Ready to Eat

I’m a month away from engaging in an exercise in profound humility.  I’ve signed Cleo and me up for the obedience trials at the Del Monte Kennel Club show on July 13^th and 14^th.  Yes, yes, go ahead and remind me how many times I’ve bragged in this space about how brilliant and intuitive Cleo is.  Let me remind you that she is still a terrier. 

Most people are familiar with the OCD aspect of the terrier’s nature, if only from the Eddie Murphy Dr. Doolittle movies.  Think of the Parson Russell Terrier who leaps repeatedly into the shot saying over and over again, “Throw the ball, throw the ball, throw the ball.”  Bedlingtons, or at least Cleo, aren’t quite so disturbingly fixated.  Nonetheless, there is still the element of distraction to be considered.  Many’s the time that Cleo has failed to respond to a command as we’ve been working, and when I pop her collar, she turns to look at me with an expression that says, “I’m sorry, were you saying something?  I couldn’t hear you because I was staring at that beetle over there.”  Put her into a ring with a bunch of new dogs, spectators and other events going on all around her?  My heart quails.

I’m going to lobby Pluis, our trainer, to hold some of our classes outside over the next few weeks.  The event in July will be on grass.  It seems a little unfair: Dogs who relieve themselves during the event are immediately disqualified.  That’s not what concerns me for Cleo.  I’m pretty sure that as long as she pees before we start, she’ll be okay;  she’s not big into marking.  But she does associate grass with playtime.  Okay, she associates most things with playtime.  Yet, she can be contained at our indoor classes. 

Of course, the other day, she was a bit resentful that Pluis wasn’t paying enough attention to her.  Usually, Pluis will acknowledge a dog’s longing looks with a gentle, “Yes, I see you.”  This assuages most dogs for the time being.  For whatever reason, Cleo had not gotten her usual reassurance of existence and worth from Pluis. She found her moment when we were practicing long-distance recall.  We were the last in the class of about sixteen to go.  Cleo is always reliable in the stay.  When we go last, though, she can be hesitant to come across the wide floor, especially if any of the dogs have been extra-exuberant in their own recalls.  But I had taken the opportunity of a late start to our class last Monday to practice recalls outside on the grass.  Cleo had been impressive, even to me.  So I confidently told her to stay and strode out onto the floor.  Before I was halfway across, one of the working dog moms looked at me pityingly.  She made an embarrassed gesture behind me.  I turned around.  Cleo was mincing her way toward Pluis.  The closer she got, the more she lowered herself until, about two feet away, she was crawling on her belly like a soldier traversing open ground under fire.  Still about six inches from Pluis’ shoes, she started turning her front-half upside down, paddling closer with her rear feet.  As the top of her head hit Pluis’ toe, Cleo flipped her back feet around and presented her tummy.  I mean really!  It was an embarrassing display of subservience.  Such a show would not go over well at an obedience trial.

Rock climbing girl with Dad

The outdoors is one great jungle gym for Cleo.  Last weekend, John and I took her for our regular walk to the beach.  We frequent a boulder-strewn spot these days where all three of us love to hop from rock to rock until we can stare into the tidepools (or, for some of us, wade in them up to our armpits).  Between two rocky beaches is a cliff covered with iceplant.  The cliff falls away sharply, at about a thirty degree slant, down to a narrow strip of rocks and sand fifteen feet below.  As I picked my way up the slope to the top of the cliff, I heard John, several yards ahead of me, yell, “S***!  Cleo!!”  Running along next to John at the top of the cliff, she had suddenly decided that there was something interesting over the side.  Without a pause, she simply went over the edge, leaping like a mountain goat from one iceplant foothold to the next.  Because she was hugging the cliff, she was quickly out of our sight.  Had she managed to control her descent the whole way?  As John went back in the direction we had come, I ran forward, both of us trying to make our way off the cliff and down to the beach.  “There she is!” John yelled.  Realizing that she could no longer see us, Cleo had decided to return along the rocks to the beach we had just left.  “Cleo, here we are,” John called to her, directing her up the sandy trail that led to the top of the cliff.  With three bounds from rock to rock, Cleo headed up to him, but not along the trail.  She went straight back up the side of the cliff.  The three of us together at the top once more, I leaned down to pat her.  “I have got to get you back into agility class,” I told her.

