Day: March 20, 2016

Fate has had what I considered a serious problem. She got so excited when she met new people that she jumped up on them, sometimes leaping up into the air and lunging at their face. This was not aggressive, it was an overabundance of emotion and enthusiasm.

And because she is so athletic, she could do it.

She knocked over one elderly woman sitting on a park in a yoga position, she nearly knocked down a frail man on a walker, she did knock down a painter riding on his bicycle. A lot of people encouraged the behavior, thought it was cute, or just her nature. I was daunted by the training task, Fate has an explosive amount of instinct and energy, hard to curb that in a dog without traumatizing them.

When she got excited, she lost control of herself, and that is not good for dogs or people.

I fell into the quite common trap of shouting at her all of the time to “get off,” and “no jump,” and being ignored.

Of course, I was just reinforcing the behavior and not curbing it. I have some absolute rules in my life with dogs. Never harm a person or another dog. Never go near the street. Ever. Never endanger people who are frail, young, elderly or infirm by leaping up on them and frightening or threatening them.

Fate had done this at least once in each category. It is terrifying to young children to have a dog leap up in their face, even to lick them.

These are felonies to me, they can’t be permitted or laughed away.

I finally hit on the proper and intelligent approach.

I should have done it months ago. I ordered a throw chain from Amazon, something I have used effectively to get dogs to come, stay, or “get off.” Dogs hate to have objects come down on them from the air, if a dog won’t come to me, I throw the chain over his or her head. The noise startles them and they turn to me, I praise them and say “come” and greet them enthusiastically. I may have to shake the chain once or twice, but then I put it away, I don’t need it any more.

It is very effective as a means of getting dogs to leave things alone, including people who don’t want to be approached. “Get off” is an essential command if a dog is nipping or biting or chewing on people’s hands or shoes or jumps on people.

This is a big deal, because every time a dog blows you off, you are teaching the dog to be a multiple-choice dog: maybe I have to do it, maybe I don’t. That often leads dogs to trouble.

If Fate doesn’t care to herd sheep, that’s fine with me, it’s her choice. If she wants to jump on people, it’s not fine, she has to stop doing it, it isn’t negotiable. A cardinal rule of dog training is to never give a dog a command you can’t be certain they will obey.

The Ace Hardware store in town, where there is always a jar of biscuits, became one of my primary training grounds.

Fate loves Nancy and the rest of the staff,  and Nancy loves Fate and biscuits are freely dispensed there.  There is much hugging and scratching and playing. An arousal festival for Fate.

Fate was leaping up on staff and customers and ignoring my commands to sit, stay and lie down.

I first used the choke chain when our petsitter Deb Foster came to the house. Fate goes nuts around  Deb (so does Red, but he never jumps on anyone) and leaps up on her.

I said “no jump” and Fate ignored me and I threw the chain at her feet. It took two more throws and Fate, rattled, watched me and obeyed instantly when I told her “no jump” and then, “get off.” I had to do this three or four times. Since Deb, we’ve had about a half-dozen visitors and I used the throw chain three or four times. I forget it the last time or two, I didn’t need it.

Today, a friend came to the house and Fate got excited but did not jump up. I held the chain in my hand, but didn’t use it. She sat up, was petted and  was appropriate. This afternoon, Maria and I went to the hardware store and I decided to do a major test of this training. The hardware store was ground zero for excitement and arousal  – dog lovers, biscuits, strange sights and sounds.

I walked Fate in off leash, she ran up to Nancy, and I jiggled the chain in my pocket. Fate sat down, looked at me – she was quite proud of herself –  and then got her biscuit.  I praised her lavishly, I hate the “up” voice, it sounds ridiculous to me, but I was clearly enthusiastic. Finally, I was reinforcing the right thing.

There may be people who believe throw chains are cruel. I would ignore them, they are no crueler than our use of them. I don’t hit the dog with it or use it in a way that traumatizes them, it is a powerful device to get their attention and live with them in love and harmony, not shouting and frustration. Like anything else, a choke chain is as thoughtful and effective as the person using it is thoughtful, restrained and precise.

But still, I don’t tell other people what to do. Every person is different, so is every dog. I’m sharing what works for me. I’m not Cesar, I don’t get off on telling other people what to do with their dogs.

I haven’t yelled at Fate in a month or so, I like it. That is the other end of humane.

Fate behaved perfectly, she went to find Maria down one of the aisles and then came back for another biscuit. Our focus and will is strong, if we really mean it, we will get the behaviors we want. That’s my lesson. I’m glad I didn’t look away at Fate and her jumping up, someone would have gotten hurt or frightened. This will also her her focus on me more (Maria got a chain also) help keep her grounded, safe and responsive.

I’m sure this training isn’t finished,  I am wary of hubris with a strong-willed dog, but we are very close, we will get there.

 

When Fate sets out to explore her vast meadow, she follows the deer trails, paths that the deers and coyotes take at night that criss-cross the meadow and make it easier for them to move from one place to another. I believe that dogs are spirit animals, they come for a purpose, and leave when their work is finished.

From the path, she can navigate easily, see a good distance, watch for frogs, chipmunks, rabbits.

Red came to me at a critical moment in my life, a peaceful, trusting, spiritual creature to take me from one place to another, from bedlam to a new bedlam farm. He is a grounding force, a companion, a comforting guide kind of dog. He was what I very much-needed and need still. He is a spirit dog, he comes to mark a passage, as dogs will.

When a new dogs comes into our lives, I know it is for a purpose and I wait to see the purpose revealed. Why has Fate come? What is her meaning to me? This is so important a question when it comes to our relationship with dogs, yet we so rarely ask the question, they are so close to use we can barely see it.

When I watch Fate in the meadow, I acquire perspective. I see her revealed.

