washing-up sponge.
And then I took fibre a stage too far. I’d enjoyed chewing the oven gloves, with their char-grilled taste and the intense pleasure of foam interior but they’d been hidden somewhere I hadn’t found them yet so I discovered something else.
‘Have you seen the tea-towel, Marc?’
‘Oh, no.’
I couldn’t settle that night. I felt like I needed to go to the toilet so I whined and was told to shut up. ‘You’ve cried Wolf once too often you have.’ This was a bit unfair as it was my job to cry wolf and I’m willing to bet there were no wolves within ten runnings of our house – all down to me. But just when it mattered, they weren’t taking me seriously. And this was serious. My guts were bubbling like a volcano after thousands of dormant years. I knew I was going to blow. And sure enough, my stomach erupted and I found out what it was like to really heave up. Not the little grass sickies that Stratos and I had self-induced but a full blown ‘If I don’t bring up this tea-towel, I’ll die.’ I’d made it out of the bedroom into the hall and Marc was there beside me, all concern now. After a few indeterminate piles on the floor, there it was.
‘The tea-towel,’ Marc yelled to Christine.
‘Oh good,’ was the sleepy reply.
One end might have finished evacuating but the other was about to start and when I ran to the outside door and whacked it with my paws, Marc took me seriously, thank Dog. I finished my business and went back to the bedroom, carefully wiped my bottom on the carpet and flaked out, desperate for some sleep. I half-heard Marc coming back to bed after clearing up.
‘He smells foul,’ Christine murmured.
‘I’ll clean him up in the morning.’ Then silence.
The tea-towels went to live with the oven gloves.
Chapter 5.
‘I thought you were going to make him sleep somewhere else after a bit.’
‘But he’s happy here. And you know what he’ll be like if we try and move him now...’
‘He snores, he farts, he walks about in the middle of the night and shakes his ears. He’s noisy when we make love. He puts me off. It’s like having a dirty old tramp watching us.’
‘You’re imagining it. He’s not interested at all in me doing ... this... and this... See, he hasn’t moved a muscle...’ Marc initiated that strange courtship ritual Humans perform. Amazing smells though. I vibrated my dewlaps to maximise the scent discrimination. How do you Humans live with the handicap of your nose?
‘He’s waggling his face.’
‘You’re imagining it. Shut your eyes...’ My eyes were already shut. I was all nose.
‘Marc...’
His warm, purring, afterwards voice. ‘I love you too...’
‘No, it’s not that... you said you were going to take him to classes and he’s eight months now.’
‘I think he’s pretty good...young of course but pretty good.’
‘But you said...’
‘Mmmmm, OK, no problem... we’ll go to classes... show them how it’s done...’
So we started dog classes. Christine didn’t go because she had ‘Things to Do.’ Marc and I were in total agreement over one thing; we didn’t need training. I had no doubt that I had established myself firmly but kindly as leader. I had no need to nip him or growl at him, or any other Human, and it was my strong belief that only stupid or scared dogs needed to bite Humans to keep them in order. I was so secure in my leadership that I indulged Marc by rolling over and letting him stroke my tummy. ‘Look,’ he told Christine, ‘that’s a subordinate position because he’s making his throat vulnerable.’ Marc had indeed been reading dog books.
Sometimes Marc behaved inappropriately. He would use a cross voice or even shout and wave his arms about. ‘Ignore him,’ he told Christine. ‘That’s the best punishment.’ So I would ignore him until such time as I decided would be the right moment for a good leader to forgive his subordinate and allow him to become pack once more. I would go to Marc, whack a paw across his forearm, if he was sitting down, or across his thighs, if he was standing, and I would look deep into his eyes, explaining to him that this was not how he should behave and I hoped he’d learned his lesson. ‘See,’ Marc told Christine, ‘he’s come to says he’s sorry. He knows that what he did was wrong.’ And then he’d give me the cuddle I’d demanded from him and all would be well between us again.
We’d worked on the ‘command’ words. It all seemed fairly straight forward to me. If I was in the mood for a treat, I could respond to Marc’s special words, ‘Sit’, ‘Down’ and ‘Come here’ by carrying out certain actions. Once I’d got the treat, I did what I liked. If I didn’t feel like a treat, I did what I liked. It was all good fun. I’d learned to be wary of ‘Come here’ as Marc would abuse it if given the opportunity. Just when I thought I’d taught him that ‘Come here’ meant he should give me a treat and cuddle me, or even throw the ball for me to play with, he used ‘Come here’ to trick me into the house to be shut in while they went out. I wanted to stay in the garden and I was not pleased. So next time I heard ‘Come here’ I checked carefully whether he or Christine had going-out shoes on before I went anywhere near him. And if he wanted me to go in the house, he could chase me round the garden and catch me first.
He was understanding ‘Come here’ very well at the stage he started taking me to the park. There, he explained to me that I’d been such a good dog I was allowed off the lead, but if there was any monkey business I’d be straight back on it. Off lead was fun. Like being in the garden but further to run away. When I heard ‘Come here!,’ I felt like a treat so I ran to Marc, enjoyed a doggy chocolate drop and – hey, what’s this? Quicker than you can say, ‘end of fun’, the lead went back on. ‘He was brilliant on the recall,’ Marc told Christine.
Next time we went to the park, I was off le
ad and I mean OFF. ‘Come here!’ rang in my brain and I looked at Marc. Treat? Nice but. Could he be trusted? Sadly, no was the answer. I felt like playing off lead much longer so I ignored him. He was right about that. Ignoring was a very useful punishment, and kind. I taught Marc to call me several times until I felt like returning and claiming my treat, or, even better, to chase me round the park the way he chased me round the garden at home – and catch me when I felt I’d had enough. Yet again, I was fulfilling my responsibility to give him exercise and I was proud of myself.
So we didn’t need training classes but I felt our mutual understanding was good enough for us to have some fun there. My confidence was dented just a little when faced with five Belgian Shepherds, three German Shepherds, one rottweiler and two cocker spaniels. I thought I’d talk to the spaniels while we were all waiting for puppy class to end and adult class to begin.
After exchanging anal and nasal pleasantries, we got onto the nitty gritty. ‘We’re old paws, came up through puppy class,’ explained the black cocker.
‘Starred in the exhibition,’ chimed in his golden friend.
‘Part of the annual village fête for the Saint’s day. We practised for weeks and we were the best in class for noses. Could find THE hankie in a laundry.’