A Good Dog

by Jon Katz

  Once we were mostly in formation, Carolyn brought out her antique metal box filled with small figures of dogs, sheep, and fences. I groaned.

  Carolyn was fond of her toy farm creatures, which she’d shown me on our first visit, and loved to demonstrate the ballet that constituted sheepherding—human, dog, and sheep all moving in relation to one another. She would haul her box out and carefully place the components in their appropriate positions on a picnic table or on the grass. Then she’d sketch out herding and training moves like an NFL coach diagramming complex patterns for offense. The papers she handed her students when class ended were filled with X’s and O’s, squibbles and arrows. The X’s were dogs, the O’s were people. If the X’s went here, she’d explain, then the O’s would go there. The sheep were usually the squibbles.

  Devon and I were rarely where we were supposed to be. He herded sheep the way he herded school buses—forcefully, impulsively, explosively. At least the sheep could run.

  This role-playing was not the sort of thing either of us was especially good at. I was allergic to being lectured to, had hated just about every class and teacher I’d ever had, and the favor had been returned. Poor Mr. Hauser actually wept in front of my mother when I had to take his math class for the third time. Neither of us could bear the idea of going another round. Authority issues continued to plague me through my adult life. One reason that being a writer suited me was that most of the time the only jerk I had to put up with was me.

  Devon had similar issues with commands and obedience. Training seemed to either upset or excite him, and learning to herd sheep seemed unlikely to be an exception.

  “You are a ewe,” Carolyn told me, pointing to an O on her diagram, and placing one of her tiny white plastic sheep along a toy fence. “You will stand over here and wait to be approached by a dog,” she said, gesturing to an eighty-year-old woman in a sun hat holding a terrified sheltie on a leash.

  Everybody else seemed willing, even enthusiastic, about acting out these herding moves. But I didn’t want to be a ewe. Devon looked up at me curiously; I knew there was no way he was going to do this, either.

  In fact, he suddenly charged after the sheltie, chasing him under Carolyn’s truck. I pulled him back, made him lie down, and he settled to watch the proceedings.

  As Carolyn passed by, dispensing instructions, I whispered—hoping to avoid a scene—that I didn’t want to be a ewe, or to play this game. Carolyn did not suffer fools or rebels gladly. “I don’t care what you want,” she muttered. “Do it. It will be good for you.”

  I couldn’t. No better at being submissive than this strange dog I now owned, I told Carolyn this wasn’t the right class for me. Devon and I retreated to our room (Carolyn’s Raspberry Ridge Farm is a bed-and-breakfast as well as a training center) to brood. I put Devon in his crate and lay down on the bed. Outside the window, I could hear the “dogs” and “sheep” going through their exercises as Carolyn offered suggestions and critiqued the proceedings. Much as I often wished for a more pliant dog, I also wished I were a more compliant human. Life would be smoother.

  It’s an article of faith among trainers that the problem with dogs is almost always the people who own them. My dog and I were both impulsive, impatient, distractible, and restless. That was why we’d come.

  Carolyn was an impassioned believer in positive rewarding training, a training method that emphasizes reinforcing appropriate and desired behaviors, and generally rejects negative or coercive methods like yelling, swatting, or even more abusive responses.

  Positive reinforcement puts pressure on the human, rather than the dog, to suppress anger and impatience, and simply praise or mark good behaviors—with words of praise, food, clickers, whatever works. It asks a lot of people; they have to take a long view of training and curb some of their stronger instincts. For somebody who is by no means an all-positive person, like me, it was difficult—especially with a dog like Devon, who daily challenged one’s patience.

  One afternoon he escaped the yard in New Jersey (I have no idea how), and soon afterward I heard the by-now-familiar screaming and tumult in the street and went running out. Devon had intercepted half a dozen Jersey teenagers on skateboards, rounded them up into a tight cluster in the center of the street—skateboards flying in every direction—and held everyone there until I arrived.