So I’m actually not all that concerned about being served a breakfast of humble pie come mid-July.  Last year, it was at this same show that Cleo earned her Therapy Dog title.  I was so nervous about that trial that I was nauseated and sleepless the whole night before.  Yet here we are, almost a year later.  My girl is a welcome fixture at school.  The book has been published. And most of all, she is healthy, happy, beautiful.  And oh-so-very loved by her mom and dad.

In My Puppy's Eyes

It’s no wonder that there is a plethora of books on parenting; it has to be one of the most taxing and mysterious tasks there is.  Dr. Spock famously reassured new parents, “Trust yourself; you know more than you think you do.”  It’s too bad that he didn’t follow that up with, “Now that you’ve relaxed, get coaching.”  I can’t tell you how devoutly I wish that I had spent as much time in parenting classes as I’ve spent in dog training classes.  And dogs are a whole lot more straight-forward than kids.

Pluis, our trainer, frequently tells the class that our dogs show her the mistakes we’ve been making in training.  She only has to watch them.  When you tell your dog to come, does she run to you and rush to sit in the heel position rather than directly in front of you?  Well, you’ve been too consistently following the command to come with the one to heel.  Your dog’s only trying to help you by skipping the intervening step.  Does your dog constantly get up when he’s in the down-stay?  Why, look at you putting your hands all over him every time you go back to put him in place again!  He’s got your number!  He knows that if he gets up, you’ll come over and give him all the contact he could want. 

There’s a handler in our class who can’t understand why his dog wanders confusedly in front of him every time he tells her to come.  “Tell her what you want!” Pluis adjures him as he manhandles the dog this way and that by her neck.  Pluis tries to show him: “Come!” she tells the dog, then “Sit” as she reaches Pluis’ feet.  The dog performs perfectly, a look of intense relief in her liquid brown eyes.  The handler tries.  “Come,” he says sternly, then wordlessly hauls her around by her neck once more.

I haven’t consciously been applying the same thinking to students at school, but I have had several occasions to contemplate falling apples, trees and relative distances.  Years ago, two brothers came to us with tales of appalling bullying in their middle schools.  Their parents were full of stories of how badly they, too, had been treated by the school administration who refused to do anything about the bullying.  The boys were singularly lacking in social skills.  A good bit of the work I did with them focused on how to show that you are open to interacting with others, how to greet people, and how to engage in conversation.  Ordinarily, the absence of this set of skills would lead one to suspect some spectrum disorder, Asperger’s for instance, but neither of the boys showed any other indicators.  It wasn’t until one of the brothers got into a potentially serious situation by misreading a girl’s social cues that I finally learned enough to fill in the missing pieces.  “My wife and I,” the father told me, “have done everything we could to isolate our boys.  We’ve kept them young and innocent.  We haven’t let them be exposed to anything.  They never go to a party or any social event unless one of us can be there, too.  Maybe,” he added in a flash of insight, “that wasn’t such a good idea.”  Unfortunately, the flash flamed out.  When the older son graduated from our school, the parents didn’t feel he was ready to go away to college, so he stayed home.  I asked him how he felt about that.  “I’m really tired of living with my parents,” he confessed.  “They fight a lot.  But I’m not ready to go away.”  He shrugged and looked at me sheepishly.  “The world’s a scary place.”  It’s every parent’s instinct to protect her child, but what impels someone to over-protect to the point of incapacitation?

On the flipside, there’s a young woman who graduated this year and is off to a well-known university back East.  From the moment she arrived, she was a leader.  She wasn’t the valedictorian, but she was a great student because she loves to learn.  She is just as likely to share a joke and a laugh with a teacher as she is with a peer.  And who did she invite to prom?  A former classmate she happened to run into at a political forum because “He was always so nice in eighth grade.”  True to form, they had a marvelous time.  She was in my advisory group and always had uncommon wisdom to share with us all.  Here’s what she told me once:

“As far back as I can remember, kindergarten, maybe, whenever I had a problem with something, my mom would sit down with me and strategize.  At first, she’d suggest possible courses of action, we’d decide what I would do, then I’d do it.  At some point, I don’t really remember when, she stopped suggesting and started asking me what I wanted to do.  Now, she’ll ask questions to help me get my thoughts together, you know.  But mostly, she listens.  Then she tells me she trusts me to work it out.  Oh, it’s not always perfect, what I come up with,” she added, laughing, “but when I make a mistake, we talk about what I’ll do next.”

