Sin of the Month • Abby Bardi
	Obedience

The dog days are here again. So, to celebrate, I took my dog, Henry, to a psychotherapist.

Henry has been having some Òissues.Ó HeÕs very sweet most of the time, but every so often he goes into a frenzy of barking, perhaps because someone a mile away has sneezed, and when he really works himself into a swivet, he has been known to growl and lunge at people who approach him. The person he does this to the most is my husband, who is not really a dog person and doesnÕt appreciate being growled and lunged at.

For the past year, IÕve been attempting to find a solution to this problem. The obvious thing to try first was Obedience class. I found one not too far away, so every Tuesday night for ten weeks, Henry and I joined a bunch of other dogs and spent an hour mostly walking around in circles, first clockwise, then counter-clockwise, then clockwise again. Unfortunately, this activity did not make him any more obedientÑhe would still pull at the leash and occasionally lunge at the chicken breast I had cooked for him, snapping it out of my hand as if he didnÕt mind removing a finger in the process. He was very good at sits and stays as long as I was holding a hunk of Òbait,Ó but if he ascertained that no victuals were involved, he was not the least bit interested in sitting or staying.

Meanwhile, his ÒissuesÓ did not improve. In fact, in class, he was even more of a pain than at home. Each week when we entered the classroom, a large, warehouse-like space with terrible acoustics so that each yip reverberated in oneÕs head like an airhorn, he would spot all the other dogs and start freaking out, barking frenetically as if he had never seen them before and tugging at his leash as if he were going to beat them all up.

 ÒIf you donÕt do something, this dog is going to bite someone,Ó the teacher said to me.

ÒThatÕs why IÕm here,Ó I said, nearly bursting into tears. ÒIÕm trying to do something before he bites my husband.Ó

ÒYou need to dominate him,Ó she said, presumably meaning the dog. She instructed me to do a Òdominant downÓ on Henry every day, and of course, I did what I was told.

When we came back the following week, Henry started barking and freaking out as he always had. ÒYou didnÕt do the dominant downs,Ó the teacher said.

ÒYes, I did,Ó I said. Actually, I yelped it, as if someone had just stepped on my paw.

ÒHe wouldnÕt be acting this way if you had done them. You did them every day?Ó I nodded. ÒFor half an hour each time?Ó

I told her that she hadnÕt mentioned anything about doing them for half an hour. She told me to do them for half an hour every day. I was already spending nearly an hour every day grooming Henry; if you miss a day of brushing a young Tibetan Terrier, his fur will turn overnight into a giant clump. I had planned on writing my dissertation this summer, not spending all my time on Dog Maintenance, but I said okay, and Henry and I did another week of dominant downs.

The next week, he was still barking/freaking. The teacher accused me of not having done what she told me to do. ÒBut I did,Ó I whined.

ÒYouÕre not Alpha enough,Ó she said. I was expecting her to hit me on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper, but instead, she told me to walk around the ring with bait in my hand and get Henry to follow, taking it out of my hand as he heeled.

I started walking, but Henry didnÕt follow me. I turned to see where he had gone. ÒDonÕt look back!Ó the teacher snapped at me. I kept walking, then stopped. Again, Henry was lollygagging on the other side of the ring, indifferent to the bait (I hadnÕt had time to cook his chicken breast and was relying on packaged dog treats, which he feels are beneath him). ÒJust keep walking!Ó she yelled. ÒQuit turning around! Just walk in a circle!Ó

I started walking again, this time without turning to look at Henry, in fact, completing ignoring him. It was incredibly difficult, surprisingly so, and it was only later that I realized that I had spent my whole life turning around, looking to check how other people were feeling instead of walking in my own circle, minding my own business, and thinking only of my own agenda. No wonder my dog was a brat! I was the least Alpha bitch on the planet.

The next week when we came back, Henry was still behaving badly, but I was different. ÒIÕve had a psychological revelation,Ó I said to the teacher. ÒI let everyone walk all over me. I need to learn to be more Alpha.Ó

She looked at me like I was nuts. ÒOkay, everyone, start walking in circles,Ó she said.

After class, the teacher suggested that I buy a kind of halter collar, a Gentle Leader, for Henry and put it on him all the time. She told me about a Doberman who had been very dominance-aggressive and had turned into a different dog after two weeks of the Gentle Leader. Dutifully, I went to Petco the next day and bought one, and put it on Henry.

The next week, I stuck the Gentle Leader in my purse on the way to class. When we got there, the teacher asked if I had bought one. I said I had. ÒLetÕs make sure it fits him correctly,Ó she said. She adjusted it, then got me to bring Henry over to her so she could fit it over his snout. I did what she said, and you can probably guess what happened: Henry growled and lunged at her, then clamped his teeth down on my thumbs, which people have explained to me is called Òbiting,Ó though I am in too much denial to admit that.

In any case, I didnÕt blame him. In retrospect, I should have told the teacher ÒNo!Ó in a firm voice. But I was afraid of pissing her offÑshe was the Alpha Bitch of our little pack, and I wanted to remain in good standing with her, though now that I think about it, I have no idea why.

When the ten weeks of class were finally over, I confess that both Henry and I were relieved. Class had been torture for both of usÑfor me, not just because of HenryÕs terrible behavior, his constant tugging until my arm felt like it was being pulled out of its socket, and his loud barking, which still echoed in my ears hours later, but the terrible humiliation of being the person with the Bad Dog, the person who had failed as a trainer and was obviously too wimpy and incompetent to handle a dog properly. (I had owned two perfectly wonderful dogs before, but no one seemed to believe me about this.) I should have stuck to cats, I thought, regretting that I had ever gotten off the canine/feline fence and declared myself a Dog Person.

But the one really useful thing about the class was that one of our classmates, an Agility trainer herself with a perfectly-behaved Westie, gave me the number of a psychologist who specializes in dog aggression.

ÒYou poor thing,Ó the Dog Shrink said when I called her. She explained that she doesnÕt advertise, so that by the time people find her, theyÕve all been through hell.

I hadnÕt expected empathy from a dog trainer, but I liked it.

We set up an appointment, and when the day finally arrived, I stuffed Henry in the car, forcing my husband and daughter Hortense (who is back from France) to come with us, and we all drove fifty miles, mostly down country roads.

ÒThis dog is not dominance-aggressive,Ó the Dog Shrink announced at the end of our two-hour evaluation session. ÒHeÕs fear-aggressive.Ó She explained that some dogs are very reactive, and that small things can upset, even traumatize them. This could be genetic, or, as some homeopaths believe, a result of rabies vaccinations. But the upshot was that it was not our fault, and that the problem was not, in fact, my lack of Alpha Bitch-ness.

For a huge but well-deserved fee, the Dog Shrink is going to design a training program for us, and she thinks the chances are good that Henry can be helped to get over his unfortunate predilections, or, as she prefers to call them, Òbehaviors.Ó ÒAll those trainers who talk about Ôdominance,ÕÓ she mused. ÒNo offense to them, but most of them donÕt know what the heck theyÕre talking about.Ó

It was then that I realized that ÒdominanceÓ is the W.M.D. of the dog world. If thatÕs what youÕre expecting or even hoping to see, thatÕs what youÕll see.

Meanwhile, itÕs been such a relief to be able to give up on becoming an Alpha Bitch and go back to my wimpy ways. But I did learn a valuable lesson from my brush with obedienceÑto just keep on walking in my own direction, and not look back.