The Education of Will

by Patricia B. McConnell

  However, Mick’s behavior toward Willie was relentless and atypical. I asked friends and colleagues in the dog world, “What would you think of a young pup who was acting like Mick?” Most of the responses were “Take him back yesterday”—not because he was a bad dog but because he seemed a bad match for Willie.

  No matter how dedicated and skilled you are at training, you can’t fit round pegs into square holes, and sometimes behavior problems are as much about a bad fit as a lack of skill or knowledge. That is as true with dogs as it is with people. Ask yourself if you could marry anyone randomly picked off the street and be happy. Or sane. This is not an excuse to pass dogs around like casseroles; most behavioral problems can be solved with training and behavior modification. But the fact is, a small percentage of dogs are in environments where they simply are never going to be happy. Dogs cannot speak their misery, and it is up to us to translate their expressions and actions into words. If they are telling us that they are miserable where they are, it is our responsibility to find them a place where they can flourish.

  As hard as it was, I accepted that Mick was not a good match for Willie, and I drove him back to the breeders on a cold and windy day. Mick ended up in a great home the same day I returned him. I wasn’t sure whether I’d return home with another puppy from the litter. Their genetics were so solid that it was tempting. This time I brought Willie with me to check out the rest of the litter, because his appropriate greeting to Mick suggested that I could trust him around the pups without weeks of gradual introductions. I brought out a big-boned male puppy who was a perfect replica of his stable and benevolent father. Willie made snake eyes at him, stiffened, and immediately withdrew. Darn, he had been my second choice. The only one left was a male who had tested relatively well in the puppy tests but whom I had rudely labeled “ugly puppy.” It seemed wrong not to give him a chance, so I hoisted him out of his pen and took him outside to meet Willie.

  It was love at first sight. Willie immediately play-bowed, the pup groveled and squiggled, and in seconds they were romping and playing in an ice-cold driving rain. After watching them in apparent bliss for twenty minutes, I picked up the pup and drove him and Willie home.

  For three days, we were all in heaven. I named the pup Hope, a common name for both male and female sheepdogs but equally symbolic of my need to find the right dog for Willie. He and Hope played joyfully. Hope’s head and ears began to develop, so he became cuter. He was responsive to Jim and me, a quick learner, and tremendously fun to train.

  I then wrote a lengthy blog about why I had returned the first pup. I wrote honestly about the process, in hopes of helping others in similar situations, and because the issue of “the right dog” is an important one. No matter how much someone loves dogs, that person’s home is not always the best place for any one particular dog. You can’t mix oil and water or gasoline and matches. The most responsible thing to do is to acknowledge when a dog is mismatched and find a way for him to end up in the best possible place. After I published the blog, the vast majority of readers wrote to thank me for writing about why I’d returned Mick, and for my courage in writing about it honestly.

  The word “courage” was mentioned often; one would have thought I had single-handedly battled off an attack of terrorists. But they knew the kind of criticism that I’d soon be facing, and they were right. Some of the comments were nasty. I was called a hypocrite and a failure as a behaviorist. Someone suggested that no one in her group would read any of my books ever again.

  A faction of people in the dog world believes that rehoming a dog is tantamount to tossing it out the window on a highway and that the only responsible course of action is to keep a dog you’ve brought into your home, no matter the circumstances. Ironically, many of these same people foster dogs through rescue groups, keeping the dog if it fits in to their family, but sending the dog to another home if it does not.

  Even though I knew I’d be criticized for returning Mick, even though I had taken him on a three-day trial basis, I was emotionally exhausted after three days of “Should I or should I not take the puppy back?” I had already fallen in love with Mick when he wasn’t around Willie, and taking him back felt like a love affair gone wrong. The criticisms felt both personal—we were talking about my family, after all—and professional. Although I responded to the criticisms as constructively as I could, and my skin had been thickened over the years by being in the public eye, I still felt as if I’d been publicly whipped.