I believe in the power of mistakes.  As long as it doesn’t kill you, maim you or destroy your future, a mistake has more to teach you than anything else.  So I’m embracing the mistakes I made with my own kids, and dammit, I’m going to learn from them.  I’m convinced that if I pull together the lessons of my mistakes with the lessons I’ve learned from life with Cleo, I can be a better person for my students.  This is what I plan to practice:

•         Lead with love and enthusiasm (It’s much more fun to heel with someone who’s excited than someone who’s just dragging you by the throat.)
•         Follow up with humor (Someone is more likely to respond well if you tap them on the calf with your nose than if you growl at them.)
•         Remember: You cannot control anything or anyone (Even the best dog is gonna bark her fool head off now and then.)
•         Trust (No one really wants to be bad.)
•         Have patience (Remember how long it took to learn to stand for a greeting?)

Reader Responses

Such wonderful stories and comments have come from last week’s post!  For those of you who get these installments without the comments section and for those who replied via email, Facebook or other format, I want to share some of the responses to my call for reader feedback.  All of these will be anonymous, but if you want to lay claim to your story, feel free to do so!

From an experienced and dedicated Bedlington parent:

“...and so it begins. You have entered into a world of addiction for which there is no cure. I got my first Bedlington, Lambert, 9.5 years ago. From the first day, he entwined himself in my heart and my life. It is almost impossible to describe the bond I had with him. I rescued Lily when she was a year old. She has all of the same sweet traits as Lambert, but is a little more high strung. Lambert passed away unexpectedly in February, I am still grieving his loss. About 6 weeks ago though, a adopted a 12 year old named Rocky. He is a special needs Bedlington. He is deaf, has cataracts, has copper toxicosis, had a rectal tumor which was just removed on Tuesday, and he has some sort of spinal injury that makes his hind quarters weak. Even with all of these issues, his Bedlington ways shine through. I am not sure how long he will be with me, but what I do know is that no Bedlington deserves anything less than a wonderful life full of love.”

I am so moved by this degree of love and dedication.  Bedlington parents are some of the kindest, most generous people I’ve ever known.  And Bedlingtons do inspire such love.  I’m glad there’s no cure for the addiction!

Here’s a comment from the converted:

“Absolutely without doubt the greatest breed ever!  My husband, who never wanted a dog, bought Miss Dog for me 10 years ago & wouldn't be without her now!”

John, too, thought he would be perfectly happy without ever having another dog.  I think I’ve chronicled in this space how that has changed!

An enthusiastic endorsement:

“Love my Bedlington! He is a Therapy Dog, too! Whenever I talk about just how perfect he is, he does something bad, as if to say, ‘Look, nobody is perfect – see?’ I love him and wonder why more people don't have Bedlingtons:  They are the perfect size, no shedding, great personalities and smart, smart, smart!”

I attribute the perverse behavior to the famous Bedlington sense of humor.  When Cleo shows me up, there’s more than a little snickering behind her sparkling eyes.  Keeps me humble!

A wonderful conversation developed on the “I love Bedlington Terriers” Facebook page.  It began with a contributor asking if other Bedlingtons didn’t like being watched while they were eating.  It turns out this isn’t an uncommon situation.  Also not uncommon?  Bedlingtons who don’t like to eat, period.  I used to agonize over Cleo’s resistance to breakfast (I can hear John muttering to himself now: “Used to agonize?!”).  She happily eats dinner whenever I feed it to her, but breakfast is a different story.  Sometimes she’ll eat it at noon, sometimes at 4 PM, sometimes at 9 AM.  But no matter when she eats it, she’s always ready for dinner as soon as we get home from school!  It was such a relief to get a note from Cleo’s grandmother saying, “Don’t worry; Bedlingtons are not aggressive eaters.”  My girl still has her Audrey Hepburn figure! 

I am intrigued, though, by the contributor who said her Bedlington eats five raw chicken necks a day.  I imagine his breath is pretty good…  This comment sparked a delightful conversation among folks who feed their dogs chicken necks, raw wings and feet.  They go to the butcher and pick up a variety pack along with “raw pet mince.”  According to the chicken enthusiasts, the necks and feet are terrific for dogs’ teeth.  I’m thrown back into my vegetarian’s dilemma, but I’m also really interested to see how Cleo would react to a chicken neck. 

