The Puppy Diaries: Raising a Dog Named Scout (14 page)

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Authors: Jill Abramson

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It was clear that Chris had great hopes for us, and by the time we reached the river he was encouraging me to give the leash a firm tug, pulling sharply from the waist, every time Scout got a little too far ahead. Henry tried the same technique, and we could both see that the chain collar was definitely helping. Scout seemed to understand what we were trying to teach her even before we returned to our apartment.
Back at home, Chris gave Henry and me a pep talk, encouraging us to continue with the slip collar and firm correction. Consistency and repetition would be our watchwords, and the use of the collar would remind Scout that we were serious about controlling her.
Over the next few days, we were pleased to note that Chris’s instruction had made a difference. Scout pulled less, and we began to trust her more. It helped that we had seen her walk perfectly and obediently, not only with Chris holding the leash but with me holding it. Now we knew she was capable of walking on the leash without misbehaving.
Even so, I could tell that Henry was brooding about the same issue I was. We were both having real trouble letting go of the positive approach; deep
down, we still believed it would work. Besides, Scout’s job was not to sniff out bombs. Her purpose in life was simply to get her exercise and be a great companion, to share our adventures, and to keep us moving.
Happily, we eventually came up with a method that worked for us and for Scout. By stopping dead in our tracks every time she pulled, we managed to significantly reduce the problem, even when she was wearing her regular collar. True, she still pulled hard when we approached the dog run, but she did that on the chain collar as well.
The slip collar took its place in the Scout drawer, along with the harness and Gentle Leader. All served as reminders that when yank came to pull, we could take any one of them out and temporarily keep Scout under stricter control. Sometimes Henry’s back would ache after moving furniture, and he would use the slip collar. For my part, I would use it in bad weather, when the sidewalks and street were slick and dangerous.
In the end, the truth seemed to be that no single training approach consistently worked for us. We extracted the parts of Chris Velez’s prescriptions that made the most sense to us and blended them with some of Diane Abbott’s positive-training rules. We also decided that training was fundamentally an issue of trust: as Scout became an integral part of our lives,
we needed to trust her, she needed to trust us, and—perhaps most important—we needed to trust ourselves to know how best to raise her.
 
