My Very Good, Very Bad Dog

by Amy Newmark

  I hoped my husband would notice how nice things were now. The hallway tiles were clear of metal bowls and spongy puddles. There was no giant animal to step around everywhere we walked, and there were no more wee-hour treks outside for a canine gut sickened by sneaking chicken food. I hoped the children would relish the fewer daily chores: no more feeding, watering, or bathroom breaks in the rain or freezing darkness of our Alaskan winter. Maybe we could be done with dogs.

  Alas, one Saturday several weeks after poor Bear’s death, my husband and eldest son, fifteen at the time, came home with another animal rescued from the shelter — a scary-looking dog with a huge head and lots of muscles. Even his tail was strong. A Staffordshire Bull Terrier. I blanched.

  “He’s sweet,” they said.

  “Look at his face,” they said.

  “All he wanted to do when we took him out was sit next to us,” they said.

  “They’re called nanny dogs in England,” they said.

  My son named him Hondo after a favorite Louis L’Amour character.

  But I didn’t trust the dog, and I was mad at my menfolk. I remained tense and constantly on alert for two days while everyone else welcomed him and glared at me.

  Then one afternoon, I stretched out on the couch with our baby, both of us exhausted after a poor night’s sleep. Hondo, who refused to believe that I didn’t like him, marched over and sat right down next to us, facing outward like some sort of protector. I remembered the nanny-dog sobriquet and softened somewhat as I wondered if it was true.

  After a minute, my baby, now heavy with sleep, shifted, and his bare arm flopped down to hang over the side of the couch. And the dog noticed. He turned and gently — so very gently — nosed the baby’s chubby arm back up and into the crook of my arm. I think I stopped breathing for a few seconds. He lifted his eyes, and we regarded each other for a short time: Hondo calm and serious, and me surprised and contrite. He then turned back around and remained our gentle sentinel for the duration of our twenty-minute rest. I never did sleep that afternoon, but marveled over the unexpected degree of compassion this dog exhibited. I smiled for hours afterward. What a good nanny.

  And he remains so, five years later. Where our children gather, there he sits. When someone naps on the couch, there he quietly keeps watch. Whatever the kids want him to do, he complies, from hours hiking on mountain trails to hours lying still if someone thinks his tummy makes a good pillow.

  This scary-looking beast has become a cherished watchman. I’m sorry I didn’t appreciate Bear-doggy when he was with us. I’m certainly appreciative of the way Hondo, our good nanny, has improved our lives.

  ~Allison Howell

  My Working Dog

  Fun fact: Laika became the first dog in space when the former Soviet Union sent her up in Sputnik II in 1957.

  Misty’s Tilted Halo

  Not-so-fun fact: Distracting a service dog while she’s working could be dangerous to her handler, so do not pet or speak to a service dog.

  “Oh, I see you’ve got one of those angels on earth!” exclaimed a woman who saw me at the park with my first guide dog, Misty. Of course, the public has a misconception that guide dogs are flawless. I smiled and nodded. I couldn’t tell her that my guide’s halo occasionally tilted. In fact, Misty had just been distracted by a duck and almost pulled me into the nearby pond.

  When onlookers see a well-behaved guide dog, that’s not an accident; it is hard work for the dog handler. Practicing good dog-training skills is a task I work on daily. A blind owner must give the dog constant praise for good behavior or gentle correction when it makes a mistake or becomes distracted. It’s a delicate challenge to discipline my best friend, my buddy that I need to trust.

  Stepping into busy streets and walking around construction sites are just two of the dangers we overcome together. Being generous with affection and setting limits have positive results with my dog. A friend and fellow student at the Seeing Eye thinks so, too, saying, “I wish I had gotten my guide dog before I raised my kids. I would have used praise and consistency more.”

  Misty did a great job looking out for my needs, but she also managed to take care of hers. One day, she skillfully navigated me through a bustling store during the holidays. I was distracted by the commotion. Babies cried, cash registers clinked, bags rustled, and Christmas carols blared on a sound system.

