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Feature - New Dogs, Old Tricks

Teaching new dogs old tricks

By Zippy the Dog

As told to G.D. Maxwell

Photos by Dog Cam

It all started innocently enough. "Load up. We’re goin’ for a ride."

I like car rides. Truck rides too. I’m not one of those dogs who cower and snivel at the thought of jumping into a car. I’m always ready to go. Cars don’t smell right unless I’ve been in them though.

I’ve heard stories from other dogs about car rides that went bad but I can’t say that’s been my experience. Well, maybe one ride. I’m still not sure exactly what happened. We went to see the funny smelling guy who pokes and prods me. I was woozy for a day or two and it hurt like the dickens back between my hind legs for a while. No long term effect though, least not as far as I can tell.

Other than that, car rides have been great. In fact, I’m a pretty well-travelled dog. I’ve been to the ocean – the water tastes funny – and I’ve been to the desert. What kind of sick joke is that place for someone who wears fur? Swam in lots of lakes, waded in lots of streams, climbed a few mountains. Never gotten sick and lost my kibble, never been forced to hold it so long I had to water the carpet or back seat. Yup, you could say I’m a wanderin’ fool.

But that ride, and a few that followed, coulda put any dog off gettin’ into cars.

What twisted mind thought up obedience school anyway?

I guess we’d better get one thing straight from the outset. Yes, I am a dog. Zippy the Dog. Zippity Doo Dawg if you can believe my full name. I’m a Lab.

And yes, I understand your language. Deal with it. Fact is, most of us – well not those little fluffy things that look more like fashion accessories than dogs – understand human barking. And I’ll let you in on a secret: you folks think way too much. And you talk even more than you think. Bad person. Bad, bad person.

But dogs, for the most part, are way too smart to let you in on our secret. We start talkin’ to you or pretend we understand what you’re barkin’ about, next thing you know, you’ll be expecting way too much from us. Why spoil a good thing? Besides, dogs understand each other and carry on rich conversations among ourselves. It’s not our fault if you’re too speciescentric to get with the program.

So why, you’re probably asking yourself, have I broken the code of silence? I had to. I owe it to my fellow dogs. That and the slave – what kind of pathetic delusion is this "Master" stuff anyway – who takes care of me keeps going on about making me get a job every time he sees Dogs With Jobs on television. As if. I’m a sporting breed, not a working breed. How hard is that to understand?

Anyway, I’m a dog, I can talk and this is the first and last time you’ll hear from me. You’ll get over it.

In case you hadn’t taken note, this is how a dog’s life ought to go. Wake up your slaves on your own schedule. Go outside. Visit whichever lawn in the neighbourhood seems to have had the most attention paid to it by its owner recently. Get fed. Lie in the sun and digest. Play. Nap. Chew something up. Play. Nap (Repeat as necessary) Get fed. Play some more. Sleep on the couch.

Pretty simple, isn’t it? Nothin’ too complex there. No stupid tricks; no getting’ dressed up in silly clothes; no jerky commands. And no jobs. Fact is, dogs get to lead such great lives because – I hope this doesn’t sound like boasting – well, because we’re superior beings. Darn near perfect. It’s no coincidence God is dog spelled backward. And you poor suckers think you were created in His image. Boy are you in for a surprise.

Sorry, this human language is fraught with peril. I understand how people can go on and on and on without ever getting to the point. Barking is so much simpler, more elegant. Maybe someday you’ll understand.

Where was I? Oh yeah, obedience school. Give me a break. Like I said, it all started innocently enough, though the car ride wasn’t what I was hoping for. I hate going to the village. Too may people clomping around, looking at the mountains, not watching where they’re going or whose paw is underfoot. Too many doors that open onto paws. One scary plastic cow – don’t laugh; it is so scary. And what’s with tying dogs up outside places instead of bringing us in? That is so uncivilized.

