Get Over It

I wish I had thought to record some of these sessions. Just as a way of reminding myself how far we have come. I can only imagine how we must have looked. Me and Chili stumbling around Carol’s driveway. What she was teaching us was based on Schutzhund Obedience Training. If you’ve never seen a dog that’s trained in this, I highly recommend that you look it up on YouTube. It’s very impressive to watch the teamwork and connection between the dog and handler. Come to think of it, I should work on this more with Chili. She was really progressing and has a beautiful prance when she heels. However, at the time, we were laughable. I’m going in one direction and Chili’s trying to drag me in another. We certainly weren’t a good example of obedience. Poor Chili, relying on me for direction. Of course she wasn’t going to listen to me until I stepped up and became the leader. She was the natural and I had to work my ass off. Carol must have had a stiff drink after these sessions.

As I’ve explained before, I was so afraid of hurting Chili that I practically paralyzed myself when it came to being the leader. I couldn’t even make a correction with any kind of authority. The best way to describe it is that I was being more of an annoyance to her than getting her attention. In the beginning when Carol would do it, I would cringe and think, “My poor little girl.” Then I opened my eyes, got my head together and finally realized that Chili wasn’t getting hurt. She didn’t look or act hurt at all. She would just stop goofing around and start paying attention. She would, and still will, push to see how much she could get away with. She’s a very cheeky girl. With me, she would look around and find things to sniff or scratch, avoiding whatever I was asking her to do and basically giving me the dog version of the finger. But with Carol, she would pay attention and work. You could see her smiling and being proud of herself the whole time. Chili wasn’t a fragile little flower. She’s a brainy brat who’s playing me and the only way I would get her respect is if I told her what I wanted and didn’t accept no, or ‘in a minute’, for an answer. It has to be my way, not hers.

I guess you could call this one of my biggest revelations. Finally realizing that I had to ‘get over it’ and just work with my dog. I always knew it but I just didn’t know how to flick that switch in my brain. It didn’t occur to me that I could get control through working as a team with Chili. At that time we were training at Carol’s twice a week for an hour each night. We practiced heeling, long downs, walking backwards, and especially focus. Focus, focus, focus. Everything relied on her focusing on me. To train Chili to look at me I would put carrot pieces in my mouth, then I would tell her ‘me’ and when she looked I would spit a carrot at her. This got her looking directly at me. Luckily she loved carrots because there was no way I was putting dog treats in my mouth. We practiced this a lot, and it worked. Chili is a very smart girl and was catching onto things quickly. She was still trying to get away with doing her own thing but I was starting to get better at catching her attention. We were progressing, and what do you know, there could actually be a light at the end.