You Get More Flies With Honey

Although I have some concrete assignments I should be hashing out, I keep thinking about Scout, my actual dog and the inspiration for the young adult book I am working on.

The thing I keep thinking about is this:

Three or four times a day I walk Sadie and Scout around our neighborhood, and unless it is pouring rain, or I am 9 1/2 months pregnant, I enjoy it pretty much every time. I love the dogs, I love to walk, I love my neighborhood, and I love the little interchanges we have with people: alternately comical, poignant, friendly, nonsensical.

Lately, however, Scout's neuroses have been emerging on our walks, and occasionally, for no apparent reason, a dog passing by will agitate him so that he barks loudly and fiercely and pulls at the leash until the offending dog is out of sight. I would say this happens on one out of ten walks, maybe not even that often, so it is not a daily stress but an occasional source of distress. It upsets me on a number of levels, though, but perhaps most markedly in that it reveals Scout to me as a dog who still feels--several years after we adopted him from a collie rescue organization--fundamentally insecure.

It also must be said that I don't like being that person walking down the street with a giant dog that is barking and lunging like a lunatic and scaring small children and dog-shy adults alike. Only I know that when challenged by one of these dogs in even the slightest way Scout cowers behind me and whimpers, gives up the ghost altogether. If I were walking by us when he is in one of these states, I too would be nervous, especially if I'd had a bad dog experience, which I know some of my neighbors have, or were a small child or with one.

So for quite some time, as soon as I got the first intimation from Scout that he was about to have a Cujo moment, I would cross the street, turn around, go back inside, all the while pulling at his leash--he is at least 80 pounds--and saying some variation of, "No, Scout! Stop it right now, Scout! No, no, no!" When he starts to bark I become incredibly tense, much in the way I do when Lily makes bones about making a scene in a public place, which happens blessedly rarely, and when I am tense, Scout is tense, has been from pretty much the beginning of our relationship. The pulling on the leash is relatively ineffectual. I am not strong, and he is, and although the jerking can't be comfortable for him, he refuses to give in and keeps pulling, leading to a sort of dog/human tug-of-war with happy-go-lucky Sadie standing watching, wagging her tail.

One morning, I saw a prissy, prancing standard poodle Scout for some reason equates with the Son of Sam or some dog-loathing villain coming out of a building up the street. I saw him first and started to turn back, but Scout must have sensed my anxiety, or the other dog's presence, as he turned and began his barking show. For some reason, instead of yanking at his leash and yelling right back at him, or holding his mouth closed and incurring his wrath and only slightly muffled barks, I crouched down by him and put my arms around his neck. I stroked his head while saying in a low quiet voice, "You're a good boy, Scout. It's okay. We're all okay. You're a very good boy."

He barked a few more times, and then visibly relaxed. His head settled back onto his neck, his body became much less rigid. I kept petting him, looking into his eyes, talking to him, as Sadie--who would keep doing so as the Titanic sank--stood wagging her tail aggressively at passers-by. The poodle passed. Scout tensed up a little again when I got up, but we kept walking, in the direction we'd been going, and he was pretty calm for the rest of the walk.

Since that morning, I have been using this technique whenever I sense an impending bark storm, one of these seemingly random episodes triggered by something I can't see, smell or identify, something that is so clearly related to Scout's past that he may as well have told me so in plain English. And although he hasn't stopped entirely, it is amazing how much more effective my soothing voice, expansive pets and kind words are than my previous leash pulling and angry, embarrassed pleading and yells.

Anyway. That's all. Again, I suspect I'm stating the obvious for many people, but as Lily says, "If I didn't know it already (not to modify her clothing with scissors, tie Annika to the stroller, etc.) you can't get mad at me."