She is not the joy dog, the mischievous, playful pup. She is powerful, serious, a creature of inspiration.  She is free, not bound to me, her identity exists outside of me and Maria. Why is she here, what is her purpose? It is to mark yet another passage, a transition from one place to another. Red’s work is by no means done, he is vigorous and young and healthy.

But Fate’s work is just beginning. She comes as I am beginning to get older, when many other people are beginning to retreat (I have older friends who will not bring any more animals into their lives because the animals might outlive them, as if the animals can not ever adapt to a new home) from their lives, when they embrace what is to me an especially disheartening and noxious, “downsizing.”

She comes as Maria’s artistry deepens and grows, Fate is her companion at work, alongside for the joy of creation every day.

Everyone must choose their own path, but Fate’s paths remind of mine. Life begins anew, every single day, it opens its arms to me and challenges and inspires me to make something meaningful of it. Life challenges me, people disappoint me, even hurt me, I stumble and fall, but there is life, right before me, waiting for me to make a joyous noise unto the world.

Fate reminds me every day to lift the lens. The chorus in the heart needs to sing.

In conversations with my friends, a dinner gatherings, in messages online, talk often turns to the problem of anxiety. How everyone is anxious or angry, how anxiety seems to be devouring us, bit by bit, overwhelming conversation. Increasingly, I think of technology as a primary source of this fear.

Bad and troubling news rains in on us day and night, there is almost no escaping it. The technologies that are supposed to save us time and make our lives easier and ease anxiety seem instead to be degrading our peace of mind, personal connections and quality of life. “Anxiety is love’s greatest killer,” wrote Anais Nin.

Conflicts that were once resolved face to face became hateful and hostile battles on social media.

Our devices and operating systems fail, and force into the frustration and resentment of finding ourselves in the cold and uncaring arms of corporations, who pretend to care about us but do not. We think in same-minded digital communities that  permit us to never think of be challenged or disagreed with. We are increasingly depended on data and social systems that make us confused and uneasy – and eerily dependence on things we cannot see or feel.

We are restless, we can be drawn into the maelstrom at any given moment, life is complex and requires lots of passwords and notifications. A complex life is an anxious by almost any definition. And who do we know whose life is not complex? The very advances that were supposed to make our lives simpler are overwhelming us and our sense of control.

More and more, we are pushed towards the resolution of problems that do not involve people, human voice, or social contact.  Often, no solutions or resolutions are possible. We are overwhelmed with information, much of it increasingly polarizing or useless, we have lost our privacy, dignity, and in many cases, community.

We have perhaps walked into our own traps, dependent on systems that control us, not the other way around, and make us feel vulnerable and helpless – anxious.

“Everyone has some relief – tennis, yoga, a massage every Thursday,” writes Christian Wimans in The Bright Abyss, “but the very way in which those activities are framed as apart from regular life suggests  the extent to which the relief is temporary.”

I have suffered from psychological, not technological anxiety for much of my life. I was  a valium addict for decades and was treated for anxiety by analysts, psycho-therapists, holistic and homeopathic healers, by  social workers and spiritual counselors. I still experience anxiety, but in a shadow form, literally a fraction of its former self.

Life itself makes me anxious – watching the news, listening to the angry rants of political leaders, watching the hyper weather channels selling their storms, struggling to keep my devices working, my passwords accessible, dreading the tire of any single computer, calling technical support. Any computer  can shut down my world at any moment and turn all the others against me.

I am, in some ways, more alone than ever, but far less lonely than when I lived in collective institutions – journalism, television. I sense there is no lonelier place to be for so many workers than in corporate environments like Amazon warehouses and big office complexes, where people are thrown away like garbage every day. Government feels far removed from us, something to resent rather than love and protect.

Wimans writes that there is a distinction to be made between the anxiety of daily existence, which we talk about endlessly, and the anxiety of existence itself, which we rarely talk about at all. In one form or another, I think we fear death and mortality, struggle to postpone or deny it to the extent than we can, only to find ourselves trapped in a different kind of trap, the struggle against a meaningful  and hollow existence. A common and likely danger, perhaps the most frightening of all.

For me, consciousness has been the cure for much of my anxiety. Consciousness is not an intellectual exercise, but an emotional one. We become conscious by being authentic, finding our voice, accepting suffering and death, comprehending our true selves and reality. Who are we, really, what is the ground upon which we are standing? What is the truth about ourselves that we need to face? And yes, how do we wish to die.

The challenge is that the institutions upon which we have always depended for solace, guidance and inspiration seem exhausted and remote. Religion, technology, politics have failed to uplift and comfort us. The corporations that now dominate our personal, political and cultural lives are neither responsive nor compassionate, that is not their purpose.

More and more, we turn to animals for the love and comfort and warmth that seems sometimes to be vanishing from our lives. They ease our anxiety.

I think being anxious is a hallmark of our times, something, like death, that should unite us, not divided us. The more aware I am of being anxious, the less anxiety I feel. The more aware of me I am, the more grounded and less fearful I am. After all, if you come to terms with death, our common fate, what is there really to fear?

 

 

Every morning, as we do our daily dogs runs and ball-throwing and exercise, Fate has developed a new and favorite trick: she ambushes Red.

As he does h is sweeping runs and outruns around the pasture, Fate races over to the skid barn, lies in hiding, and wait until Red rounds the corner, then she pounces, tries to startle him and races alongside him around the pasture. Red, one of the world’s most even-tempered and trusting creatures, never seems to notice Fate or avoid her, he just keeps on plowing head, his usual focused and undistractable self.

Fate is fortunate to have such a patient and tolerant big brother, if Red minds this game, he never shows it, and she manages to surprise him every single time. Fate loves this game, it is one of her favorites. Fun is where you find it.