We have a dog, and not just any dog but a jet black Lab\Boxer mix that’s going to be huge and with a big brain to boot.
Pray for us.
It’s a really nice dog, all told, but you must realize: I never grew up with dogs. Don’t know anything about them, and am surprised at how much they are like a two year old. The farthest I was ever able to get with my parents was to have a gerbil – yes, a gerbil – and the most excitement you can have with a gerbil is when it gets lost in the walls (which one of mine did, to the excitement of my parents) and then its fun to have a gerbil.
Anyway, back to our dog.
Sir Winston
I take the dog on walks down the road, and I often talk to it, telling it that it may have trials in this world but they are good for it, and it’s always good to obey what you know to be right and to be thankful even for its kennel cage and God loves it – this little dog – and all the while it is sniffing the grass and stopping to dig up a dead rodent under the snow-covered leaves, and I’m telling it that I too have trials but not about doors to the great outdoors that could be open but are not but other ones, and so we walk down the road, it on its leash and I it’s master, and it’s all very idyllic, for a dog is a mans best friend, after all.
He may be my best friend, but I prefer a best friend with better manners. He has about as many manners as a two year old (referenced above), and everyone knows that two year olds are totally uncivilized. Child rearing is mainly the art of civilizing these dear ones, taking them from the primitive ape stage and making something more cultured out of them, something on the line of Leave It to Beaver or South Park if you are less successful. It’s a lot of work and and hopefully a labor of love, but a labor it is.
It is similar with a dog. I’ve gone to the park and seen dog owners pleasantly strolling their dog, their little pup on the leash ever so nicely trying to keep up with the good and kindly master, never barking and never – heaven forbid – pulling on the leash. We have yet to reach that stage with dear Winston (that is his name) who finds outside like a montage of moving freaks of nature (chickens and cats) overlaid with blessed rotting smells of dead mice and birds decaying under the frozen leaves (trophies of the cats) – all against a backdrop of geese flying South way high up in the deep blue, cold sky. At all of it, he bolts in the direction of the next amazing thing he’s found in this world – his dog brain is so taxed with psychedelic overload he just cannot be mannerly.
Not exactly your park dog, but we are trying to train him up and get some civilized behavior in him. I am, after all, the master, so me being a testosterone-laden male of the homo sapiens species, I insist that I – not he – lead the pack, and so when he insists on chasing one of our three cats, I yank him into my orbit, say “Come” and continue walking, and he has only one option: to follow; me the master and he the dog. This is how God intended it.
So he did, and in an amazing act of dog ownership and completely out of character, I took little\big Winston out to the school grounds by myself to walk him and breath some fresh, Upstate NY, air. He rode sitting up in the passenger’s seat just like my wife or teenagers would and, he being big even though a puppy, set off the bing bing bing of the alarm because he was not buckled (bing bing bing all the way to the school), and when I had to come to a sharp stop, suddenly he was shot under the glove compartment box; he made his way back into the seat like the clumsy baby giant he is, slipping on his way up the leather seats and in one burst, he hoisted his body back to its commanding position. I’ve never had a dog, and he never rode with me, so it was an adventure for both of us.
It was here at the school after hours that his manners were poor in regard to socialization with humans; every human we came upon was his long lost friend, and all had to be greeted with two paws to their chest; it was so exciting to see these good old long lost buddies – buddies that he happened to have never seen before – that his tail wagged furiously and he was full of kisses. We, however, could not have any of this, and the parent-master in me had to find its voice and go to action, so I said sternly like a master in complete control, “Sit,” and knelt next to him while also pressing his rear end down. He sat. I don’t know if this was the right tactic – I’m a novice dog owner – but its the best I had at the moment, and none of his new good friends got mauled by his kindness.
His manners at home also leave something to be desired, and I am often reminded by my kids that he is just a pup, a toddler in the dog world. Ok, I get it. They want me to understand about this dog thing, so in a crazy rage I don’t throw him in the car and drop him off twenty miles from home. His pup-ness being the case, I give him a long line, especially when he pees on my floor, nips at my clothes and takes food off the kitchen table (my dinner). It’s all part of owning a dog, and with so many things to work on you wonder why they still come out on top as man’s best friend. No, we have to train him up, and a friend of ours says bad behavior described above demands a response, and he takes his dog right down to the floor and yells “No” in its face if the infraction is serious enough. This is heavy-duty disciplinary action, to be sure, and should not be replicated when dealing with toddlers of our own species.
He is a smart dog – I mentioned that – so the good news is after several firm “Down”s, he no longer gets anything off the table or counters. He’s pretty good with peeing and pooing outside also, but like a toddler has his accidents. (Recently, I remember being glad that we were out of the toddler stage, didn’t I?) Nipping at clothes is also not allowed, and sometimes he will nip at our youngest child, Tim, who at 11 and in his high pre-puberty voice, tries to be the top dog in the relationship and yells at Winston like a choir boy, “NO!” but somehow it doesn’t carry the same weight as the teenagers deep, manly voice. I think the dog really thinks he is very low in the pecking order but is at least in front of Tim, because he nips only at Tim. We will have to see how this plays out, and if puberty helps the situation.
Such is the dog owner’s life, and not only do we have to be good parents to our eight children, the pressure is on to be a good dog owner, to train him up in the right way so we end up with a mannerly, pleasant-to-be-around dog. Am I up to it? I think I am, but suddenly the light has shone and cats – cats who I have historically always half hated … those tiny, lovable fur-encased killing machines, they now seem like the perfect pet. Who knew?
Cancer Chronicles 