  Carolyn would not have approved of my response, which was not positive in the least. I screamed at Devon to get away from the kids, apologized profusely, and retreated into the house, Devon in tow. The kids thought it was funny; when they got home, their parents might not.

  Recognizing that I needed help with Devon, a far greater challenge than my mellow Labradors, I’d started bringing him to Raspberry Ridge, along with my younger border collie, Homer. Homer didn’t seem destined to be an ace herder, either, but he was much more attentive and controllable than Devon.

  Carolyn often said she was surprised that I’d stuck it out with Devon’s lessons; in fact, she told me, she’d doubted I would come back after the first session. Which had been marked by Devon’s chasing her panicked sheep around a fenced pasture. The truth is, I never thought of leaving Raspberry Ridge. Eventually, we became regulars.

  From the first time we drove down the long gravel driveway, I was drawn to the place. Carolyn had an old stone farmhouse, a giant barn and other teetering outbuildings, a junkyard, perhaps two hundred ewes and rams, an old donkey, a dozen or so dogs, and more than seventy acres of grass, meadow, and woods.

  She lived upstairs in the farmhouse; guests and visitors occupied the B&B rooms downstairs. She kept crates tucked all over the house, in which her herding dogs—border collies and shepherds—slept while waiting to work, exercise, or play.

  These working dogs, I’d come to learn, led lives very different from my dogs’. Carolyn let them out several times a day to exercise and eliminate, but generally, they were out of crates only to train or herd sheep. While they were out, Carolyn tossed a cup of kibble into their crates for them to eat when they returned. I asked her once if she left lights on for the dogs when she went out, and she looked at me curiously. “Why? They don’t read.”

  They were happy dogs nonetheless, fit and obedient, sociable with dogs and people. From Carolyn’s example, I was learning to respect the true nature of dogs: they are wonderful, but they’re still animals, and not even the most complex animals. She didn’t see them as four-legged versions of humans, and woe to the student who did.

  Still, they were everywhere. If you bumped into a sofa it might growl or thump. Some of her crew were puppies; some were strange rescue dogs.

  The chief working dog was Dave, a venerable shorthaired Scottish border collie who efficiently ran the farm, moving sheep in and out of pastures and into training pens for lessons and herding work. This was an impressive fellow. I once saw a near-riot break out during a herding trial when some sheep crashed through a fence by the parking area, which was crammed with dogs, handlers, spectators, cars and trailers, and food stands. Carolyn yelled to me to run inside—Dave’s crate held the place of honor by Carolyn’s desk—and let him out.

  When I opened the crate, Dave promptly rushed to the front door, pushed open the screen, and picked his way among the rampaging dogs and sheep and people. He gathered up the sheep and, at Carolyn’s direction, moved them down the drive and into the back pasture, maneuvering them around lawn chairs and tents, barking dogs, and all the paraphernalia of a trial. He held them there until Carolyn arrived to close the pasture gate. Then he trotted right back to the house, nosed open the screen door, and went back into his crate. Dave was the anti-Devon, as grounded as Devon was excitable, as obedient as Devon was unresponsive, as useful as Devon was difficult and unpredictable. I told myself he was less interesting, too.

  Carolyn’s hallways were hung with crooks, ropes and halters, flashlights and rain gear. She loved dogs the way great trainers do, respecting their animal natures, understanding their simple and sometimes crass motives, accepting th
em as they are, rather than trying to recast them into versions of ourselves. The signs of her success with this approach were also abundant: the walls were festooned with trial ribbons and awards.

  Yet she spent much of her time working with less heralded dogs and their desperate people. Troubled dogs from all over the country came riding up her driveway. I remember one pair of newlyweds who arrived with a schnauzer that had belonged to the bride. The groom was covered in bandages. It seemed that every time he tried to touch his wife, the dog bit him.

  Why, someone asked, didn’t they get rid of the dog? The bride was incredulous. “I love my husband, but this dog has been with me for years.”

