by Susan Conant
Brenner enthroned himself behind the desk. I plunked down on one of the simple, hard wooden chairs facing the desk and said, “I really don’t know what to do about Juneau.”
“Well,” he assured me, “you’ve come to the right place. There’s a lot of people out there that’ll tell you they’re experts, you know, but just look around.” His hand swept over the display. “And, you know, Holly, you want to ask yourself something, and you want to take your time and give yourself an honest answer. Because there’s no sense trying to fool yourself, is there?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Well, then,” he said happily, “what you want to ask yourself now, Holly, is you want to ask yourself this. Ask yourself, ‘Have I honestly got the hours and hours every single day of the week, week after week, that it’s gonna take me to train this dog?’ Holly, do you have all those extra hours?”
“No,” I said. “Actually, I don’t have a lot of free time.”
“Well, then, you see? You’ve answered your own question, haven’t you? Much as you hate to admit it to yourself, you don’t have the time it takes to train a dog.”
I wondered whether he had ever sold something door to door, vacuum cleaners or maybe knives that never need sharpening; or whether he’d ever demonstrated multifunction kitchen devices at home shows and country fairs, magical chopper-shredder-slicers that really, really work.
“I guess not,” I conceded.
May I digress? Amy Ammen is a legendary young trainer and handler who’s now up to three O.T.Ch. dogs, pronounced “otch,” Obedience Trial Champions, and not golden retrievers, either: a flat-coat, a Japanese chin, and—get this—an American Staffordshire terrier, yes, an O.T.Ch. AmStaff. For those O.T.Ch. results, Amy Ammen trains a dog on a schedule of twenty minutes three to five times a week, less time each week than most of us spend blow-drying our hair. No time to train the dog? Amy Ammen’s real achievement has been to ruin that heretofore perfect excuse. She knows how, of course. Brenner got to that part next.
“And maybe you want to think of it this way, Holly,” he said sympathetically. “You need your appendix out, okay?” The happy expression on his pudgy face suggested that acute appendicitis was a delightful condition for which I was probably longing at that very moment. He went on: “And, sure, maybe you know that’s what’s causing this pain in your belly.” He punched his fist into his gut. “And, sure, you know it’s gotta come out, okay? But even if you’ve got all the time in world, you aren’t going to do it yourself, are you?” He nearly rose from the chair, stared directly at me, and pointed an accusing finger toward what I assume was supposed to be my inflamed appendix.
I smiled, crossed my legs, and said, “Hardly.”
Brenner smiled as if trying to convince me that I’d said something clever and surprising. Then he wrinkled his brow and, with a slow, solemn nod of his head, said, “And I know it might not hit you straight off as the same thing, but when you get right down to it, when you get to the heart of the matter and yank it up by its roots and take a good, hard look at it, it is the same thing, and I’m going to tell you why: You want it done right, and you want it done painlessly, you go to a professional.” He sank back in the chair and waited.
I tried to smile appreciatively.
“So what you want to do is,” he confided, “you want to give us a couple of weeks to work with her, and, then, before you practically even know it, you’ve got a fully trained dog.” He gave me a few seconds to contemplate that happy prospect, then went on. “We spend a couple of minutes with you, we show you a couple of easy commands, and that’s all there is to it. You don’t even have to come all the way back here. We deliver her right to your own door. It’ll be just like getting a brand-new dog.”
“You can really get her to come when she’s called?” I asked.
“Like a shot,” he promised. “Piece of cake.” He stood up. “Let me show you something.”
I was hoping to get a close look at the kennels from indoors, but, according to Brenner, strangers upset the dogs’ routine. He had me wait in a large bare room while he got Sultan, who turned out to be what’s called a “robot,” a dog that works with more precision than joy, and not even a very good robot. Brenner dropped him a few times, and, each time, Sultan hit the floor promptly. Brenner also had Sultan retrieve, first a handkerchief, then a glove.
“Wow!” I gushed. Big deal, I thought. On command only, of course, Vinnie would answer the phone for me by picking up the receiver and depositing it politely in my hand. Rowdy, for God’s sake, could retrieve handkerchiefs and gloves.