  “Can I pet your dog?” other shoppers asked me.

  “No, I’m sorry, she’s working.” Misty’s beauty and gentle eyes attracted people like a magnet, but she needed to pay attention to me, and all the hazards in our path. Through the harness handle, I felt my dog move more cautiously, so I sensed obstacles and cramped aisles.

  We were ready to go home when I realized that I hadn’t said “good girl” for keeping me safe. What an oversight on my part, since our shopping trip was without any flaws, not even a stumble or bump. I heard a “whoosh” as the electric doors parted, and I bent down to give her a pat. That was when I felt something clenched in her jaw — a spongy, round object. My good dog had snatched a ball from the toy department. I went back into the store to pay for the ball, which became her holiday bonus.

  Despite her training, good manners, and charm, Misty was full of surprises. One evening, we took her to the theater with us. As the house lights were going down we dashed to our seats. My husband helped me peel off my coat, and then I told Misty “sit.” A thud and a sigh let me know she was down, but I learned later, not all the way. The man seated in front of her must have been alluring, full of animal magnetism to my dog. Before lying down on the floor, she lunged forward, and I heard her give him a “kiss” on the back of his ear. My husband told me that the man turned to look at his wife with a huge smile on his face.

  Misty gave me freedom and dignity and she was a responsible, careful guide dog; but she was still a dog at heart. Once, at our home during one of our yuletide parties, a guest asked, “What’s that sticking out of your nativity scene?” I knelt down and felt around under the decorated tree. And there it was — a stash of buried dog biscuits!

  ~Carol Chiodo Fleischman

  Reprinted by permission of www.offthemark.com

  Working for Cheese

  Fun fact: An avalanche search dog is trained to find humans under up to fifteen feet of snow.

  Through most of the 1990s, I rode my Morgan horse, Kelly, in the riverbed that ran through the heart of Santa Ana, California. Many strange and wonderful things happened on those rides. I made friends with gang members who were tagging. I prayed at early-morning SWAT raids. I gave horse rides to children playing at a park. Kelly and I dodged balls from not-very-good golfers. I chatted with homeless people, and they petted Kelly.

  Then one morning, my life slipped into another gear when I found a starving dog in the middle of the dirt trail along the riverbed. At first, I thought the dog was dead, but he jumped up when he saw the horse coming at him. I couldn’t just leave this skinny, half-dead dog on the trail.

  I slid off Kelly and tried putting the dog on the saddle. He squirmed too much for me to hold him and swing back up, so I got back off, put Kelly’s lead line around him, scrambled back on my patient horse and hauled the dog aboard. He sat quietly in my lap on the flat dressage saddle. Perhaps he was too weak to struggle more. I could feel all his bones under his black fur. We rode back to the stable, and he meekly crouched in my car for the short trip home.

  My husband Jeff and I had been married for almost ten years. We hadn’t been able to have children, so getting a dog was wonderful for us. We named our new charge Wolfgang, Wolfie for short, because he looked like a half-sized German Shepherd.

  “I think his father is that junkyard dog I see when Kelly and I go north on the riverbed,” I said to Jeff. An identical-looking dog barked furiously every time we went by. After a few weeks, Wolfie gained weight and strength, and would follow Kelly and me, so the junkyard dog had to bark at the three of us.

  Wolf adored Kelly, perhaps because he saw her as part
of the team that saved him, and he loved to go riding. He would carefully watch me in the early morning to determine if I was dressing to go to work or to ride. Once he discerned that I was going to the stables, he’d bark crazily from that moment on, all through the car ride, until we jumped out of the car at the stable. He never chased or nipped at Kelly. He was a gentleman when he was on the trail, even though he was off-leash most of the time. He learned to respond to hand and voice commands to move out of bicyclists’ way and leave loose dogs alone.

