“After going through this period of difficult training, Victory Princess became loyal and devoted, even more protective of me than the other dogs. Actually this is true of all of my most difficult dogs. If a dog has a behavior problem or is more difficult, I wind up having a close relationship with it. We have a special bond that I don’t have with the others. they become really cute actually, and sensitive.” -Morie Sawataishi. From Martha Sherrill’s book Dog Man
In my dream this morning, Sage and I were walking together on the road and we came upon a children’s birthday party that spilled out onto the street. There were parents, playing children and a small plastic pool, dogs and a shetland pony wandering into the road. I was surprised to look aside at Sage and see him not reacting- he was looking around just walking with me. We then passed some tall landscaping guys carrying big metal pieces of machinery, and I spoke with them (about goaltending, actually) but Sage sat beside me and ignored them. I did not know how this suddenly changed in Sage, because you don’t always know you are dreaming until you wake up, but I was very happy.
It is a simplification to say that he is either a golden retriever or a problem. I never did expect him to be some ideal movie dog. I love Reilly dearly and she is not the classic definition of an ideal dog, either. She is a real dog though, with a real personality. (Caninality? no, the point must be made that whatever we mean by a personality, it is not exclusive to human beings.) Sage is a real dog, too, with a completely different personality- and if I try to imagine the ‘best’ he can be, it is still wary and alert. He will always be dependent upon me to manage his public encounters. What I can expect to improve with training is to increase his calmness in low-stress times, and to increase the time we have to escape the higher stress things before it becomes too much for him. He will never be easy-going. I know this and I can love this. It would be a stretch to think that his natural personality is very much different from what he is doing now.
I was thinking the other day about how often I have talked with people about dogs and listened to them describe a dog they had once with these words, “He was great! you could do ANYTHING to that dog.” What the heck? They go on to describe the children’s antics the dog patiently endured, the injuries and rudeness he submissively put up with. By contrast, as I was trying to remember the words to “My Favorite Things” with Raye, we came to the chorus “When the dog bites, when the bee stings, I simply remember my favorite things and then I dont feel so bad.” The song says basically: Hey, bees sting- it’s what they do- dogs bite, it’s what they do, so for god’s sake respect both of them and if you DO get injured by these creatures by not giving them space, just think about whiskers on kittens and get over it.
Apparently at some point, it was common sense that dogs can bite if you are careless or annoying, and at another, later, point we value the ‘best’ dogs as ones you don’t have to be careful or respectful of, “would never bite” -ers. My dogs are real dogs and while I consider them fair, as large toothy animals I would not expect them to tolerate children sitting on them or taking stuff away from them and do not ask them to. Instead, I am proud of the children I trust to enjoy my dogs, Raye and her friend Molly, who are respectful of animals and kind to them. I wont brag about my dog’s exceptional tolerance- they are not exceptionally tolerant, they are merely typically tolerant- I WILL go on about the girls though: “Those kids are GREAT, they ‘get’ animals.”