The real test of an obedience dog, of course, the exercise that breaks a tie in any obedience trial, is off-leash heeling, which isn’t a test of the dog at all, but the ultimate evidence of teamwork. Yes, the dog never forges, never lags, never heels wide, never crowds, but so natural and so apparently effortless is his perfection that even the astute observer is temporarily persuaded to forget that such faults exist; and to the confident handler, they are evidently unknown. Never so much as sneaking a glance at the dog, the handler stands tall and straight, head high; smoothly follows the judge’s orders; glides into a brisk walk, a fast pace, a slow pace; halts; turns right and left; makes an about-turn; and, all the while, moves and stops as unhesitatingly as if that perfect score were preordained. Flawless off-leash heeling is one of the most beautiful sights in dogdom.
One of the ugliest is the mockery that results when a self-aggrandizing handler mistakes terror-driven outward compliance for the joyful half of the relationship that we foolishly call “dog obedience.” Ordered to heel, Sultan slunk; when Brenner stepped forward, the dog did, too; whenever the man halted, the dog sat. In that sense only, the dog heeled, and heeled quite well. I acted impressed and said how good the dog was. I hoped that Sultan was listening. He might never have heard the word good before, but he’d understand it, anyway. All dogs do.
Brenner saved the highlight of Sultan’s performance for last. With no warning to me, Brenner gave the dog some signal that I missed, and the shepherd crouched low, bared his teeth, unleashed a monstrous and terrifying combination of growls and roars, and twisted his face into a mask of menace. Just as suddenly, on signal, the dog quit, and I started breathing again. I was half sorry I’d ever taught Kimi or any other dog that harmless warning growl. I was glad that I’d never trained beyond it.
“We can teach Juneau that, too,” Brenner offered. “Course, it takes a little more time.”
Finally, for the first time, he asked to see my dog. While he returned Sultan to his run, I went out to get Kimi.
“This is going to be strange, and it might get scary,” I warned her as I opened the tailgate and snapped on the chain leash. “And I know it’s a lot to ask. But if I don’t see for myself, I can’t write about it very well, and if I don’t write about it, this crazy son of a bitch is going to keep on duping people into leaving their dogs here. And I know you can handle it. I have perfect confidence in you.” I stroked Kimi’s face. Direct eye contact makes some dogs uncomfortable. She met my gaze. I know I’m biased, but I’ll swear that the Alaskan malamute is the strongest, sweetest dog on earth, iron and honey.
To protect my hands in case I needed to grip the leash, I grabbed a pair of leather gloves from the front seat and pulled them on. Then I let Kimi move ahead of me to the barnlike building and deliberately trailed after her. Once we were inside, the scent of all the other dogs keyed Kimi up. When Brenner appeared through a door to the kennel area, I nervously said, “Now be a good girl. Sit down, Juneau?”
The dog’s name, preferably her own, comes first, of course. Besides, even a golden retriever, for God’s sake, won’t obey a question, and did I want Juneau to sit or to lie down? Except to pull happily toward the kennel door, Kimi ignored me.
“It isn’t time to play with other dogs now,” I said feebly. Then, still fighting the temptation to grab Kimi, beat it back to Cambridge, and settle for Jackie Miner’s story of how Brenner had trea
ted Willie, I told him that I was sure I didn’t have the money to have him train Juneau for me. But I did need help. Couldn’t he give us just one lesson? He agreed. It galled me to pay cash, but the name printed on my checks is my own.
A good instructor occasionally borrows a dog to demonstrate something, but a genuine expert, if forced to work with only one half of the dog-handler team, will choose you, not your dog. Dogs learn fast. Real pros enjoy a challenge. Brenner led us back into the big empty room, pulled a standard six-foot leather leash and an ordinary metal choke collar from his pocket, and slipped it over Kimi’s head. He snapped on the leather leash, removed that stupid flat collar and the chain leash, and handed them to me. I hadn’t expected him to teach like an expert, of course, but I was so inexperienced with really bad instructors that I’d thought I’d be the person at Kimi’s side. She kept her soft, intelligent eyes on me. More quickly than I’d expected, Brenner stepped to heel position on her right side, and I knew that the second she heard the word heel, she’d blow our cover.