  Wolfie never became a people-person dog. Perhaps he’d been abused. He loved Jeff and me and two other family members unwaveringly, and that was it. He didn’t really like people other than his four favorites to touch him. When Jeff and I occasionally argued, Wolfie would pant anxiously, whine, and run from one of us to the other until we stopped fighting. We called him the Counselor Dog.

  He learned so many words that we started saying things in Spanish so he wouldn’t get his hopes up that he was included in, say, a car ride when he wasn’t. Eventually, he became bilingual! Wolfie continued to show he was very smart. I was a volunteer with a search-and-rescue team in Southern California, and I began bringing Wolfie to some of our team drills.

  One Saturday, our team went to a regional park with grassy hills, steep ravines and miles of trails. Wolfie had been primed to search after being fed cheese sticks by the three “victims” prior to their hiding.

  My team and I trampled through the hundred-plus degree heat looking for victims all morning. Two had already been rescued by other teams, and we were walking along a high trail looking for the third, when Wolfie stopped and looked down a ravine choked with chaparral. A trained SAR dog will alert to human scent by doing something like barking or picking up a stick. Wolfie and I were new at this, so what would he do? Wolfie stayed very still. Could he understand what we were doing? Was he after more cheese from the victim? Finally, I said, “The dog thinks someone is down there.”

  So we scrambled into the ravine. Sure enough, under the heavy oak limbs of a tree, was the victim, a teen with a “broken leg.”

  “You guys took long enough. I was bored,” he said. My team members were overjoyed. “Good dog!” everyone said over and over to Wolfie, who graciously allowed them to pet him even though they weren’t his fab four. The victim fed him his reward: a cheese stick.

  After my team packaged the victim, splinting his broken leg and placing him on a backboard, we transported him back up to the trail where a truck was waiting to whisk him away. Finished with my duties, I looked around for Wolfie. He generally didn’t stray far from me. I skittered back down to where we had put our backpacks with our gear and lunch. Wolfie was slinking away.

  He had something in his mouth. I caught him and grabbed his jaws. I pried them open and out popped a damp cheese ball about the size of a baseball.

  While we had been prepping the victim, Wolfie had been conducting a search of our backpacks. When my team members found out, they stopped with the praise and muttered, “Bad dog! Bad dog!”

  Of course, who could blame him?

  ~Marian Flandrick

  Real Dedication

  Fun fact: Border Collies are the most widely utilized stock dog in the world as a result of being selectively bred for their working ability for many generations.

  Zac was a working Border Collie. He was also my teacher and partner. Some people would say his life revolved around working livestock, but he loved working with me even more.

  I had just started training dogs to work livestock when Zac was born. The minute I looked into his big, brown eyes, I knew he was put on the earth to be mine. The connection was immediate.

  He was one of the smaller pups in the litter and not the most athletic of the bunch but he could be downright bossy with livestock. He’d politely “ask” once, maybe even twice, but the third time there were going to be consequences for any animal that didn’t obey him.

  One day in the prime of Zac’s life, a massive fire raged in the buffalo pasture next to one of our summer pastures. My husband was on the fire line and called over the CB radio to ask me to move our cows and sheep out of the way of the fire. I quickly saddled a horse, grabbed Zac and my other dog Kat, and loped out across the hills to hustle the livestock to safety.

  Several hundred disoriented sheep were pressed up against the fence in the middle of a huge cloud of smoke. There wasn’t any time for subtleties. “Get ’em up!” I hollered to the dogs. They knew from past experience and the urgency in my voice that it was time to push, and push hard.

  The sheep resisted at first and tried to beat the dogs back. The dogs and I won out, however, and over the hill we went with the whole bunch at a high lope. They raced on until we came to a water tank.

  The sheep had been standing in the smoke for quite some time, and they hit the tank hard. The lambs were still quite small at the time, and many got shoved right in. They couldn’t reach the bottom and were already exhausted, so it didn’t take long before several of them were in real trouble. I jumped off my horse and started grabbing the lambs nearest the edge to drag them out.

