Page 6 of Scout Takes the Lead
My body was pulsing with adrenaline, and Scout barked sharply. I looked down at the dog and then up at the guy, and I let the guy go.
“What the hell is your problem?” He didn’t wait for an answer, though—he darted across the street and a guy in a convertible with the top down blasted his horn.
“Sorry!” I called after him. I felt this urge to explain, but he was long gone.
4: Basic Training: Grace
My favorite workshop day is the first one, when I get to see who my new clients are. Not just the canine ones, though of course they’re my favorites. But the human ones, too. Young couples with their first puppy, a set of training wheels for having an infant. They were cute because they were still figuring out who was going to be the disciplinarian in their relationship. Who would fall for the puppy’s sad eyes, and who would enforce the rules.
There were always a couple of families with a kid’s first puppy. Five years old was often cited as the magic number to get a child a dog, though in my opinion it was more about the behavior of the adults than the age of the kid. Who was going to be the primary dog trainer? Was that person the real dog lover, and was he or she home often enough?
I’ve run into a lot of men who adored their dogs, but left most of the training and the cleaning up to their wives, which led to strife. Usually the kid was in the middle of those battles. It was important to know which parent was going to train the child, too.
There are a lot of ways you can make dog ownership a terrible chore, like forcing walks and cleanup on a kid who wants no part of it. Ideally, the dog-loving parent was the one who worked with the kid, passing on that canine love and making chores into expressions of affection. A kid who’s not squeamish can get a lot of delight out of picking up poop or combing tangles out of a dog’s hair. And seeing the love a dog expresses for a child can warm even the coldest heart.
Then there are the singletons. Young women who get big dogs, often for safety reasons, without understanding how strong the animals can be. Guys who think a small dog will be low-maintenance when it’s exactly the opposite.
I was surprised to see Alex and Scout that Saturday morning. Though he had promised to show up, he looked like the kind of guy who was so self-reliant he thought he could train a dog himself, without understanding any of the basics.
He was hovering near the front door with Scout and I walked over to them. “Hey,” I said. “I’m glad you could come.”
“I’m not sure I can stay,” he said. “It’s kind of crowded.”
A pair of cute twenty-something boys had a Papillon that shivered with fright, with a yip that could cut through ice. Two women, both in hospital scrubs. One had a pit bull mix, the other a poodle. Then a flighty-looking guy with an orange streak in his hair whose puppy looked very much liked Scout, the same gold and white coloring and the same pointed snout.
The fear showed on Alex’s face. Afraid of getting shown up by a girl? Afraid of another dog attacking Scout? Or something else? “I tell you what,” I said. “I’ll give you the last chair against the wall, right by the door, and if either your or Scout feel uncomfortable you can scoot outside.”
Something warred behind his eyes as he looked from left to right inside the room.
“All right, we’ll give it a try,” he said. He stepped inside and immediately moved the last chair in line a few feet farther away from the nurse with the poodle. Scout sat obediently on the floor beside him, though he occasionally looked over at the poodle with interest.
First up was the “heel” command. I started with the guy with the orange hair because his dog was so lively he was disrupting everyone else. His name was Kenny and his dog was Cheyenne.
“Not after the western town but after the actor?” he said, with a question mark at the end of his sentence. “Cheyenne Jackson? He’s my favorite. He’s so handsome.”
I noticed he gave Alex a side glance. While Alex’s face was longer and narrower than the actor’s he had the same height and square build. I took Cheyenne’s lead and told him to heel. He looked up at me like I was speaking a foreign language to him—-which of course I was.
Cheyenne had the same long snout as Scout, the same square head and gold coloring. And the same huge paws. Both were going to be big dogs. But right now he was a puppy, and I could manhandle him into position beside me.
When he walked there for a minute, I gave him a treat and praised him with “Good heel.” Then we started again and immediately he wanted to sniff other dogs.
I yanked gently on the lead and said, “Cheyenne. Heel.” It took a couple of tries before he got the picture.
I spread everyone out in the room and told them to practice. I was surprised at how well Scout did. It was clear that Scout and the pit bull mix were the best students. The Papillon and Kenny’s Cheyenne were the worst.
While everyone continued to practice, I walked over to Alex. “Have you been working with him?”
“I bought a book on dog training,” he said. “And like I told you, I have a lot of time to work with him. I learned you have to get his attention first and then demonstrate what you want him to do, and praise him when he does it. Just like you’re teaching.”
“It’s obviously working. What are you using for rewards?”
“I ran through those T-bone treats the first day,” he said. “So I cut up a couple of hot dogs into small chunks and nuked them in the microwave. Scout and I practice walking, both in the house and outside, and I reward him with hot dog bits and lots of praise. He’s a smart dog, and he already understands sit and stay.”
“Great. I can use him later.”
I walked to the front of room before Alex could protest. All the dogs were learning to heel, and eventually I staged a parade up and down the room so both dogs and owners could see how heel worked when they were out and about.
It was comical to watch Kenny and Cheyenne try to follow instructions. The only thing Cheyenne could do was lie down and roll over—and I had a feeling that wasn’t something he’d learned.