Brenner was watching Kimi, not me. I cleared my throat and, catching her eye, raised my arm slightly and mouthed, “Up!” She growled and rose.
Over the years, I’d heard a lot of stories about barbaric methods employed and recommended by a few high-priced private trainers: If the dog jumps on you, slam your foot on his hind feet. If he barks and growls, squirt ammonia in his eyes. Ammonia! Jesus. If he challenges you, lift him up in the air and hurl him to the ground. Only now did I realize that I’d never quite believed the stories. I’d expected Brenner to act, but not to overreact so strongly and certainly not so quickly. With one sharp upward yank on the leather leash, he started to string up my dog.
You know what that means? It’s also called “hanging.” The choke collar is the noose, the leash is the rope, and the human arm is the gallows. Is it ever okay to string up a dog? Maybe, if it’s the only way to break up a dog fight or if it’s a last-resort effort to save a dog’s life by convincing him that biting people is absolutely taboo. Desperate? A pinch collar looks like an instrument of torture, a series of linked prongs, but it won’t damage the dog’s larynx.
I wasn’t packing a pinch collar, but those cheesy chain leashes turn out to have a use after all, at least if you’re wearing heavy leather gloves. Before Kimi’s front legs left the floor, I had a solid grip on the length of chain. As I’ve mentioned, an experienced handler glides into a fast pace. A few rapid steps positioned me directly behind Brenner, and with a single sweep over his head that was as smooth and natural as even the AKC could want, I wrapped the chain around his neck and yanked hard enough to remind him that canis familiaris isn’t the only species with a larynx. One firm jerk on a training collar works better than a hundred weak little tugs. When I want to yank, I yank hard.
“Brenner, you son of a bitch,” I told him, “drop that leash.” Training Rule One: Name first, then the command.
He complied. Although the chain must have hurt, I suspect that my effective weapon was, in fact, surprise. I do not look or sound like the kind of person who goes around half garrotting people with crummy chain leashes from discount department stores. Even so, before Brenner had time to recover from his state of shock, whether physical or mental, and before he could fetch Sultan, who really did scare me, I released my grip, left the chain draped around his neck, and swooped up Kimi’s leash. Then, with what the AKC calls “the utmost in willingness, enjoyment, and precision,” Kimi and I beat it out of there. Front and Finish is always publishing scrappy exchanges about what that key word, utmost, really means. Now I know.
Oh, except for Sultan. If you really love dogs, you’ll understand that I hated to leave him there. There must be a curse on German shepherds that makes them attract the human extremes, the best and the worst, Steve Delaney and Dickie Brenner. A German shepherd or any other dog who’s been bred or trained to act vicious is a desecration. I mean that. A sacrilege. Ever read the Bible? Every dog wants nothing more than to play Ruth to your Naomi: “Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people; and thy God my God.”
About Sultan? The moral of the story is that if you own a German shepherd, be careful how you choose your God. Here endeth today’s Lesson.
17
God does not like modern English and holds a grudge against the whole twentieth century, or so you’d gather from how Cambridge celebrates Christmas. In normal places, people invite you to go out caroling and get together for a few drinks. But not in Cambridge. When I first got here, a guy asked me if I wanted to wassail. I thought he was propositioning me to do something so perverted that I’d never even heard of it.
Not long afterward, though, I lost my innocence: I went to the Christmas Revels in Sanders Theater. If I’d never met Steve, I’d probably have come home from Brenner’s and immediately gone out to spend the evening of December twenty-third decadently frolicking around in puff-sleeved peasant garb while an accompanist piped out a winter solstice tune on some cumbersome but authentic protorecorder with a range of three notes. Oh, well, the life wouldn’t have suited me anyway, and I’ve renounced it entirely, except to drag Steve down with me while I walk the streets of Harvard Square.
