Authors: Martin Kihn
“Good girl,” I say. “Okay.”
She stands and I grab the leash, praising her lavishly, and put her into a heel for our trip back to Gloria. I let Gloria pet her for a minute—a touching mother and child reunion.
“I see you two have been busy,” Gloria says. “I’m impressed.”
“She’s doing good.”
“You two look great,” she says. “Healthy.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m late for my riding lesson. I have to go. Sorry.”
“That’s okay.”
She looks at me, expectantly, and I think she is going to tell me something.
“Can you move the car?” she says. “I can’t back out.”
Hola sleeps most of the way back to the city, until we get to the bridge to Manhattan, when she starts whining.
I say, “I know how you feel, girl. I know exactly how you feel.”
W
HEN WE GET BACK HOME
there is an e-mail message from the AKC saying that Mary Burch will talk to me. When I get her on the phone, it turns out she’s a genetically warm woman with a deep-fried southern accent and an acidic sense of humor.
I tell her I enjoyed Meet the Breeds very much.
“It was better than the typical dog show,” she says, “because you’re not just preaching to the converted.”
“Yeah, there were civilians there. Families.”
“That ring where I did the demos was too small, scrunched in the middle like that. We won’t do it like that again.”
“The CGC is important,” I say. “It should be out in the main ring.”
“How’s your dog doing with it?”
Here, I describe a moving narrative of our struggle with item #10.
“The mistake people make with that one,” she says, “is they don’t train for it. They show up at the test and expect the dog to do it without ever having practiced. Owners are confused because it doesn’t look like a trained behavior in the sense of sit or down.”
“It does seem like it should be easy,” I say. “But Hola starts getting upset after twenty seconds.”
Mary Burch breathes out dramatically, as people often do when contemplating the logic of dogs.
“Some dogs,” she says, “can do separation from the day they are born. They are hang-loose dogs who are happy to hang out and wait for you to come back. For dogs who have bonded strongly with their owners, this can be a difficult item.”
“Yup.”
She tells me to try shaping it with a cue every time, like “Wait,” and starting with a few seconds’ absence, gradually increasing the duration of the separation, second by second. Which sounds fine until I remember that the specified separation period is three minutes long. That’s a lot of seconds to pile on one by one.
“We have a dog at home, he’s a UD”—Utility Dog, an advanced title obtained by fewer than one-tenth of one percent of dogs in the United States each year—“and I don’t know if he’d pass that item. He’s so attached to my husband. But he hates me. I take the leash, and he sneers at me and goes three steps away.”
“Sounds like we have a preferred-parent situation.”
“And how.”
She talks about how the CGC evaluator wants to see “some shred of relationship between the handler and the dog,” one in which the dog pays attention and the handler is fair. And we talk about items that were modified over the years, how evaluators get some leeway in the ring, and what the program is really all about.
“Every year thousands of dogs are abandoned to shelters because of behavior problems,” she tells me, with obvious passion. “And these are things that can be corrected with just basic training. Dogs are being killed because of lack of training, and that’s what the Canine Good Citizen program is all about.”
A
FEW NIGHTS LATER
, I am sitting on my sofa in front of the television rereading Susan Conant’s latest Holly Winter book,
All Shots
, eating Oreos, and running my fingers through Hola’s freshly shampooed fur: “Behind every so-called coincidence,” Conant writes, “lies a series of connections, some small, some large, that, if traced back far enough, lead inevitably to the great source of meaning and purpose in this otherwise senseless universe, namely, dogs.”
Ruby is kneading the sofa cushion at my head like there is a rush order for a dozen tiny pizzas.
The TV is muted, since I prefer to imagine that what is being said is more interesting than it actually is. A promo spot comes on for a show about “ordinary” people who suddenly lose their minds and do terrible things. Usually, it turns out these so-called ordinary people had a long history of drug abuse and mental illness, but, still, it’s a cautionary tale. Gloria watched this show regularly; I could always tell when it was on because she would call me at work and suddenly thank me for not running a meth lab or having a secret sex slave. I am grateful to
48 Hours: Mystery
for making me look good. And I am feeling mutedly hopeful about our CGC test, scheduled for the coming weekend.