  The support of Jim and my best girlfriends and the joy of having Hope in the house saved me. Willie and Hope played together beautifully, mock-wrestling on the living room floor, playing tug games with Uncle Willie, who modulated his power to match that of the pup. Hope was crazy fun to train—as smart and responsive as Mick—and for three days, we were all having a ball.

  Until we weren’t.

  Day four of life with puppy Hope began with a sweetheart of a morning, rich with the melodious song of rufous-sided towhees. “Drink your TEA TEA TEA!” they sang as I did the chores with Willie and Hope at my heels. The dogs played inside and out, and soon Dr. John, our “James Herriot by another name” veterinarian, came out to give the pup a vaccination.

  Hope licked John’s face rapturously, and Willie pushed in for equal attention while Dr. John cooed and kissed and gave Hope a shot so quickly he barely noticed. We went outside to chat and take the pup to pee. After relieving himself, Hope pounced on a stick and ran under a bush with it. John and I were talking a few feet away, and I happened to turn my head in the pup’s direction as Willie walked over to investigate. Like a bullet, Hope shot out toward Willie, eyes blazing, lips snarling, with a growl more appropriate to a full-grown dog than a baby pup. Willie stopped, as stunned as I was, and turned away.

  And thus began the Summer from Hell. Hope began bullying Willie, leaping up and biting the top of his neck any time Willie moved from one place to another. As he did so, he let out a series of growls that led me to call him “Psycho Pup.” The snarls were lower in pitch than a pup his size should be physically able to produce, more appropriate to a horror movie than a living room. If Willie had simply corrected him with an appropriate snap, it probably would have ended there, but for some reason (as with Mick), Willie seemed incapable of defending himself. Willie, who, as a pup, hadn’t hesitated to challenge an adult dog over a vegetable, was unwilling or unable to discipline the tiniest of puppies. It made little sense that a dog who could be so aggressive in one context could be so helpless in another.

  But then I’d remind myself how we are all different in different contexts. Perhaps Willie was following the unwritten “puppy pass” policy that seems so common in canines, in which rude behavior is tolerated in young dogs, just as it is in very young children? Or perhaps I had conditioned him so carefully that I’d taken away his ability to assert himself? Either way, in spite of all my efforts, I felt as helpless as he was behaving, and it added yet another layer of angst to a summer filled with worry.

  Like his littermate, Hope urinated more often than other pups and seemed oblivious to standard house training. The vet discovered that he had crystals in his urine and cleared those up, but his relentless need to potty continued over the summer. Normally, this would have been no more than irksome, but I had fallen a week after bringing Hope home and smashed my knee, so I was on crutches and in a lot of pain. Far worse, Jim had popped his bicep tendon off the bone while helping a stranger load heavy objects into her van, and he had to wear a burdensome arm brace for months after surgery to repair it. He had only one good arm, and I had only one good leg—not an ideal situation when living on a working farm with a puppy who needs to go outside a gazillion times a day.

  Besides these difficult logistics, a soul-sucking angst ate at me every day. On the one hand, Hope was a dream puppy to train. Teaching him something new was like paddling a canoe down a river—you had to exert some effort, but you always knew the current was going in the right direction. You could even pick up th
e paddles sometimes and just let yourself coast. So much of the training I had done for the last two decades was on older dogs with serious behavior problems; I had almost forgotten how glorious it is to work with a pup. Any time we were out of the house, we had a wonderful time—in puppy class and on walks in small towns where strangers would squat down to scratch his chin and he would squint in bliss.

  But inside, the tension between Hope and Willie was so dense it felt hard to breathe. They had stopped playing together, and every time Willie got up to go from one room to another, Hope leaped onto his shoulder, growling and snarling like an adult wolf during breeding season. Willie would nervously flick his tongue and continue moving forward as if Hope didn’t exist. Silent interventions from Jim or me only delayed the next attack, and verbal corrections would have intimidated Willie as much as the pup. Outside, the tables were turned. Every time the pup began to run forward as if to play, Willie would muzzle-punch him into a stop. Willie apparently thought that this was great fun, the puppy not so much. Instead of playing joyfully, they had to be watched and managed constantly while I attempted to foster a good relationship between them. On crutches, with a bum knee, and a disabled husband.