  Carolyn prescribed an elaborate new regimen in which all food came from the husband’s hand, and only when the dog was calm and well behaved. Any growling or biting meant the dog didn’t eat. The couple stayed at Raspberry Ridge for a week, and when they drove away, the dog was dozing lovingly in the husband’s lap, marriage saved.

  Often, I was appointed “dog bait” for a weekend: I approached an aggressive dog with a bag of meatballs to see how close I could get before the dog went off. Meatballs and other smelly stuff were a centerpiece of Raspberry Ridge dog training. When an aggressive dog was on hand, all of us armed ourselves with meatballs and began approaching the dog from a distance, tossing meatballs, getting a bit closer each time. The dog would begin by barking, but as meatballs began to rain from the sky, he’d calm down and likely rethink his hostility to people.

  Staying at Carolyn’s bed-and-breakfast with Devon and Homer was an adventure. Sometimes, when I took the dogs out, I would hear Carolyn or somebody scream “Run!” and realize an aggressive dog-in-rehab was outside. We’d dive back inside, slamming the door as some ferocious-sounding creature thudded against it. These were exotic experiences for me, but useful for Devon, who became more comfortable on a farm and seemed rattled by fewer things.

  The true heart of Carolyn’s farm was her kitchen, where sausages and pungent dog treats lay scattered over the counters, along with collars, magazines and books, trial application forms, checks from her students (Carolyn, not big on details, often left them lying around for months), leashes, and dog toys.

  Pots of coffee were always brewing, and dog people could be found sitting around her big wooden table at all hours. Devon and I were always welcome there, and he grew to love going around the table from person to person, collecting pats and treats. Troubled dogs were familiar at that table, and appreciated. If we couldn’t bring our dogs many places, we could always bring them here. If Devon wasn’t always successful, he was always accepted.

  So was I. Here, I could be me. I came to cherish more rural pleasures. I began staying at the farm overnight, combining our lessons with taking the sheep out to graze. I helped with lambing in the spring, tossed hay to the flock in the winter. I met and befriended a donkey named Carol.

  I also started accompanying Carolyn to the Scottish “faires” held around the region on weekends. She got paid peanuts for these appearances, but she loved showing people the art of herding, keeping it alive.

  We would pile several dogs and half a dozen sheep into her pickup, along with hay and water and some temporary fencing, and drive off to herding demos. Suburbanites loved to see Dave push the sheep around parks and fields; between acts, Carolyn and I, like old-fashioned carnies on the circuit, could lounge in lawn chairs BS-ing about dogs.

  While faires were child’s play for Dave, the awed crowds responded as if they were at the Olympics. I understood: there is something profoundly beautiful and moving in seeing dogs do this traditional work. Devon could not herd in these situations—too dangerous—but he very much appreciated coming along, and was much hugged and admired. Even within the safer confines of Raspberry Ridge, his herding progress was uneven, to say the least. We had many frustrating and uncomfortable days, along with our triumphant moments.

  Devon still wasn’t reliable enough to herd the sheep, but if I put him on a leash, the sheep would move ahead of us anyway. We could take them out to pasture, then take up positions between the herd and the road.

  It was often freezing, or sticky-hot and buggy, but if we went very early in the morning when the pasture was often shrouded in dew and mist, we could sit side by side for hours, Devon as calm as I ever saw him, listening to the sheep crunch away at the grass.

  But when it was time to herd back to the barn and I released him, he would bore straight into the middle of the flock, all training forgotten, scattering sheep in every direction.

  Homer was more of a herding dog, calmer, able to slip in behind the sheep and move them. He had more protective instincts, too; he could locate a newborn lamb off in the woods, help gather the flock in the midst of a blizzard.

  But he also had problems. Homer was small, not especially hardy for a border collie, so he had trouble getting out in front of the sheep to turn the herd. He tended to use his mouth instead, and when he got excited, he’d grip a sheep by the legs—a major transgression. And he was easily intimidated. It was his misfortune to grow up as the Helldog’s little brother. Devon relentlessly terrorized poor Homer, grabbing his toys and food, pinning him to the ground when he came near me. If his canine sibling could push him around, a cranky ram or ewe could intimidate him, too.

