Confession: sometimes, I feel highly inadequate as a dog owner. It’s nice to hear other people, other dog people, admit the same. As I write this, I’m listening to an episode of the podcast “Sexier Than a Squirrel,” and Lauren just stated that she has felt the same at times in her past. This is a person with top level agility dogs that runs several dog businesses in the UK; she’s probably pretty competent when it comes to her dogs.
I say that I feel like I’m failing them at times because they can seem out of control, like they don’t pay attention or listen to me at all and will happily run after any rabbit or squirrel they see, bark at any dog that looks at them for too long or jump on any human that sends any attention in their general direction. I get frustrated when they exhibit these behaviors and lose my cool with them. I’ll even tell them that they’re “bad dogs,” which really isn’t true. They’re just dogs being dogs. Even perfect Flint received plenty of negative attention he didn’t really deserve at times from me.
Part of the issue is that, as was pointed out to me the other day, I do compare Rook and Magic to Flint, subconsciously or otherwise. Flint went to one Basic Obedience class at PetSmart when we first adopted him. Beyond that, we really didn’t make true attempts to train him. He just fell into our lives and our routines and went along with everything as it was presented to him. We rarely needed to correct him. We were so unbelievably lucky to know and have that dog in our lives. It’s unfair to hold any other dog to him as a standard because there was nothing “standard” about him. In general, it’s just wrong to hold any dog to another dog’s level.
The big problem with comparing two dogs to one another is that each one is an individual. They have their own quirks, their own strengths, their own shortcomings (all of which are somewhat in the eye of the beholder- just because a habit drives one person crazy doesn’t mean it will even register with someone else), their own likes and their own things that they just won’t tolerate. These traits are not necessarily wrong or right or innately good or bad.
Occasionally, when I feel my dogs have a long way to go with their training, I meet a client’s dog or a random dog at the park and think to myself that Rook and Magic are really not terribly behaved at all. My staff tells me all the time that they are not, in fact, bad dogs. I believe I’ve mentioned in a previous post that the Friday reception staff expects Rook to be behind the desk with them for at least the afternoon every week because, they tell me, he’s their “therapy dog.” Last weekend, we went out of town from late afternoon until about midnight for a family party. One of my technicians stopped by the house with her husband and young son to take the dogs for a walk and feed them dinner in the evening. All week last week, I would overhear her raving about how good Magic was, gentle with her son and walking at a slow pace without any tugging on her leash for her husband, who also had their son during their walk.
It always makes me happy and proud to hear positive feedback from others about Rook and Magic. It reminds me that they are in fact good dogs, even great dogs, in their own ways. Sometimes, they’re just better behaved for other people than they are for me. Last year, before lockdown, we traveled to Ireland for a week, and my tech that stayed at the house with them told me how she one day took my two for a walk with her own three dogs. At the time, I sometimes felt that I could barely handle just Rook and Magic on my own, forget about adding any additional dogs into the mix. I’m still impressed that she was able to do that with them, even though they’ve made great strides in the past year on their manners during walks. (It continues to be a work in progress.)
I hope that, in addition to continuing training, I can learn to just have more patience with them when they slip and make a bad decision to behave in a way that I don’t appreciate. I hope that some day we get to a point where they will both listen to me even when there is a cat under the bush next to us or the neighbor’s dog is barking at them, especially when it’s both of them, me and no one else around. Lack of patience is definitely something I feel I’ve always struggled with in certain situations. There’s plenty of room for improvement for all of us.
“All his life he tried to be a good person. Many times, however, he failed. For after all, he was only human. He wasn’t a dog.” ~ Charles M. Schulz