 
As spring approached, I was eager to show Chris that Scout had made real progress. As it happened, I had been invited to a promotional event in Manhattan for Swiffer, a line of cleaning products that, among other things, does a good job of collecting dog hair. The event was a cocktail party, humans and dogs invited, at a midtown hotel, and the guest of honor was Cesar Millan, Swiffer’s celebrity sponsor. Since I was hoping to interview Millan and I knew Chris admired him, I called Chris and invited him to join Henry, Scout, and me at the party.
The scene was charmingly chaotic. Scout was very excited to see Chris, as well as the dozen other dogs who were “guests” at the soiree. The party’s reception area—which led out to the hotel’s roof deck—was adorned with oversized martini glasses that had been placed on the floor. The glasses, which were about the size of large dog water bowls, were filled with homebaked dog biscuits in three different flavors.
Scout was indifferent to the celebrity in our midst, but once she discovered what those martini glasses
contained and realized that their rims were level with her snout and mouth, she was in heaven. Every time I tried to lead her away from the biscuits, Scout pulled hard on her leash. Observing this struggle, Chris gently took the leash and led Scout away from the dog biscuits. She followed him happily toward the roof deck, where many of the other owners and dogs had already gathered.
Out on the deck was Millan himself, and I walked up to him. Wearing jeans and a diamond earring, he looked relaxed and very Californian. He was not surrounded by handlers, as many celebrities are, and I found him friendly and eager to talk.
Dog Whisperer
, Millan’s Friday night TV show on the National Geographic channel, is now in its seventh season and is still one of the most highly rated cable programs. At forty-one, Millan is an industry unto himself, with popular books and other commercial tie-ins to the show. For someone who was born in Mexico and spoke no English when he arrived in this country illegally twenty years ago, he has come far. Now a superstar dog trainer (and a U.S. citizen), he has helped such famous clients as Oprah Winfrey, Nicolas Cage, and Will Smith.
But at this point in his career, Millan is also a man under fire. A growing chorus of critics has assailed his vision of dog owners as assertive pack leaders and
labeled his approach to training as too punitive. Some say his techniques—including the alpha roll, which involves forcing a dog to roll on its side—are dangerous and can be psychologically damaging to dogs. (Indeed, his show warns that viewers should not copy his techniques without consulting a professional.) Some respected animal behaviorists, like Temple Grandin, also claim that Millan misunderstands the behavior of wolves and how it applies to dogs.
I had read a lot of the criticism, including an oftcited op-ed article in the
Times
called “Pack of Lies.” And, of course, Diane Abbott had talked to me about why positive reinforcement trainers believe that Millan’s pack-leader approach is completely wrong.
When reading Millan’s latest book,
Cesar’s Rules,
I was surprised to note that he goes out of his way to document his use of positive reinforcement “in one form or another” in two-thirds of his first 140 TV shows. And in defense of his leadership-focused techniques, he points out that his work is mostly with problem dogs. As he puts it in his book, “What I’m doing isn’t dog ‘training’ but dog rehabilitation.”
In the book, Millan also cites the influence of Dr. Ian Dunbar, the guru of lure-reward training. Millan tells the story of a session during which his pit bull Junior learned to respond to voice commands (Millan usually prefers to work in silence) and picked up an
entirely new command—Down—in the course of a few minutes thanks to the use of rewards. Clearly, the Dog Whisperer is trying to send the message that he has an open mind about methodology. He is also trying to establish credibility with his critics without compromising the training principles that made his reputation.
As Millan and I chatted on the roof deck, I mentioned a number of the criticisms I’d heard about his methods. He didn’t seem in any way defensive or offended. “I don’t disagree with anyone disagreeing with me,” he said. “All the people who disagree with me have never walked with a pack of dogs,” he said. Back in California, Millan said he had sixteen pit bulls living at his training facility; even when off-leash, the dogs followed him obediently when he walked around his property. Millan had also trained rottweilers, another difficult breed known for aggression, to follow him without leashes. “Animals do not follow unstable pack leaders,” he told me in his calm but assertive tone.
That comment bothered me, but not because I believed he was wrong. I thought about Scout’s problem with pulling—maybe she dragged me this way and that because I was an unstable leader.
I described Scout’s problem to Millan. His response was sympathetic but direct. “She loves you, but that doesn’t mean she will follow you.” Continuing, he
said, “Too many people say, ‘My dog is my baby, my dog is my soul mate.’ But we need to honor that a dog is a dog.”
These words made supreme sense to me. The setting for our conversation was more than a little surreal—I’d been to plenty of Manhattan cocktail parties, but never one quite like this—yet Millan was right. Dogs are not our soul mates. They are their own beings.
A moment later, Chris approached us with Scout, and Millan gave her an admiring pat. Then it was time for him to return to the reception area and demonstrate his training techniques to the crowd of thirty or so humans and their dogs.
The Swiffer people had arranged for a passel of six-week-old puppies to serve as Millan’s trainees during the demonstration. When the puppies walked to the front of the room with Millan, Scout could not be contained, so Chris led her to the front row where she could see everything. Spotting her and seeing how much she yearned to be part of the performance, Millan invited Scout to join in, even though she was a lot bigger than the tiny pups. He drew our attention to the way the puppies eagerly sniffed Scout, thereby using their sense of smell to judge the newcomer in their midst.
Scout proudly strutted around the puppies and then bowed in front of one of them, inviting it to play. “That is what dogs should do,” Millan told the audience. The audience clapped, and Scout seemed to bask in the attention. Then, her moment in the sun over, she followed Chris to the back of the room, where she resumed her hunt for biscuits.
Henry, Jill, Cesar Millan, Chris Velez, and Scout at the Swiffer event
(Ken Taro)
 