  It’ll be fine, I told myself. I’m an animal behaviorist. I can work through this. Hope is just a puppy. I consulted colleagues. I wrote out a treatment plan, complete with goals, expectations, and step-by-step instructions. The best plan was to teach Hope a different response to Willie’s movement, so that every time Willie got up, Hope would come to me, or go get a toy, or log on to the Internet and order expensive dog toys. Anything to keep him from bullying Willie, who behaved like he was incapable of growling at a tiny puppy. The training helped, but not enough. Hope was obsessed, seemingly driven to harass Willie, or at least to respond to his every movement by attacking him.

  Jim and I agreed that the best course of action was to work on their relationship over the summer and reassess in a few months. All the time, every day and every minute, a silent but relentless internal voice told me that, like Mick, Hope was the wrong dog for Willie. Hope was a lovely pup who would be better off with a group of normal dogs who would benevolently teach him manners. Willie deserved to have a safe home where he wasn’t being bullied. Both my knee and Jim’s arm needed to heal. I waited and worked on Hope because it seemed right to give him some time.

  But that wasn’t the only reason I put off making a decision. I knew I’d get criticized on the Internet for returning another puppy. This time I wasn’t sure I had the emotional strength to put up with it. Not just because I would be criticized but because I was criticizing myself. I wasn’t sure I’d made the best decision when I brought Hope home. The decision to bring home Mick had been made thoughtfully and carefully. However, in Hope’s case, I’d taken one look at him and Willie playing in the rain, picked up the pup, and put him in the car without further thought. I could have driven home and thought about it. I could have put the pup away and gone inside the breeder’s house to ponder. Even though I had carefully researched the genetics of the litter, deciding to take home the pup I had rejected earlier felt like a snap decision. The breeder and the friend who’d come with me had looked at me in shock when I declared that I was taking Hope home, knowing that I’d shown little interest in him beforehand. Still, it seemed like a good decision for the first three days. But after a few weeks, it became clear that yet again, this was not the right dog to add to our family.

  • • • • •

  Perfection is unattainable—no dog is perfect, and of course, no person is either. Yet, like many, I often fight the belief that I should be free of mistakes, and I suffer from shame when I come up short. But this emotion comes in many shades, and ever since I pretended to be kidnapped, a black veil of shame has been my silent but constant partner for over fifty years.

  We all feel shame about some things in our lives, and most of us bury it as deeply as we can because it is so painful to experience. Getting rid of guilt is difficult (admitting “I did a bad thing”), but getting rid of shame (“I am a bad person”) is even harder. The power that it has over us derives from our tendency to keep it hidden. Shame is a private, intimate thing—no wonder rape and shame go hand in hand—and yet it loses its grip on us only if we bathe it in light.

  Brené Brown, author of Daring Greatly, has studied the emotion of shame for years. She found that, in general, men universally feel ashamed if they are perceived as weak, whereas women tend to feel shame about not “being perfect.” Somehow men have come to believe that they must be all-powerful, all the time. Women believe that they need to be perfect professionals, perfect mothers, perfect lovers with perfect bodies . . . and to never have a problem puppy. Or get molested or raped. Or pretend to be kidnapped. Until I went into therapy, I tried never to think about any of it. It was as though, every once in a while, a mass of deep water would recede enough to let the memories surface, but then it instantly would rush back in and cover it up.

  Exposing our private shames to the light does not require us to reveal all of our deepest secrets to everyone. We may be living in a culture in which people exchange privacy for fame, but that doesn’t mean it serves them to do so. Brené Brown has found that people living what she calls a “wholehearted life” are resilient to the destructive power of shame because they handle it as if dealing with a toxic chemical. Exposing one’s shame without any thought of a safety system is as dangerous as handling nuclear material without a containment plan. There are rules about when to disclose and when not to: Don’t go public about something you are ashamed of until you have worked it through privately. Be sure that you have a safety net of friends who will be there for you no matter what. Learn to dismiss criticism from those who aren’t “in the arena” or haven’t been in a similar situation.

