What does it take to make a group of 15 adults and children stand around uttering inane cooing noises and falling all over themselves with delight? Answer: a puppy. In this case a round butterball of a golden retriever named Stella. A welcoming committee of friends and relatives is gathered at my older daughter’s home. “She looks like a stuffed animal!” people keep exclaiming.
Nine-week-old golden retriever puppy Stella. (Photos by Lisa Aciukewicz)
“Watch this,” says my daughter, and she tells Stella to sit, whereupon (or shortly after) the puppy parks her substantial rump on the floor. We are all duly impressed. I know my daughter has been studying “Golden Retrievers for Dummies” as though she were preparing for a degree. And she has definitely taken to heart the book’s admonition: “There’s only a short window of opportunity to turn your puppy into a good dog.”
I am optimistic for her, but I know from experience how easy it is to lose that determination. I had similar high hopes when I got my black Lab Hattie nine years ago. Alas, the window started shutting almost as soon as it opened.
One of the books I read told me to train the puppy to wait until you say “OK” before it eats the food in its dish. That went really well for us and to this day when I feed her, Hattie will look at me until I give the OK. This early success, however, is far outweighed by my inability to have trained her not to jump on the counter to eat the loaf of bread I have carelessly left there, grab a bagel from a child’s hand at perfect nose level, or lure me to the door on the pretense of needing to go out and run back to finish my lunch before I realize I have been fooled once again.
Hattie (left) and Stella tear around the front yard.
Another success was the command “Leave it” when I would put a treat on the floor. Hattie, also possessed of a substantial rump (I was alluding to earlier description of Stella, but … ), would look at me eagerly but wouldn’t move until I told her OK. All of which made me even more furious every time I ran after her up one staircase and down the other screaming “Leave it,” along with some other not-proper-dog-training words, while she pranced happily ahead with a pair of underpants or a thawing chicken breast or a favorite glove. In our older age we have reached a truce. Now she doesn’t sprint away so fast and is usually willing to “trade it”—my possession for a dog treat. Of course this bargaining has its limits, not applying to stolen food that’s way better than the proffered treat.
Walkie walk!
I don’t know how it happened, but of the many commands I could have chosen to use while training the dog to walk, Barbara Woodhouse’s “Walkies!” from her book “No Bad Dogs” stuck in my mind. Worse, I modified it to an even more embarrassing “walkie walk.” I never did master the rest of the lesson, which was to “jerk it [the dog]on gaily,” but instead allowed dawdling and endless sniffing so that any walk took 10 times as long as it should have. Still, these days, when we’re getting nowhere fast on a walk, I say in as low a voice as possible, “Hattie, walkie walk,” and for several feet we make real progress.
Stella and Hattie in a rare moment of rest.
We tried obedience school. One in Littleton was offering clicker training, a new method that was all the rage, kind of like the buzz over Ferberizing babies. I remember we humans had an indoctrination given by a man who clearly saw himself as a messiah of the gospel according to clickers. The idea was that you trained the dog by using this clicker, which you timed to precisely coincide with the proper response—or something. You were not to use words of praise or to give idle affection as they interfered with training. In a big practice room, Hattie and I were doing pretty well until I—not Hattie—was caught misbehaving. The trainer stalked over to me and said, “No talking to your dog.” I’m sure the method works for some people, but Hattie and I were out of there. What did these people think Hattie was, a dog?
So no, my good intentions for dog-training ended up as more pavement for that proverbial road. Still, maybe some things are more important than absolute obedience and perfect behavior. Aunt Hattie met Stella for the first time the other day. She tried to be gentle and not step on or squash Stella, she licked her affectionately, and she patiently tolerated puppy nipping. So, yes, I wish my daughter good luck in her training, but if she too misses the “short window” and Stella turns out to be like Hattie, sweet and loving, maybe that’s OK.
