Bad Dog (17 page)

Without the treats, she is definitely calmer. Focused on the air, the ground, her endless search for something edible, her nonstop recon for another little dog to vote for her.

I am not making this up or imagining things that did not happen when I admit: our relationship changed within a single day.

I don’t do anything different. Not really. Just give myself permission to lead.

Dominance is hardly scary—not like I’d imagined. It’s not a battle of wills between two armed combatants. It’s more like an off-site with HR where people are given new titles and a performance review. The review might be unsettling for a moment or two, but after that, we just act our pay grade; and we are relieved by the routine of knowing where it is that we fit in the organization that allows us to honor our bills.

To the dog, training is like a daily performance review, so it needs to be delivered in the language that they speak.

By leading, we are taking on stress on behalf of our dog. We are assuming responsibility to negotiate the world, especially that part more than one or two feet off the ground. Studies have shown leaders have higher blood pressure than followers. Leaders have more stress hormones in their blood. Despite what business books may tell you, leadership is not the natural state of most people, or dogs. We may not be born to run—but we are usually born to follow.

Our new relationship is expressed in small moments of awareness and intention; I’m aware of what she is doing now every moment of our working time. And a walk is mostly working time. Strong leadership takes vigilance, monitoring, care.

Take it from one who knows well: part of the reason a lot of us want our dogs to be free and not looking to us all the time for instructions is because we cannot be bothered with the alternative.

Being a leader is a
lot
more work—and I don’t mean for the dog.

At the door I say, “Sit,” and she sits. I walk through. Her caboose leaves the ground before I say okay, it’s
Grrr
.

Back.

“Sit.” Sit. “Okay.”

She follows me through the door.

There are two doors: we do it twice.

There are three stairs beyond the second door.

She sits at the top of the stairs. I go down the stairs.

Wait.

“Okay.”

If she breaks the sit, even if it’s just to stand and wait for me, it’s
Grrr
.

Go back up the stairs. Sit, stay; go down the stairs.

Wait.

“Okay.”

Crossing the lobby requires an immediate heel: “With me!” I say.

Pat my leg with my left hand. Indicating she follows me at heel.

Down. Down-stay. People pass. They smile. She has to stay.

Her tail twitches on the marble slabs.

She wants so badly to jump up on these people it’s almost like she can taste the salt in their eyes. But no. Okay.

At the elevator, she can’t stand and sniff and wait for a dog to appear through the crack in the miracle door. It’s a sit, a down, stay,
Grr
, again, stay,
Grr
, repeat, rinse, recycle, remember.

Then again, if you think she’s just going to be trotting out through the elevator door on our floor, you haven’t been paying attention. It’s a wait for me; leaders first.

And the hall. Don’t get me started on the hall—ending in a sit outside our door, and as I open it, she stands. Because dinner is inside there somewhere, somehow. But
Grrr
. Nope. Close door, sit again, wait wait wait. Open door. Stand.
Grr
.

Until she waits as it’s opened, as I go inside, look into her face, and say the magic word:

“Okay.”

Of course she has to sit or down before she gets her dinner bowl.

Not to mention five or ten minutes on the wood flooring of the living room practicing our down-stays—the command she’s been forgetting for years.

Hola doesn’t like her new trainer
.

Now, what is my point in describing all this? To drive you to tears? Send you into the loving arms of Satan?

No, it’s this: to ask you to think about what I’ve just described. Is that how you get your pushy, troublemaking bitch from the front door to the dinner bowl? Well, why not? Lorena isn’t teaching us competitive obedience handling here. I’m not getting Hola ready for the show rings or the OTCH trials. What I’m talking about is making a nice, friendly pet.

See what I mean about laziness?

Isn’t it more natural for people like us to put up with a little growling in the lobby, a few avoidant neighbors, a nip or two on the leash, for a little freaking freedom of our own?

Because leading your dog, I’m beginning to see, is a job. And it’s much more of a gift to the dog than a convenience to the owner.

T
HE MIGHTY
B
ERNESE MOUNTAIN DOG
, capstone of canine creation, apex of Mount Woofy, is not, apparently, the perfect pet. According to the AKC’s official description, repeated over the PA at televised breed shows such as Westminster, “This is not a breed for everyone.”

The AKC boilerplate tends to be written in a kind of soft code, a muted set of pastels instead of vivid colors of truth. Compare that note to the harsh warning officially attached to another notoriously difficult large breed: “Malamutes are great family dogs.”

Huh?

In context, “This is not a breed for everyone” means something like:
“Stop, drop and roll, dude! Run and don’t look back!”

Nonetheless, the Berner’s Cary Grant–like charm and striking looks, aided by a featured appearance in the film
Hotel for Dogs
, are only making it more popular, even in cities. Among the 164 breeds recognized by the AKC, the Bernese mountain dog ranks #40, up from #63 just ten years ago. It’s more popular than bloodhounds, St. Bernards, border collies, greyhounds, and Irish setters. More popular than dalmations, for God’s sake.

More than five years too late, I take the “Compatibility Profiler” test offered by the Bernese Mountain Dog Club of America.
Typically, it starts, “Are you right for the Bernese Mountain Dog?” As I’ve pointed out, acquiring a purebred has more in common with applying to the Trinity School than shopping at Target.

It is a lifetime commitment, even if that lifetime is not often very long.