  I didn’t know any of that when I wrote about bringing Mick and Hope to the farm. I had the safety net of true friends, but I wasn’t wise enough (in my relentless imperfection) to heed points number one and three. The bad news is that it was painful. The good news is that I learned a lot.

  • • • • •

  The public reaction to my story about Mick and Hope was a vaccine against the reaction I feared if I exposed my darkest secret about faking a kidnapping. Intellectually, what I did makes all the sense in the world: A young girl could not bring herself to say out loud that a series of events had left her ashamed, as well as being terrified that another version of doom could occur at any moment. And yet it is one thing to tell the world that you’ve been raped or molested, given the shame our culture still attaches to its survivors. It is another thing to come clean after lying about something as horrific as being kidnapped—which makes you the perpetrator instead of the victim. And it is another thing entirely to learn how to forgive yourself for it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Saint Bernards are big dogs, and the one in my office was a very big dog indeed. Merlin must have weighed 160 pounds, with a head as big as a volleyball. There are advantages to owning a dog the size of a pony. You can stroke its head without bending down. People wave and smile as they see you walking by. However, the dog’s size also means that he can drag you across the street until the skin of your forearms is scraped off by the asphalt, as Merlin had done to his owner, Joyce. Joyce couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds, so it was easy for Merlin to pull her around like a toy on a string.

  Being dragged across the pavement by a large dog is the stuff of cartoons and sitcoms. We laugh because we can relate—what dog owner hasn’t once been the victim of an out-of-control pet that turned us into a slapstick wagon careening down the street? In a slip-on-a-banana-peel kind of way, it’s amusing to see others lose their dignity to something we can’t always control. Joyce told me that people often laughed at her as her massive dog dragged her somewhere she didn’t want to go.

  Except it wasn’t funny. Merlin wasn’t enthusiastically chasing a squirrel up a tree or dashing over to the neighbors to play with their children. M
erlin was using every bit of his power to attack any dog in his line of sight. Several times he had managed to overpower Joyce and injure other dogs, even though Joyce had equipped him with a special collar and harness to control him.

  As Joyce told me their history, Merlin sat nobly beside her, strong and fit, his eyes radiating quiet dignity. If he could talk, I’m sure he would have said, “Don’t believe a word of it.”

  Joyce had done all she knew to stop his attacks. She had tried to train him to sit and stay when he saw another dog, and she walked him at odd hours to avoid other dogs. All of this had helped a little, but the week before our appointment, he had bolted after another dog and sent Joyce flying onto the gravel, badly injuring her arm and shoulder. Without the help of a jogger, she never would have been able to stop him before he reached the other dog.

  In spite of her own injuries, Joyce was primarily afraid that Merlin would hurt or kill another dog. But fear wasn’t the only emotion she was experiencing. She also felt guilty. And ashamed. And embarrassed. Guilty that her dog had a serious behavior problem she couldn’t manage. Ashamed because she felt she’d failed as a responsible dog owner. Embarrassed because being hauled like a hay wagon in front of the neighbors was humiliating.

  Joyce was not alone. The dark side of being a responsible dog owner is being plagued with guilt and its handmaiden, shame.

  Guilt isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Feeling guilty isn’t fun, which is why it prevents us from repeating something we’ve done in the past that is best not done again. But guilt and shame can be two-edged swords. I’ve had a multitude of clients who felt so guilty about their dog’s behavior that they were almost paralyzed. I learned to say, “I know that your dog’s behavior is problematic, but I do want you to remember that you yourself didn’t bite anyone.” Even clients whose dogs merely growled at a suspicious stranger told me how bad they felt about it. Or that their family dog of thirteen years wasn’t getting along with the new dog they’d rescued from the shelter.