 
It is simply breathtaking how much a puppy learns and changes in the first year. Sure, Scout still pulled, but as a full-grown girl she had also become the best kind of companion: empathetic when I’d had a bad day at work, funny and always ready to play, and a good-natured advocate for the beneficial effects of exercise. Now, as the cold weather at last receded and the first forsythia buds began to show themselves in Connecticut and Manhattan, Scout regularly persuaded me to crawl off the couch and go for a good walk.
So much of my experience of Scout’s first twelve months reminded me of the years when I was
surrounded by small children, a passage I missed more than I admitted to myself. When I walked into our apartment at night, Scout would invariably be waiting for me with a toy in her mouth—usually Louis the Lobster or Crazy Henrietta—and I would often think of my kids and how attached they were to their playthings. (I was pretty attached to them, too; in fact, Will once told me he suspected that I loved playing with his action figures more than he did.)
As happened with our children, Scout would sometimes appear at our bedside in the middle of the night or near dawn, lonely and needing our company. She would also occasionally bark or become agitated when she heard strange noises, particularly when she was new to Manhattan. And she was especially mischievous early in the morning. If we didn’t give her enough attention after waking, she was liable to steal one of my socks or a glove and chew it to pieces. Or if Henry and I were making our bed, she was sure to pick that moment to jump on the bed and mess the covers. Like Cornelia and Will, Scout loved it when we covered her with our sheets and blankets.
But just as children can sometimes be infuriating, Scout’s antics would occasionally drive me just short of crazy. One night I had to stay at the office unusually late, but since I knew that Henry was at home
working on a report, I wasn’t worried about leaving Scout alone. When I got back to our apartment, however, it was immediately apparent that Henry had failed to keep an eye on our devious pup. There was Henry, hunched over his computer and completely absorbed in his work—and there was Scout, snoozing in the front hall with the wreckage of my favorite cowboy boots nearby. A pair of brown Luccheses, they had been specially ordered from Texas and had turned a wonderful, warm color with age. The boots were one of the only pairs of good leather shoes I could comfortably wear after my unfortunate encounter with the truck; otherwise, my closet was filled with orthopedic flats. Clearly Scout had broken into my closet, stolen one of the boots, and gnawed off its burnished, pointed toe. She must have spent a good deal of time accomplishing this wicked task. Annoyed, I accused Henry of not paying enough attention. “I thought she was just chewing on her bone,” Henry explained sheepishly. From that point on, we slid pens through the closet’s door handle so Scout could no longer break in and steal my footwear.
As was also true when our kids were little, much of our social life now revolved around our friendships with people who shared our giddy fascination with the newest members of our families. When we got
together with Marian and Howard and others like them, a lot of our talk revolved around our pups. (At least we didn’t have to immerse ourselves in endless discussion about which grade school Scout could or should go to.) And when we encountered strangers on the street or in a park who also had dogs, we often struck up animated conversations about issues small and large that we inevitably had in common.
Scout, meanwhile, was growing up so quickly that we could barely keep pace with how much she was changing. She no longer feared German shepherds, and she was now relaxed and happy around her dog friends and confident when meeting unfamiliar dogs. She never once displayed a bit of aggression, even when strange dogs suddenly growled at her in Manhattan. She had now reached her adult weight of eighty pounds—twenty more than originally predicted!—but she was still in love with Charlie, the toy Havanese that lived across the street, and she was very careful not to trample him or step on his tiny paws during play. Charlie still invited Scout to chase him and roughhouse with him, and Scout continued to steal Charlie’s toys and gobble the small rawhide bones that Charlie, with his Lilliputian teeth, would spend months chewing on.
Although Scout was now completely at ease in the city, her happiest times were still in Connecticut when
she met her friends at the farm and romped in the fields without a leash. On the weekends, Scout and I frequently met up with my friend Barbara Pearce and her young Lab, Xena, who was extremely wild as a pup and remained so. Scout and Xena would tear around the farm at top speed, swim in the mucky ponds even when the water was freezing, and wrestle happily in the mud. After a playdate with Xena, Scout was always absurdly filthy. I would look at her dirty face and suddenly remember the look on my kids’ faces after they’d spent a spring morning playing in the mud. Never have I seen a lovelier image of pure happiness.
 