But when we got to where we were going, it wasn’t so bad. There were lots of other dogs I’d never met and that was cool. There was one who looked like me, a brown Lab, whose name was Tanner. Tanner was almost as handsome as me but boy, did he talk fast. I thought I was hyper until I met Tanner. There was another Lab, a yellow one named Timber who had, shall we say, an attention problem. Not his attention, his slaves. "They keep trying to get me to do things I don’t want to do," he’d say. Silly people.

With three Labs in the pack, we figured we pretty much owned the place. Just one problem. We were all leashed. Leashed! I’m only going to explain this one time and I’ll try to put it into words even humans understand. All you male slaves, think neckties. You females, pantyhose. Ties and pantyhose on a hot day. That’s the way dogs think about leashes. They’re about as welcome as fleas at a bitch session. That’s a dog joke.

But we were all leashed and it played havoc with us meeting each other and sorting out our order in the pack. It didn’t matter though, the humans had something else in mind.

"SIT!" they all seemed to say. Over and over again. I knew SIT but lots of the others didn’t and I wasn’t about to be the only showoff in the class. None of us sat. The humans were talking, we were talking, let me tell you, it was confusing. But then we started to move and it was a good thing. Tanner… did I tell you there was another Tanner? This Tanner was a little wiener dog and he needed a bush or an unsuspecting shoe in the worst way.

So off we went. Now, left to our own devices, we dogs follow our noses. Dogs would never have invented the straight line. But as soon as we tried to wander off too far, "NO!" the humans would bark and jerk on those damn leashes.

Free on leash is what the alpha human, I think her name was Tammy or maybe Joanne, called it. In a pig’s eye. Every time one of us gave a tug on the leash – just trying to get the humans to pick up the pace a little; those bipods are soooo slow – "NO!" and back our heads would snap. I think Timber, who didn’t want any of that action, may have needed a chiropractor after the session.

For an hour or two we practised free on leash. To be honest, I finally gave in. My neck was sore, my head was sore. It was easier to let the slaves think they were in control for a while. But you can bet I got back at them. Dogs have long memories. What was I talking about?

That was pretty much it. My humans made half-hearted attempts to do the free on leash thing during the next couple of days but they’re pretty understanding about how dogs really shouldn’t be on leash, free or not, except in very unusual circumstances. Life got back to normal.

Then we went for another car ride.

What? Again? There was the pack again and there were those dreaded leashes. Ilsa the German Shepherd was giving her slaves heck, so was Keisha the Golden Retriever. The only one who seemed to like the leash thing was Elmo. I’m not sure what kind of dog Elmo is. He’s pretty small and looks like Harpo Marx but has lots of energy. That’s surprising considering we found out Elmo was very sick. We discovered this when he came in with all his hair shaved off. Musta been chemo or something.

Anyway we knew something was up. We walked back to the Rebagliati Park – where it always smells like skunk cabbage… even in winter – and learned something called HEEL and SIT. Talk about fickle. Like I said before, I know SIT. It means take a load off, hang out. But what’s with HEEL? You start and stop, start and stop, start and stop. If dogs walked like that we’d never get anyplace at all. Please explain the point of walking 20 feet at your slave’s heel? Dogs belong up front, setting the pace, choosing the route, calling the shots. Humans follow. This sucks.

I was all set to bite someone and be an obedience school dropout. But the next time we got together as a pack, things weren’t too bad. "SIT!" the humans screamed. Don’t mind if I do, thank you. On the other hand, why sit when you can lie down. Well, let me tell you, as soon as I got comfy, jerk goes the leash. "ZIPPY, SIT!"

Now I’m getting confused. What’s the difference? Sit, lie down. Why should they care as long as I’m not running around. Jeez, I’ve seen them sit before. Hard for me to tell the difference between their sit and when a sit slouches into a lie down, which seems to work its way into sleep. I’m pretty sure that’s not a sit once they’re snoring, even if they’re still in a chair.

