House of Cards

Did I mention my dog is good looking? Yeah, I'm biased, but really, he's like a supermodel. People actually slam on their brakes when they see him. Everyone asks about his puppies (not having quite put together the no balls=no puppies thing). Every dogman or woman who's ever met him has taken a moment to run their eyes over him and whistle softly. "Damn, that dog has great lines. You found him in the pound?" It's a little weird: this quality of desirability that has nothing to do with the dog's character (or mine, for that matter), something on which people compliment you that you didn't actually work on, like your hair ("thanks, I grew it myself.") OK, yes, I did consciously adopt a beautiful dog. On some level I must have been just as attracted to it as the brake-slammers. SHINY! I WANT IT! 

All of which is the categorical opposite of the other way people see my dog: BAD DOG! MONSTER! Aggressive, unsocial! The disconnect is a problem for people. How can pretty shiny dog be aggressive? Must be bad owner! I feel their accusing eyes settle on me, taking in whatever cue or piece of gear that fits into their current conception of Wrong and Inhumane, trying to match it up against idea forming in their mind of what kind of treatment I'm inflicting on the poor animal to make it act this way. In better moments, I'm kind of amused by the role I'm playing, which is to embody evil for that person in that moment. I am the danger. Someone has to do it. When it's one of those dogmatic Berkeley types, it's easy for me. I'm happy to be what they need, because no part of my heart wants their approval.

But then, how easily my bubble can pop when, for whatever reason, I do care. We have a neighbor with a couple little terriers. He and his wife seem like good folk; they recently opened a yoga studio in the neighborhood and we've stopped to have brief chats about dogs and starting businesses. The neighbor has admired Laszlo during our training sessions out on the block, and more than once I've had to gently dissuade him from introducing his dogs and himself to Laszlo. Today he saw me, I waved, and he strode across the street straight toward Laszlo with his hand out, not waiting for an invitation. "He's such a beautiful dog, can I meet him this time?" It may have been just fine for him to meet Laszlo right then, but I'd just been working him around stuff that triggered him, and I didn't even wait to read Laszlo's body; in that moment it seemed like the possibility of him biting the neighbor had to be avoided at all costs, so I pulled the dog back and said kind of harshly, "I wouldn't...no, seriously, I wouldn't. He does bite." The neighbor looked really disappointed and said, "I thought you said he was doing a lot better!"

I don't know when or if I'd said that to him, but that sentence went right to my core where all the buttons get pushed. Suddenly the perception of a decent morning session with my dog turned sour, and I got that feeling in my chest, a house of cards collapsing inward, a stone lodged in my throat. All the STUFF. You're not good enough. You're failing. Your dog will never be trustworthy. You are just kidding yourself with all this training stuff. I thought you said he was better. You're full of shit, aren't you. What kind of people are you, owning that dog. What are you trying to prove.

I've visited this place a lot over the years, like wrestling with a tiger at the bottom of a pit: I lived there for a while when I was much younger, and then at some point I realized I could leave the pit, that the world was beautiful and there was joy at the core, but every once in a while the bottom falls out and I find myself there again, looking upward from a great depth. Getting Laszlo plunged me into the pit for many months, and it was a dark time.

Yet over and over I have proven to myself that we can make progress. Over and over I have seen my dog transform, assimilate an exercise I secretly doubted was possible for him, make a previously insurmountable hurdle into old news. But of course it's not really about the dog.

So the real progress is that now I go there, but I don't live there. The pit is still dark, the tiger still at the bottom. Now I can stand outside it and look at it and say, OK, that's what I'm feeling now. I want the neighbor to like me. I want people to like me. OK. I am afraid of not being likable. OK. And then I can just feel THAT. It's not about the dog. It's not about goals, or success, or failure. It's about a child's primal fear. Here it sits, here in my chest. I don't need to argue with it, because it is not an argument. I don't need to feel anything but that, the truth. That's the best thing I've ever learned from dog training. It's enough for now.