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11/03/04 - 7:31 p.m.

How lucky for me that I married a Dog Person and that he would wait thirteen years, until Shirley B., the female Seal Point Siamese, died, to say,"It's time we got a dog."

See, the aggreement had been that when my cats died, we would get a dog. I always thought of it as "a dog for him." I always laughed when I reminded him that Siamese live longer than most cats and so he should be prepared to wait for 15 or more years before they would croke.

He liked to make jokes about what he could do with their corpses. A favorite idea was tire stops for his '67 Bronco. In reality, my husband worried more about Jack and Shirley B. when they were missing, spent more time making sure they had food and treats and a clean litter box than I did most of the time. When Shirley was missing that first time, and it turned out she was locked in our landlord's shed, it was W. who walked all over the neighborhood calling for her, three days in a row. I kept saying "Oh, she'll turn up. Cats disapear sometimes." Sure, the last day she was gone I was crying, but before that it was only W. who really worried.

When she was missing again, it was W. who found out which of our landlord's sheds she was in THIS time and got her out. I just figured she would find her way home, like last time.

And the time Jack was discovered inside the wall of a neighbor's house which was under construction, it was W. who broke in, made a hole in the plaster with his fishing knife, and rescued Jack from a goulish, Poe-ellian death.

W. pretended to hate them, my cats with nine lives who prevented him from acquiring another dog, but really he loved them as much as he could love cats.

When Shirley died and we only had Jack around the house, our own house now, with a small but fenced backyard, he ventured to suggest that it was time. Time for a dog? "How about half a dog?" I asked?

Never having ever had a dog, my expectations were based mainly on tv, books and movies. The few people I'd known who had dogs, didn't make me want one for myself. The Fictional Dogs I'd known were pretty big paws to expect any real animal to fill.

I mean, come on. How likely was it that we were going to find Lassie? Or Buck?
And I didn't want 101 dalmations, even if they were adorable. How about a dog that sings like Patti Page from the dog pound scene in Lady and The Tramp?

You see? My frame of reference was unrealistic. Still, I had very definate ideas of what "his dog" should and should not be: full breed, not a mutt; a male, not a female; something comanding in nature, not a lab or golden retreiver-- they're a family dog; not a long haired breed that needed constant brushing, a self-groomer--like cats! I didn't want a dog that sniffed crotches or jumped up on visitors or a dog that would not obey. And most of all, "his" dog was NOT going to be a Springer Spaniel-- because he had bred and raised that breed with his first wife. No Springers.

There were a couple things we agreed on, believe it or not.

One thing was sleeping in bed with us. Big no.

One thing was getting up on furniture. No.

Another thing was that Jack had to adjust to this change and not be tramatized. Well, not for very long.

We actually didn't know the first thing about introducing a cat and new dog to your home. We did most everything wrong and somehow it worked out, but we were just lucky. Don't do what we did, do what they say is the proper thing, so the introduction is gradual and less stressful. Fortunate for us, Jack wanted a new sister, even if it was a different specis and three times his size.

But I did do a LOT of research on the Internet for information-- trying to match our different desires and the requirements of our lifestyle to actual breeds out there.

It's a long story how we finally got to Sierra, but for now let's skip that part and arrive at the point where she was in our home, named Sierra and we were falling in love.

The three of us were bonding and falling in love. It was a triangle that worked, though not without some jeleousy.

I was intent on training Sierra and we worked hard all day on 'sit' and walking on a leash.

Sierra thought 'sit' was fun for about ten minutes and then got bored with it and wanted to run after a neighbor's cat. She thought walking on a leash was very tiresome and wanted to pull me like a sled, which was fun for her, but tore ligaments in my left knee.

More training and a Halti head-lead was an immediate answer to those problems.

Training in fact was great fun for Sierra. Her life had been lacking structure and her little Shepherd mind wanted bounderies and rules. She caught on very quickly and just needed me to varry the excersises to avoid monotany. She would often master a comand and then think "well, I don't need to do THAT ever again, as I know it by heart, as you can see." So she had to learn that "down" is really something I expect her to obey, on a regular basis, even!

She has a major stuborn streak and it made my mother comment, when I was complaining about her refusal to do what I ask at crucial times, say in traffic or off-leash,"Well, now you know how it was for me raising you! Finally, I've lived to see my revenge! Haha!"

W. on the other hand, wanted to not train Sierra, but play tug of war and roll around on the ground with her, mimicing Smack Down Wrestling.

I gave him a list of fourty-odd commands that Sierra and I were learning and he threw it away.

"I only want her to know how to come when I call and stay in the truck when I leave her to get beer in the store," he said more than once.

So, there we were; the drill sergent and the play boy, both of us angry that the other wasn't going along with the program of the other. We were fighting all the time over how to give comands and W.'s idea of fun play, which I had read was bad for dominant-aggressive personalities (Sierra's, not mine!--ok, well, I'm talking about her's at the moment, ok??!!)and didn't want him continuing with that, no matter how much he enjoyed it!

I believed that we needed to mold Sierra into the dog we wanted and the training was the method to gain the results of a dog that no longer dug holes in the backyard, chewed to peices every plastic and rubber item we owned, and disobeyed everything we'd said we wanted in a dog. She sniffed crotches and jumped up on family and friends and strangers. She was crazy-out-of-control and that was why she'd been to the pound twice already at eleven months.

She'd be back there again if something didn't change.

My mother came for her yearly month-long visit, along about here. After observing my training attempts, W.'s obvious lack of cooperation and Sierra's loving, exsuberant nature, my mother came to a conclusion of her own.

"You are absolutely right," she told me. "Your training endevours are exactly what Sierra needs and if W. won't join you in the training willingly, you have to make him cooporate. That was the same problem I had with your father, you know."

Bells went off in my head.

Flashing lights and alarms and fire works and sirens.

An invisable club hit me over the head and I realized in an instant what our triangle, our little family, had become: a duplicate of my own family when I was a child! Oh dear. Oh no.

My mother had been the authoritarian and my father the fun guy. Sure he was gone a lot working, just like W., but when he was around, he allowed me treats before dinner and we went places at night with no regard for Mother's Bedtime, I didn't have to drink my milk with every meal and I could go barefoot even if it wasn't summer! Oh my!

After their divorce, she always said that I was like a wild indian when I came home from visitation weekends with Dad and she had to "whip" me back into shape before I was back to her good, obedient little girl again. Oh dear.

My mother's compliment was exactly what I needed to see myself in a clear light. I stopped right then telling W. what commands to use, to stop playing his games with Sierra--even the ones the books said never to play with a dog like her-- and I quit demanding that they have a realtionship like I wanted them to have. I started to appreciate the relationship that they built between them; different than mine and Sierra's, but no less deep and bonded and loving. Besides those changes, I was just a bit less demanding of Sierra myself. I let her be a bit more of a free spirit, let her be a dog and sniff a crotch or two! I still have rules and I am still the drill sergent, but it's a game and fun, not a testing of her will against mine. (Well, not very often.)

Fortunatelly my mother told me I was right, and I came to my senses and had the brains to do the most important thing of all: appologise to W. and promise to back off--leave them alone to have their own Thing together.

Now, when he whistles and Sierra doesn't 'come', I just laugh. Sometimes she doesn't come for me either, and that's just the way it is: Sierra isn't Lassie, but she doesn't need all that brushing to look good either.

 

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