My husband takes our 6-yr-old Shephard-mix pound-hound to the park every weekday afternoon to play Frisbee. I take Ellie Maze on the weekends. I stand at the top of the hill and toss the disk as far as I can to get her running since she’s a ‘high-energy’ dog and needs the daily workout.
At breakfast this morning my husband was upset with our dog.
“Ellie won’t get in my car to go to Frisbee anymore. I had to take her in your car again to get her to come with me.” He paused, glared at Ellie laying near the kitchen table on her fluffy blanket listening to our dialog. The dog stared back at him then looked at me. “Thing is, I get she wanted you to take her, and not me.” I could tell by his pout he wasn’t happy about our dog’s bratty behavior. “I take her 5 days a week and somehow that’s not good enough. She wants you to take her.”
Ellie Maze is a brat, to just about everyone, but me. Raised by four adults, the dog has two grown kids and my husband and I placating to her needs.
“I don’t know why she gravitates to you because we all take care of this dog,” my DH said. “You are her alpha. Clearly,” he added, looking down at El, who’s looking at me. “Is it just cuz you trained her when she was a pup?”
“I was on her more than anyone else, but we all trained her. Give a dog what they need, and consistently express what you need from them, and it’s really not hard to train most dogs.”
“For you. You’re like the Dog Whisperer,” he said, and believed it.
“I’m not. All you gotta do is talk to them. I talk to this dog, and every dog I’ve had, constantly, from the day I got them as puppies. Communication is key, and easy with a dog. Simple, unlike humans. Dogs wanta please. So, I wanta please them. Perfect synergy! Mutual respect.”
“I talk to this dog all the time,” my DH defended.
I shook my head. “Not so much. You talk at her, give her commands, or praise her cuteness, or her prowess.”
“You do too!” he snapped.
“Yeah, I do. I too melt with her cuteness,” I said, looking at Ellie, her rocket ears up, her big brown eyes fixed on me. “But at Frisbee, I talk to her about needing a break, ask if she wants to wait before the next toss. And she does wanta wait, a lot, especially after we’ve been playing a while. So, we wait. She stands by me or even leans against me and pants, and drools.” I flash a smile at my husband, but he doesn’t acknowledge it, so I continued. “I’ve asked her to walk around me to cue me up when she’s ready for the next catch, and she does now. Didn’t take her long to get my meaning. She gets what she needs from me at Frisbee which is why she wants to go with me more than anyone else.”
“On Sunday, when you hurt your back at Pickleball, Ellie sat on her blanket and stared at me when I tried to get her to come for Frisbee. She would not move and did not respond to my repeated commands to “Come!” He looked at our dog and Ellie’s huge ears went slack. “And she didn’t come, until you commanded her to go with me.”
“But I didn’t command her. I told her about hurting my back, and that I couldn’t take her, even though I normally do on the weekends. I looked her in the eyes and acknowledged her disappointment, as I would with any child. Dogs never really ‘mature’ beyond human adolescence. And regardless we all anthropomorphize our pets, most dogs aren’t born with a lot of hangups. Kids aren’t either. Expectations from parents, friends, social media creates them in us.” I smiled at my husband. He looked at Ellie. She looked back at him passively, then looked at me, the intensity of her stare connecting us. She stuck the tip of her tongue out, practically licked her lips — her classic mooch. Then she got up and came to me for strokes.
jcafesin.com 