The now-silent program is Conan O’Brien’s
Tonight Show
, before it gets canceled, and his guest is Gabourey Sidibe, the
young star of the searing dramatic tour de force
Precious
. I hadn’t seen that particular tour de force myself, since I avoid suicidally depressing films, but her silent charm makes me unmute the sound on the TV and listen up.
Gabourey says something modest and moving; Conan responds with a comment so glib it blinds the eyes; there’s a trickle of laughter; and as it’s dripping down, Gabourey utters a word I cannot believe I am hearing.
A single word that has convinced me to this day that we are all connected in this life, that our smallest actions—if done with conviction and in a spirit of service—can yodel through the canyons of this country like a warning from a village on the farther shore of love.
She says: “Totes.”
… S
O WE ENTER THE RING
.
Hola weighs in at a trim and angular eighty-five, a solid weight, all sinew now and deep fluffy fur. Carefully rinsed, raked, and combed out for her Canine Good Citizen test. Her coloring is glorious in the harsh interior light of the Port Chester Obedience Training Club, blasted by a winter blizzard: white paws a-trot, grounding a deep black torso and cottony chest as white as spun sugar. A streamlined muzzle with a brush of blaze driving up her nose to those determined amber eyes.
She trots into the center and I whisper, “Okay, girl. It’s on!”
The ref comes toward us, wearing a gym teacher’s smile, in regulation baggy jeans, pale-blue sweatshirt, and graying hair over snowy skin that hasn’t seen a beach since the Summer of Love.
“Hola, sit,” I say and check my fighter as she does.
She takes the measure of the ring, a girl who only really comes alive on stage. Classmates from her Family Manners and CGC prep classes taken over the past few months dot the side walls in pained anticipation:
Alex, the black Lab who can do almost nothing, and little Brewster, the poodle who loves Hola so much he lies down sometimes and just watches her breathe. There’s Cody, the unspayed German shepherd bitch who’s the world’s scariest-looking
cupcake, and like many of the others is trying for her Therapy Dog certification today. And Bob, the Havanese who is a genius and a gymnast, teacher’s pet and egomaniac, a legend in his own two-ounce mind.
Hola scans them, eye to eye, as she sits by my left leg, nodding slightly, acknowledging their support and encouragement during the long, wintry months of struggle she has totally forgotten.
I scan the onlookers myself to see if Gloria is there, but I know she can’t be. The roads are almost closed. Driving down here in this storm would be too dangerous.
It’s a large ring, maybe a thousand square feet, well lighted, with a computer-screen-blue pad underfoot and surrounded by white accordion gates.
And as the ref stands in front of us, I see Hola’s rear end twitch, as though she wants to break her sit. Even as I remind her, “Hola, sit!” I know we’ve got trouble.
There’s a suggestion in the CGC
Evaluator Guide
that the ref give some general introductory remarks, such as that dogs are not required to perform with the precision required in formal obedience. This is something that I’m sure does not even occur to most people, who have never seen a formal obedience competition. TV tends to show only the conformation beauty pageants, not so-called performance events such as Agility and Obedience.
But above all, the guide says, “The Canine Good Citizen experience should be fun for the handler and the dog.”
Then, there is your life.
“Are you ready?” asks the ref.
“Yes,” I say, and she nods—the signal to begin.
Hola starts in a solid sit, but her mind keeps trying to play an inner game on her, telling her the ref needs a good greeting, maybe one with both paws on her tummy.
I keep still, my body at right angles to the mat and my eyes drilled into our evaluator. She’s looking at me, not the dog, because she wants us to pass. Most dogs will not jump on a person who does not make eye contact with them.
The ref comes up to me and shakes my hand, and in my peripheral vision I see Hola with her head up, trying to dominate her instincts as they circle one another. The ref steps back, and Hola sticks her sit.
She’s just passed item #1, “Accepting a friendly stranger.”
“May I pet your dog?” asks the ref.
I’d like to say no.
And, in fact, the guidelines to item #2, “Sitting politely for petting,” require neither the formal question nor any particular answer from the handler.
“Yes.”
And she bends over and pets Hola.
