The snowflakes came in big and fast. Biscuit Eaters, the agility field where we often train in Boulder, looked like a Hollywood set, with oversized, impossibly fluffy flakes sweeping in. Other than our voices and the chug of panting dogs, the air rang with winter’s silence. I ran the sequence – jump, jump, tire … with a hard left before the tire. Except after I made the turn, I realized Lilly wasn’t with me. Instead, she crouched between jump #2 and the tire. The huge snowflakes stuck to her from head to tail. She looked forlorn, as if God was pelting her with rocks. Our trainer shook her head in dismay and said, “You have a working dog who’s afraid of snow.”
Mind you, we live above 8,000 feet in the Rocky Mountains. Lilly knows snow, plays in it all the time, but something about working and thinking and running a short agility sequence loomed heavy. She simply couldn’t think straight with those big flakes popping her on the nose.
I just laughed. My sensitive, smart working dog.
This is my life with a “soft” dog. That’s dog training lingo for sensitive, shy, fearful dogs.
Yes, wild, out of control dogs make for great reading – a la “Marley & Me,” but having a soft dog generates its own brand of humor. The next weekend as I regaled my friends with the tale of Lilly’s reaction to snow, some said, “I heard.”
So, you know, great [eyeroll] to be famous for training a working dog with flaws.
Word got around. We were somewhat the butt of jokes, but that’s OK with me. The laughter came with sympathy attached — most of the time. [There will always be people who suck and gossip.]
I guess working dog and dogs at work kinda similar in that way.
It’s not just snow that shuts Lilly down. Planes or geese flying overhead cause her to glaze over too. Dry leaves rustling in the wind, whining dogs on the sidelines, big trucks or buses rumbling set her on edge.
When we began learning the chute (a collapsed fabric tunnel the dog must push through), I learned quickly that the command “chute” caused her to slink off course.
It sounded like “shoot,” which Lilly knows as a cuss word. I didn’t realize how much I “shoot” my way through a typical day of writing until Lilly pointed out this flaw. Since she practically lives in the knee hole of my desk while I write, she’s learned “shoot” means something bad. (I realize it’s also tone of voice, but with her vocab, I’m pretty sure she recognizes the word too.)
So, for us, the chute is called “Push,” as in push-push-push your way through – not a simple task for a shy dog.
It’s not all bad, though. Some fears subside.
Lilly no longer cowers under the bed when I vacuum. She no longer flees in terror if I accidentally squeak the Styrofoam egg carton when I’m putting it back in the fridge. She’s stopped giving me stink eye, when I ride my mountain bike on the stationary trainer. At first, the zzz-zzz-zzz of my wheels made her crabby.
Yet, other things don’t faze her at all. We did early obedience proofing at the fire station up the road, and the noise fire trucks did not bother her. She thinks nothing of the motorcycle noise, when my husband rides in the pasture. In fact, they’ve devised a game, where he rides very slowly and lets her herd him.
Heck, neighbors saw Lilly jump on a coyote’s back and ride it out of the creek bed (with our big dog Ginko, chasing from behind). And, I once had a huge elk buck running straight for me, with Lilly hot on his tail.
A thousand-pound elk? No problem.
A stack of papers falling off my desk … holy terror.
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