A heavily festooned giant evergreen loomed in front of the kiosk in the center of the Square. The subway entrance was moved years ago, and the Out of Town Newsstand is a substantial business housed in a building that’s too big to be called “the kiosk,” but that’s exactly what it’s called. Kendall Square, near MIT, may be scientific, but Harvard Square is metaphysical. You have to be a visionary to find your way around; the evidence of your senses tells you nothing. Anyway, suspended over the streets that radiate out from the kiosk were the same kinds of silvery giant-candy-cane decorations and strings of multicolored lights that were swinging over a million American Main Streets. According to the sign flashing above one of the banks, the temperature was sixty-three degrees. Steve and I were wearing jeans and T-shirts. We hung around in front of the Coop for a few minutes to listen to a small Salvation Army band play a brassy “O Come, All Ye Faithful” or, Cambridge being Cambridge, “Adeste Fideles.” When the carol ended, we threw some quarters into a big kettle suspended on an iron tripod.
Then we rounded the corner at Nini’s and strolled into the Cambridge of Brattle Square, the atavistic, anglophile Cambridge of mimes, jugglers, sword swallowers, fire-eaters, acrobats, storytellers, and street musicians, including street musicians with Ph.D.’s who take offense if you mistake their viola da gambas for mere cellos. Violas da gamba? Damn. I’ll never fit in here. I mean, this is a place where you can state your occupation as bard, fifer, ballad-monger, or busker, and most people won’t even laugh. If you get asked what you want to drink, it’s perfectly okay to call for a tankard of mead. There are people here who not only can speak fluent Elizabethan English, but who never speak any other kind, for God’s sake. I love Cambridge. It’s a human dog show.
“So what did you want me to do?” I indignantly asked Steve over the din of a female choir fervently caroling in what sounded like Russian. I’d filled him in on my visit to Anneliese, but he was more irked at my visit to Brenner than he was interested in the Bourques. “Take Jackie’s word for it? Look, when you want to make a diagnosis, you want to see the animal, don’t you? You don’t just want to hear someone else describe the problem. You want to see for yourself. It’s the same thing. I wasn’t going to leave Kimi there, you know, and obviously, I wasn’t about to let him hurt her. I didn’t, did I?”
He shook his head. “Did you have some plan in mind if he went back and got the dog? You know what a dog like that could’ve done to Kimi?” He added as an afterthought, “Or you?”
“But he wouldn’t have. That’s the other thing I confirmed, besides Jackie’s story. Look, if Brenner’d been going to retaliate against someone, he’d have done it with Patterson, wouldn’t he? The second Patterson punched him, he’d have punched him right back, and he didn’t.”
&
nbsp; “Nothing happened to Patterson, he’s in great shape, so nothing’s going to happen to you, either. Is that it?”
“Yes,” I said. “Appearances to the contrary. What was he going to do? Slug me? Sic his dog on me? No, and for the same reason he didn’t punch Patterson or get the dog, which is that he couldn’t afford the bad publicity. Look, if Brenner had kicked the shit out of Patterson, what would’ve happened? The first thing is that it would’ve ended up in all the papers. Patterson’d probably have pressed charges, and it could’ve ended up in court. And you know what? You can bet Patterson would’ve really played it up, first of all, because he dramatized stuff anyway, and, second of all, because he’d’ve been glad to see Brenner exposed, and Brenner probably knew it. And me? His showpiece dog mauls a client? Or a client’s dog? Yeah, sure, I was scared. Who wouldn’t be? But so what? And so what if it’s just his pride that’s hurt? Other people must’ve called him on things before, and it hasn’t hurt his business.”
“Sure,” Steve said. “All he did was get kicked in the balls. Twice. But, hey, he’s the only guy in the world that didn’t give a damn.”
“You’re wrong,” I said. “Because, look, you of all people ought to know that when they don’t descend, they can be a lot of places, or they can not be there at all, right? So Brenner’s are in a really weird place, which is a safe deposit box at the bank. So if you really want to kick him where it hurts, that’s what you go for. Jackie Miner didn’t exactly stroke his macho image, and what about whoever owns that Clumber spaniel? The people I told you about who bought the dog from the Metcalfs. They’re the ones who told Oscar Patterson about Brenner. It was their dog that made Patterson go after Brenner in the first place. So presumably they didn’t exactly tell Brenner they were thrilled with him, either, and nothing’s happened to them, at least as far as I know.”