 
That March, I spent an afternoon with Lee Gibson, who had recently received good news from Fidelco: Viggo had successfully completed his final course of training. Lee showed me several pictures of Viggo participating in his classes, which involved intensive work with professional trainers who acted out the roles of blind people. He looked happy and proud, and as Lee showed me the photos, she did too. Of the ten dogs in Viggo’s litter, he was one of only three who ultimately passed.
Soon after that visit, I was honored when Lee invited
me to go with her to watch Viggo complete one of his final training walks. We drove to Hartford and met a director from Fidelco at a downtown street corner. The director instructed us to stand at the curb as Viggo passed by; she also told us not to distract Viggo or try to establish contact with him in any way. Viggo would be walking with the director of Fidelco’s foster program and leading her as he would a blind person. He had been trained to walk around the many obstacles presented by a city sidewalk; he had also been taught to listen to the traffic so he would know when to cross the street.
Lee and I waited for a few minutes, and then suddenly there he was, walking beside a tall female trainer. Viggo wore a heavy harness, and he appeared thinner and older than when I had last seen him. He also looked so calm and responsible that it was nearly impossible to believe that this was the same dog that had once bullied our little pup.
Lee and I watched as Viggo carefully led the trainer around a tree that was almost directly in their path. Then, at the entrance to the old G. Fox department store, Viggo led the trainer through a revolving door, something I couldn’t imagine Scout mastering. Only once, when they passed a group of pigeons, did the trainer have to correct Viggo. For a split second,
he seemed about to lunge at the birds, but the trainer brought him immediately back into line. Scout, of course, would have ripped out my arm to get to the pigeons.
After the training walk, Lee was allowed to visit with Viggo for an hour. I gave her one of Scout’s favorite balls to pass on to Viggo, but Lee was clearly anxious about having to say good-bye to him all over again. Still, we were both amazed to think that the hapless pup that she had begun working with a little more than a year ago was about to become an actual guide dog for the blind. The hundreds of hours that Lee had spent training and socializing Viggo had paid off.
As I drove home that day, I reminded myself that if Viggo could learn so much in a relatively short time, Scout too could eventually learn not to pull and even not to eat cowboy boots. But Henry and I would have to rededicate ourselves to training her, spend many more hours working with her, and give her plenty of attention and love along the way. In the coming months, we would undoubtedly see as much backsliding as progress; we would also, I was sure, experience surprises both bad and good. But if Chris Velez could train dogs to sniff bombs and Lee could train Viggo to work as a guide dog, we could do our part for Scout.
We would do it not because Scout would be working in the real world, but because we knew she wanted to learn how to master the job of being a very good dog.
 
 
As Scout approached her first birthday, Henry and I were eager to take her back to Thistledown and show her off to Donna Cutler, the breeder. We also wanted Scout to have a reunion with her mother, Tess, and the rest of her relatives. Partly we wanted to see if Scout shared any of her blood family’s physical and personality characteristics, but we were also curious to learn whether, as we had read in some books, the mother-puppy bond remained strong even after separation.
We made the necessary arrangements with Donna, but when the day for the reunion came I was unable to go. Disappointed, I insisted that Henry bring back a full report, and when he returned from Thistledown he gave me a detailed description of the visit, which began when he once again followed instructions and carefully wiped his paws before entering Donna’s house, with Scout right behind him.
Scout greeted Donna enthusiastically and eagerly accepted her admiring pats, but she did not seem to remember Donna. Henry and Scout followed Donna outside to the wire-fenced dog pen, where more than half a dozen beautiful British goldens were lounging about. At the sight of Donna and Scout, they got to their feet, moved briskly to the gate, and gave off a mighty homecoming howl, making Scout feel wonderfully welcome. But would she know or get along with her relatives, especially her mother?
Donna Cutler introducing Scout to her ancestors
First Donna brought out Tess, Scout’s gorgeous, one-eyed mother. They greeted each other the way two dog acquaintances would; there was no great joy, just a little sniff, and then Scout wanted to play. But Tess declined the invitation and soon displayed more interest in Donna than in her offspring. So much for the theory that female dogs remain attached to their pups!
Such a cool hello from a birth mother might have been devastating to a human, but mother dogs often become somewhat detached from their puppies after weaning. Interestingly, this may be an evolutionary response brought about by millennia of contact with humans, who usually take over the care of puppies when they’re still quite young. (That’s what a number of scientists suggest, anyway. Given that a new mother has as many as ten pups feeding off her day and night, I think Momma may just need a break!)
Next came Scout’s grandmother, who Henry thought actually looked more like Scout than Tess did. The two dogs immediately took off and began running in circles, which delighted Scout. After a few minutes of play, out came great-grandmother, who greeted Scout with just a sniff or two. Then it was time for a group photograph of the maternal line going back four generations. Looking at this remarkable collection of beauties, Henry felt a little sad to think that Scout couldn’t continue the line, but that was our choice, and Donna’s rule, from the beginning.
Scout (left) with her ancestors
Scout’s father—a famous Austrian golden named Patrick—no longer lived with Donna; he had moved to New Hampshire. But to end the procession of relatives, Donna brought out Scout’s grandfather, who was much larger than any of the females but still a calm fellow and very handsome to boot. As Henry took a few group photos, he and Donna agreed that it was this big guy whom Scout most resembled.
Once the dogs were put back in their pen, Donna remarked that she thought Scout’s temperament was excellent. She also said that Scout could be a good candidate for advanced training, which might include retrieving ducks from the water. As it happened, Donna had kept the last of Scout’s littermates, Johnnie, and he had become a field champion, winning blue ribbons in a competition in Canada. Donna showed Henry the two ducks she kept in her freezer for Johnnie’s
practice sessions, but in the end he politely declined her offer to allow Scout a little taste of the wild.

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