  The tank was both deep and wide, and many lambs were out too far for me to reach them from the edge. I started pulling off my boots and was headed in to pull them out before they drowned. Zac had been watching me the whole time, and before I could even put a foot into the tank myself, he jumped in.

  He swam out and grabbed a lamb by the tail, and like any good lifeguard, dragged them one at time to the edge where I could pull them out. He didn’t quit until the last one was rescued. I didn’t say one word to him during the process. He just knew what needed to be done and shot into action.

  As we both stood there trying to catch our breath afterwards, I reached down and stroked his head, reminding him once again how much I thought of him. He gently wagged his tail and looked deep into my soul like he always did.

  There wasn’t much time for affection or to kick back as we still had cows to move away from the approaching blaze. We hustled off in the direction my husband said he thought they were last seen. As we topped the last hill, they were already crossing a fence that had been cut to let firefighters into the buffalo pasture. The dogs and I worked quickly to herd the cows back to safety.

  As we were moving them down the first hill, Kat heeled one cow to hurry her as Zac crossed behind her. A heavy kick from the cow landed squarely on Zac, and he went flying through the air. After what seemed like forever, he landed hard. I raced down to check on him, but before I could get there, he was already up and headed back to work. I figured he was okay, and we continued moving cows for another hour.

  When all the livestock was safely out of the way of the oncoming fire, the dogs and I headed for home. We took a much-needed break and lounged around for a bit. An hour or so later, I walked out to feed the dogs, and Zac couldn’t stand up. He tried several times, but despite no yelps of pain, it was evident he was hurting. I quickly set out with him on the hour-long drive to the nearest veterinary clinic.

  My vet checked him over and discovered through an X-ray that Zac’s hip had been broken. My heart ached for the lousy job I’d done of looking out for my best friend. He never whimpered or cried when the cow kicked him. Not once did he try to quit in the hour of pushing cows after it happened. There never was a growl toward the vet or me as we poked and prodded to fix what must have hurt so badly.

  As I fought back tears of regret, Zac lay on the steel table and licked my face, reassuring me everything would be all right. He was right, as usual. He healed, and we had many more years of partnership. Despite some arthritis in his old age, he lived a long, wonderful life, always by my side. I will forever be grateful for the gift of Zac’s faithful heart and his dedication to our work together.

  ~Laura Hicks

  Creating a Guide Dog

  Fun fact: The use of guide dogs for the blind increased when World War II veterans began looking into their use. Guide Dogs for the Blind, Inc. was founded in 1942.

&nb
sp; When you see a blind person being guided by a dog, do you ever wonder how that helpful canine came to be a service animal? Well, I raise puppies that grow up to become guide dogs. They live with me from about eight weeks old until age two. During that time, my responsibility is to get these untrained dogs socialized to the world.

  At that point, the pups return to the Guide Dogs for the Blind school campus. There they spend several months being formally trained and thoroughly tested. Only then are the dogs matched up with a blind person. By then, these service animals have been totally prepared for anything and everything when teamed up with their human companions.

  My most recent pup was Leo. I took him many different places to practice good behavior. We went to buffets and restaurants with all those wonderful, distracting food aromas, attended parties, and visited libraries, stores, and amusement parks. My pup accompanied me to historic events where he heard cannons shooting off, and he even rode along with me in my 1926 Model T Ford that rumbled and shook as we drove. Leo went everywhere people buzzed about their business.

  My very good dog and I participated in charity walks and city disaster drills, greeted people for special events, and visited people in hospitals and rest homes. Everywhere I took him, Leo was the perfect dog. If I gave the command, “Leo, let’s go,” he was ready and willing. He never resisted, nor was he afraid to do anything I asked of him.

  However, there was one time that Leo “had a mind of his own” and shocked me while making others laugh. I had been nominated for an award for my volunteer service work, and I was invited to attend the awards banquet.