Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-28560.
I’ve mentioned recently that our new dog was so well house-trained that I got a bit annoyed. Going through troubles together is how you forge a bond, right? Butch and Sundance worked so well together as a team because just less than half the time, they hated each other’s guts.
As a related aside, now seems a good enough time to reference one of my two or three favorite conversations in movies:
If you haven’t seen the whole movie, do it. Now. G’wan, I’ll wait.
OK, now watch The Sting.
Fritz is still at the “mark out your territory” phase, so there’s a lot of barking, both inside and out. But it’s directed barking, and we know why he’s doing it. We’ll let him stay outside for as long as we think that it won’t annoy the neighbors. He likes snow, so he’s (literally) in his element when we open the sliding door, and he rushes out. So far, everything had worked out. So well, in fact, that he actually fell asleep in front of the TV last night as we were watching a video. Not only was it incredibly cute, it was also a good sign to us. If we can wear out the dog, he won’t tear up the furniture, or get really bored and annoy us to death.
One of the things that we had to do to adopt Fritz was to take him to the vet within ten (10) days of taking him home. I scheduled a visit for him to the local large chain pet store. [Eventually, we'll get him in to see our old vet in Bloomington, but this one was just to get it over with.] We got home from church around noon, and I mentally got ready to take him to the vet. I was not 100% sure of my assessment of his personality, and so taking him out in public with a lot of other people and their pets made my brain freeze a little bit. I’ve taken to walking him with a leather training leash attached to a chain-link collar. This makes it much easier to “pop” him when he does something that he shouldn’t, like try to run after squirrels. Remember the squirrels.
Our old dog Sam, we had trained enough so that I could open the front door, and he would walk with me for ten yards, unleashed, to hop in the back of the car, and I guess that was what I was expected our heretofore generally laid back new pet to do. So, I open the front door, and Fritz does what any normal dog does. He bolts. Remember when I said that we renamed him because I didn’t want to be running around the neighborhood shouting, “Cracker!”? Well, I’m very glad we did, because I started after him. I saw, a moment too late, that there were three squirrels minding their own business, until Fritz tried to lay down the law.
Because of the recent weather, there is a melty sheet of ice over the whole front yard, which certainly prevents me from going full-out. Especially in black dress shoes. I finally get across the street and three houses down, and find him, making like Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive, his nose seeking out the sciuridian1 malefactors. Luckily, it looks at though he is simply enamored of his freedom rather than being eager to escape from my clutches, so, after a couple of minutes, I’m able to grab on to his collar and walk/drag him back to the car, along with the folder of humane society records that I had dropped into the slush in the pursuit of the dog. Off to the vet.
In his defense, once in the store, he is almost perfectly well behaved. In the 20 minutes that we wait to be asked into the office, there are a couple of barks, some pulling and sniffing trips. And the barks were mainly because, right next to the waiting area, there is the plate glass window looking into the cat adoption corral, which doesn’t seem like the smartest thing in the world to do when you’re planning out a pet store. Great Pyrenees are, according to the literature, quite territorial, and since the dog hasn’t seen many people besides his family this week, when the vet tech tried to check his ears, his mouth lashed out a bit: I could touch his ears, no problem, but she couldn’t. Unfortunately, she’s the professional, and so she got a little muzzle which, again, he wouldn’t let her put on him, but when I tried to do it, he was just fine. When he lashed out (that’s too strong a phrase for what he did), I could see in his eyes that it was from fear of the unknown rather than anger. So, the ears were checked, and it turns out they needed a swab check. Which she did, and then left the rest for the vet himself.
Dr. Lee (that’s his first name)2 comes in, and does the basic look in the ears again, feels the bones, decides that he’s a good size, but that he shouldn’t get any bigger. Fine with me, other than the fact that he says at the other corner of the examining room. I would think that I would look like a competent-enough pet owner to keep a good handle on my 65-lb. pet. But that’s just me.
So, back home we get. I think that I’ve learned my lesson about properly securing the dog before he goes out in public. I pick up the leash and chain collar from the front seat, get out of the car, open up the rear door, and string the collar around his neck. Good to go, right? Wrong. He apparently sees something else that’s wrong with the universe, and sprints out of the car, dragging me alone with him. I just have a grip on the leather, but don’t have my hand through the noose at the tail end. Fritz takes advantage of this and, though I’m grabbing on for dear life, I can feel it slipping through my hands. I try to stop his momentum (which is inexorably dragging me over the sheet ice of the front yard) by running along, murmuring, “feets don’t fail me now”. Eventually (strange word to use as it was no more than a couple of seconds from start to finish) I gave in to fate, let go of the leash, and fell onto the ground. The dog, who doesn’t seem to be chasing anything3, has disappeared. I surmise from my experience earlier in the afternoon that, since the dog is territorial, and I am part of his territory, he will eventually come looking for me. So, I stop my search, bring various things into the house, upbraid the children for the state of the back seat of the car, announce that the dog is on the loose, and rejoin the search.
Within a few seconds, I sight the dog running in and around a different set of houses from the first time, eyes wide, tongue flapping, leash trailing. After a couple of head and body feints, I get him to come toward me. I grab onto the leash, rope it securely around my arm, not unlike one of those CIA handcuffed briefcases.
Lesson learned again. Sometimes it takes me a while. Those P90X infomercials are becoming more and more attractive to me, as I see that a 65-lb. dog can generate about 500 pounds of force if he needs to.
And that’s about a two-hour slice of my afternoon. How was your Sunday?
EDIT: I completely spaced that, as I was leaving the store, two uniformed members of the metropolitan constabulary entered. And they had been summoned. If I were a good blogger, I would have stayed to get a story. There was no obvious violence or noise. I wonder what you need to do to merit a police visit at Petsmart?
That is a southern tradition, but it seems to be one that has spread to people who deal with children. AJ’s teachers were Miss Amy, Mr. Dave, etc. Perhaps it says something about how the vets view their relationship with the animals.
And, sigh, it’s probably a generational thing too. We’re just a much more informal society in that way. To me, “Mr. MyLastName” will always be my father.
Your story of dog escapes makes me think of the winter we volunteered walking dogs at the shelter. They can definitely generate many times their body weight in force!
Why does this new blog layout not show me when you have a new post? It kind of hides it.
Yes, it’s sort of annoying. Since this template was designed for a more magazine-y kind of blog (with featured stories), a chronological blog like mine doesn’t really fit. But I love the rest of the features so much that I couldn’t help but use it. I assume that most people read this through an RSS reader, and never get to the page itself.
The easiest way to find the new post is to look under the “What I wrote” section at the top right of the page.
I’ll try that. I read blogs in a kind of neo-Luddite way, I guess. It’s still me coming over from the blogger “enemies of Carlotta” link.
It might sound crazy but next time he bolts – and eventually gets caught give him a delicious treat. By the time you get him, he will associate the treat with you and be excited to see you – at least he’s be interested in coming back if he does bolt.
Thank you! That didn’t occur to me because we haven’t treat-trained our dogs before. Now I know….