Here are some of the questions and my answers:

The profiler’s verdict is not encouraging: “Certain of your responses indicate that a Bernese Mountain Dog is not suitable for you.”

Now you tell me.

The first Bernese mountain dog organization was established in 1907 in the canton of Bern, Switzerland, with seventeen members and about thirty dogs. These were very much working
farm animals: milk and cheese cart pullers, watchdogs, and cattle drovers. A picture of one of the first dogs registered, Belline, shows marked points of difference from today’s standard: a lower, sloping head; a wider muzzle; a higher-sitting and skinnier torso; and a noticeably flatter coat. He looks more like a rottweiler than a modern Berner.

In the 1930s, a wealthy American named Mrs. L. Egg-Leach moved to Switzerland and was struck by a dog she thought was a tricolor collie pulling a milk cart. She introduced the breed to Americans in her 1935 article, “The Bernese Is a Loyal Dog of the Swiss Alps,” published in the
AKC Gazette
. In it, she echoes many Berner owners in recalling her first real-world sighting: “I think I lost my head at the time.”

A few years later, the Bernese mountain dog was recognized by the AKC.

To correct a drift toward shyness and occasional aggression, a Swiss breeder in the 1940s decided to cross a Berner with a purebred Newfoundland. Newfies are truly gentle giants, beloved by Byron and Emily Dickinson. The result was a thicker-coated, sweet-natured dog, the legendary Alex v Angstorf. He was an international champion, sire of fifty-one litters, and almost all Berners in the United States today are descended from him or his sister.

Still, by the early 1970s, there were only a few hundred registered dogs in the United States. It wasn’t until the 1990s that their popularity really climbed a mountain.

One nineteenth-century Swiss assessment of the breed shows that Hola is probably not all that different from her European ancestors: “They are rural in character and generally do not possess fine manners by themselves. From this it does not necessarily follow that they cannot be trained during their youth, as other dogs. But being obedient is often forgotten.”

• • •

B
ECAUSE IT IS A WIDE-OPEN SPACE
, our building’s lobby has been the site of some of Hola’s ripest antics. Past the doorman station, which holds Hola’s favorite people on earth—namely, doormen—there are three steps down into a large marble lobby, three steps to a doggie paradise of rolling 360s, wild barking, nails slipping on rock.

In the past.

Now I make her wait at the top of the steps as I go down.

“Okay.” I release.

Her eyes glimmer with recent memories of spectacular demolition derbies, drawing crowds, Bernese gone wild … until my
“Grrr!”
reminds her of something … something important … she’s thinking as we walk …

By the time she remembers to misbehave, she’s already doing automatic sits around the lobby perimeter.

It is during one of these automatic-sit sessions that I get a call from my friend Lilian, one of the best-known breeders of Bernese mountain dogs in the country. I’d met her at Responsible Dog Ownership Day in Madison Square Park, where she had a booth promoting the Bernese Mountain Dog Club of America, and we got to talking about her website.

“It’s terrible,” she’d said, one of her champion Berners standing calmly at her side. “I just learned e-mail as a senior citizen. It’s a big problem for me.”

I mentioned that, gosh, I happened to work in the Internet business myself, and I’d be happy to lift a mouse finger for the glorious cause, an offer she rapidly accepted.

For her site, I conducted an interview with her about her kennel and posted pictures of her litters and stud dogs. Lilian was the real deal: her kennel dominated the Bernese breed rings
in the 1990s; her daughter had handled the best-in-show winners at Westminster two years in a row. (They were not Bernese mountain dogs, although one was the famous Newfoundland Josh.) Although semiretired, Lilian remained a grand lady in the breed.

A native Swiss, she has exactly the same friendly, warming presence I associate with her dogs.

“I wonder if you can do me a favor,” she asks in her slightly accented English.

“Okay.”

“Have you heard of Meet the Breeds?”

“Yes.”

And who hasn’t—posters for it are up all over Manhattan. It is AKC’s blowout event at the Jacob Javits Center, where every one of the 161 recognized breeds would be present, along with every breed of cat. Because there is also going to be a CGC demonstration, I have already bought a ticket.

“I’m doing the Berner booth,” she says. “And I was wondering if you could bring Hola.”

“What?”

“My dogs might need a break; it’s two long days, Saturday and Sunday. Can Hola come and help out?”

“You want
Hola
to represent the breed?”

“Yes, dear.”

“At the biggest event of the year?”

“Yes.”

“
My
Hola?”

“Why not? She’s a wonderful dog. Do you think she can’t do it?”

To be fair, Lilian met the actual Hola at the park, so she knows she is not a show-quality animal. I look down at my bête noire, holding her sit on my left side quite beautifully and looking up
at me, beseeching me for a cookie, a crumb, a mere molecule of food. Her eyes blink and glisten. Can you spell
manipulative?

“Of course,” I lie. “We’d be honored to go. Thanks for asking.”

Only a few seconds after we hang up, I am already regretting what I said.

When we get home, I call Gloria and tell her the good news. Three times. It is difficult for her to understand why anyone would want our dog to represent anything other than a cautionary tale.

“Are you sure she had the right number?” she asks.

“Be supportive,” I say. “This is Hola’s big break.”

“She gets very stressed out. How many people are going to be there? Did Lilian tell you?”

“There could be agents,” I say. “Movie people. Broadway produ—”

“You’re not being fair to her. Think about the dog, Marty. She’s not a show dog.”