  I knew neither dog would make a stellar working dog like Dave—they were already too old, too far down the path of pet-hood. And I didn’t know enough to train them well. If I ever got serious about sheepherding, I would have to get a dog from a herding line and learn much more.

  But we kept at it. At Raspberry Ridge, we saw an astonishing parade of dogs who bit, chewed, barked, and otherwise challenged the limits of their owners’ love and responsibility. Carolyn took on one problem dog after another, stalking the farm in an Australian slouch hat and cape, pockets stuffed with smelly meat, analyzing behavior both canine and human, offering suggestions and instructions. Dogs paid attention to her. She understood them and their foibles, even as she often got frustrated with their humans.

  Carolyn believed that in Devon’s case “the world makes no sense to him.” I thought she was correct. Devon faced a constant tension between being himself and trying to be what the world wanted him to be. He was always struggling to figure things out, always making choices, usually the wrong ones. I felt that herding sheep might help steady him.

  Carolyn kept our lessons brief and focused. We usually took Devon into a pen with a few sheep and tried to induce him to move calmly around them. Usually we failed.

  We supplemented that with grounding and obedience exercises—lie down, stay, get back. Eye contact. Name recognition. Over and over. It got boring, frustrating. I wasn’t really prepared for how repetitive the proper training of a dog is, how long it takes, especially with an already-damaged student. I wanted training to be quick and painless.

  Instead, it was difficult and challenging. Devon’s sheepherding skills improved only sporadically, and I could hardly call him obedient. But he loved working with me, and he did begin to calm down. I believed, though our progress was slow, that there was hope, that I was learning enough about dogs to train him and, therefore, to keep him.

  I knew that my problems were as entrenched as his. I got angry and frustrated and yelled at Devon. Carolyn repeatedly pointed out that he wouldn’t settle down until I did, but that was a tough lesson to translate into word and deed. Dogs like Devon, I’ve come to understand, feed off our attention to them. The more apoplectic I became when he didn’t behave, the more I reinforced his misbehavior. Yet sometimes I found it impossible to remain quiet.

  Once, out in the pasture, he tore off after a ewe, grabbed her leg, and tried to pull her down. Even from some distance away, I could see that he’d drawn blood, and I was horrified, enraged. I tore off after him, grabbed him by the collar, and screamed “No!” “Bad!” and the other useless things frustrated humans shout at their dogs. I knew by then that the right thing to do was to ignore the charging and biting, to wait
for Devon to be calm around the sheep, then praise him. But I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to summon such self-control at a moment like that.

  Devon froze, frightened and cowering, as the ewe ran off. When I saw the look on his face, I stopped yelling and pulled him toward me, as upset with myself as I was with him. I knew this outburst would undermine our work together. I knew he couldn’t help himself. I hated seeing the sheep bleed and limp, but I also hated screaming at him; I hated the rage and frustration I felt. Was this why we were coming out here? So I could bully him into submission?

  I rocked Devon in my arms like a baby while he licked my face. “I will try to never do this again,” I said. “I will try to be different.”

  I told Carolyn what had happened, and in her usual blunt way, she told me I had set things back months. “But it happens. You are, unfortunately, a human,” she said. People, she pointed out, simply don’t grasp that dogs faced with anger and menace have only two options: fight or flight. When you pummel or intimidate them, they might do one or the other, but they do not learn.

  Still, it was there, at Carolyn’s place, that I really got hooked on doing this ancient work with dogs, however haltingly we were learning it. And there I learned to love the rituals and routines of a farm. But it was also at Raspberry Ridge that I entered—or perhaps descended into—the world of dog lovers.

  We would sit around her kitchen table for hours—Carolyn, her friends and students, the ceaseless parade of dog people who came to the farm—gabbing about our dogs, our training, what worked and what didn’t. Almost everybody had a Devon-type dog, an animal they loved dearly but were struggling to live with.