"STAY!" Stay? They’ve got me tied to a fence for cripessakes. Where do they think I’m going? On the other hand, if Timber pulls much harder, we just might get this fence down. That’d be a good one. Not to boast, but I’ve got this STAY thing pretty dialled. So does Rabin the Border Collie, although his STAY looks pretty intense, like he’s hallucinating about sheep or tearin’ out someone’s throat or something.

Chloe, the Jack Russell Terrier wouldn’t know stay if it bit her on the tush. Whadya expect of a Jack? Puffy and Fluffy – I wonder if their humans know how embarrassing that is, hope they don’t dress ’em up the same – are struggling with stay but the rest of us have it down. Now if I’m not mistaken, nap comes after stay.

Wrong again. Now we’re reliving the horrors of HEEL & SIT. Will this never end?

The next week – I’m beginning to see a pattern develop here – it was "COME!" Okay, I’ll play along. But as soon as I come, the dummies move somewhere else and yell "COME!" all over. That’s the problem with humans, they’re never satisfied. They move furniture, rearrange papers, change perfectly good clothes. I’ve decided humans, as a species, are just incapable of ever being satisfied. And I’ll give you a clue folks, COME is a lot better followed by T-R-E-A-T if you know what I mean.

But I came, I saw, I lost interest. I tried to get Tanner, the other chocolate, to pull the old switcheroo on our humans. "Not interested" he said. "You’ve got to go along to get along."

"Tanner," I barked loudly. "Snap out of it!"

This obedience thing is insidious. It sneaks up on you, works its way into your brain without you even noticing it. Without thinking, you begin to respond to their silly commands. You feel pleased when you see how happy they are you’re sitting or staying or whatever. Let me tell you, it’s spooky and somebody ought to do something about it.

I thought a lot about that all week. Tanner wasn’t the only one starting to change. Keisha was pretty snappy responding to commands. And Ilsa. Jeez, I half expected to see Ilsa serving coffee to her people. I resolved to be a hellion at the next class.

They musta seen through my plan. "DOWN," everybody yelled. Well now, that’s more like it. Down sounded pretty good right about then. As I eased into a comfy down, "STAY," they all shouted like puppets. Hmm, down and stay. With any luck, nap comes next.

Down and stay is, in the cosmic scheme of things a pretty easy command. Unless you’re a Jack Russell terrier. Chloe was bouncing around like a Mexican jumping bean, winding Elmo and Tanner the Dachshund up like cheap alarm clocks. "CHILL," I barked at them to no avail.

Ooh, ohh, there’s some new dogs coming into the park. "Let’s get ’em," some of us bark. I rise quickly. "DOWN!" Ouch. Who would have imagined a leash worked both up and down. "STAY!" No, wait, you don’t understand. There are new dogs in the park. We’ve got to go sniff them. It’s a rule. "STAY!" Cripes, you humans can ruin even a good command.

And so it went. There were more sessions. I learned STOP, and GO, which actually meant "GET OVER TO THE SIDE OF THE ROAD." We reviewed everything. The humans congratulated themselves for being so smart and then, get this, they all put us into cars and then "they" went out to celebrate. They went out to celebrate? We cooled our heels in cars?

That was the end of my formative period. To give them credit, my humans opted out of Advanced Obedience. I guess they can be taught. And sometimes, even though it’s over and they don’t bring that leash out very often, I acquiesce to their silly commands. It’s a small price to pay for having two of them wait on me hand and foot.

I wish they’d hang my diploma on the wall though. I don’t think very many people who meet me ever guess how obedient I am. Oh well, time to practice NAP.

Human Note: Zippy the Dog is a better dog for having "graduated" from obedience school. He’ll never admit it but, as you might have guessed by now, he’s a little cockeyed about the workings of the world. If he wasn’t so stubborn he’d heartily recommend any of the obedience sessions put on by the Puppy Zone. There’s another class in July. Tell them Zippy sent you.



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