Now, Hola never had any problem with shyness, so she’s not going to bark, flinch, or bite—all unacceptable reactions—but I know there’s a finely calibrated jab-and-counter going on in her mind as she tries to keep four paws on the floor and her exuberance contained for the exercise, even as her old self fires back with a flurry of good reasons to jump up.
Despite the item’s name, the guide says that the dog is allowed to stand to receive petting (the Volhards’ CGC book gets this wrong). Hola stands, and the ref says, “It’s okay; she just can’t jump all over me.”
Now that
, says a part of Hola I know too well,
sounds like a good idea
.
The ref’s hand loiters as it glides through Hola’s fur, burying fingers in a weave of Bernese warmth, and I can tell Hola is working her usual voodoo on the human spirit. Then the ref
bends over Hola and lifts up her front paws, peeks into her ears, and pulls back her lips.
She steps away, saying, “Thank you.”
Hola has passed items #2 and #3, “Appearance and grooming.”
“That’s a beautiful girl,” says the ref, breaking her professional detachment for a moment. “What a doll.”
But I’m troubled by an almost imperceptible tug on the leash as the old Hola warns me she may be the underdog here, but she’s got a few variations left in her bag.
There’s a saying in the sweet science: punch a boxer and box a puncher.
Now, Hola is not a boxer, but she certainly has a lot of punch as we enter into the brutal middle rounds, the items that can make or break a dog’s confidence as they pile one upon another in a flurry of evaluations that can, given a shaky move early on, take on the inevitability of a dirge.
“Okay,” says the ref, stepping back into the center of the ring. “Walking on a loose lead. Keep her in control here. Go around that column. Okay, turn left. Go straight. Make a right. Around that column. Good. Keep it loose … Good.”
While the ref talks, I ramp up a sotto voce barrage of encouragement, more to get Hola’s eyes on me than to tell her what to do: “Hola baby, over here, with me, with me, heel, heel, over here, with me …”
The litany of the amateur in the evaluation ring.
Suddenly five or six of the people from the audience come into the ring and start wandering around, chatting and acting crazy. I’m not sure where the tradition came from, but most of the CGC tests I’ve seen inspire someone in the “crowd” for
item #5, “Walking through a crowd,” to act as though they’re drunk.
Usually, they’ll sing.
In all my years as a drunk walking among drunks in a drunken state, while I saw many people crying, I never once saw a person break into song. Perhaps I needed to broaden my acquaintance.
The phony drunk doesn’t distract Hola, but she does distract me.
And bad Hola—the one that’s been waiting at ringside—sees an opening: she comes out of her corner with tremendous speed and power, unfurling a body punch from the depths of a cavern of steel, as she rockets a jib-jab at me and suddenly flies to the end of the leash, taking out the slack.
Then she leans back into her powerful rear pistons, gathering leverage for an explosion through the air onto the back of the “drunk,” who is actually her old teacher Wendy from her Family Manners Skills class.
Staying cool, I say, “Good girl!” which may seem like a strange reaction. But it works; in the real world, most of the time this phrase is followed by some lavish praise and sometimes even a little treat. I don’t have any treats in the test ring, but it’s my emergency mantra, the one that always gets her attention.
Hola comes back to me, beating down the sneak attack, and looks up with a big smile, waiting for her reward.
“Good girl!” I say.
We’d almost failed—if she’d jumped up on Wendy, she’d have been disqualified—but we didn’t.
Ding.
Onward.
Hola is still in this thing, with a bell.
• • •
“Thank you, crowd,” says the ref, dismissing them, and she directs me and Hola over to the corner of the ring farthest from the entrance to the club.
“Okay, we’re going to do some basic obedience exercises now,” she says. “Ask your dog to sit. Okay. Now down.”
“Down,” I say to a nicely seated Hola. She looks at me vacantly.
“Down!” I say again, raising my hand over her head, our signal.
Again, nothing.
It looks like Hola’s old instincts, having punked out in the clinch earlier, have decided to make it a game of attrition—wearing out my new, improved dog gradually, item by item, grinding down her poise, waiting for the strength to leave her paws, confusing her with a dogged persistence, and now: Hola seems stunned.