Another comment posted on the blog site made me really want to meet this writer:

“You and I are both in love with our Bedlingtons. I almost said dogs, but on reflection, I had to change the word to Bedlingtons. … I, for one, yearn to possess some of her finer qualities, and I don't mean going ape when she encounters squirrels….” 

That Bedlophile sounds like a whole lot of fun to hang out with!!  And, by the way, I’m trademarking  the word “bedlophile.” 

A faithful reader who has known Cleo since the instant of her birth writes:

“I have two Bedlingtons, mother and son.  If Sterling gets into his dad’s lap first, Gracee will run to the doggy door and bark.  Sterling goes to see what she sees, then she runs and gets in her dad’s lap.  The trick worked!“

I love this!  Cleo works this kind of trick on us all the time.  If they only had opposable thumbs, Bedlingtons could be grand master chess players.

This reader also goes on to describe “the Bedlington bounce.”  It’s such a wonderful trait.  If you’ve never seen it, you can approximate it in your imagination: Picture the way an antelope springs across the prairie, launching from its rear legs and bouncing forward onto its forelegs.  Such joy and exuberance!  Now convert that to a lamb-sized dog and you’ve got the idea.

She concludes:

“Our life would be dull without a Bedlington.  They are the smartest, most loving, and if you are anxious or stressed-out just lay down with them and snuggle.  The soft, loving response will always make you feel better.  I could go on and on.”

Hear, hear!

Finally, a reader summed it up well with this succinct contribution:

“You know you have a Bedlington when others bleat at her on her walks.”

Thanks to everyone who responded!  We so enjoyed reading the thoughts and reflections on all the dogs we heard about.  The bottom line: We are so lucky to have these remarkable companions, be they Bedlington, English Conformation Labradors, Cocker Spaniel or whatever.

But especially the Bedlingtons.

The Best of All Possible Dogs

As anyone who has ever worked in a school can tell you, the end of the school year can be a wild ride.  Whether it’s spring fever, the promise of summer vacation, the end of high school for the seniors, or simply exhaustion from the ten month cycle of classes, extracurriculars and homework, students start to resemble squirrels on an acorn high more than the dedicated young scholars who have been filling our classrooms since August.  Suffice it to say that Cleo and I have been kept busy these last few weeks.  Add in a wonderful, whirlwind trip back East, and the absence of posts for the last month is explained. 

While I was out of town, John sent me a photo of Cleo taken on their morning walk.  At the time, I thought to myself, You know you’re in love with your puppy when getting a picture of her sends you into paroxysms of delight, even though you’ve been gone for less than a day.  This got me thinking.  Everyone believes their dog is the best, right?  I have a student who insists that her dog flunked out of puppy school.  She says the trainer asked them not to return.  Between you and me, I think this was a problem with the trainer, not the handlers and certainly not the puppy.  Be that as it may, she adores her dog and wouldn’t trade him for anything.  She comes in regularly with a friend and the two of them fuss over Cleo, but spend the entire time talking about how wonderful their own dogs are. 

Now, I don’t have a lot of experience, so comparisons are tough for me.  Cleo is my first Bedlington Terrier, and as I’ve mentioned in this space before, my previous canine partnerships have been limited: a miniature schnauzer who followed my mother around like she was the second coming, an Irish setter who could have made a box of rocks look like a rocket scientist, a Sheltie who I never really connected with, and a Chinese Crested who I loved a lot.  To me, Cleo is truly special.  I don’t want to sound disloyal, but it has crossed my mind that her specialness has more to do with her being a Bedlington than it does with Cleo herself.  (I feel a little guilty even admitting that!)

A regular reader left a comment saying, “For some time now I have been feeling that my Bedlington is as smart as your Bedlington.”  Honestly, I’d be disappointed to hear anything else!  I mean, I would hope that all parents feel that way about their dogs.  But then I read an article about Bedlingtons written by someone who really knows them and who has a wide basis for comparison: She has raised and bred a variety of dogs and has a line of championship Bedlingtons that stretches down through generations.  Full disclosure, I’m referring to Cleo’s paternal grandmother, Lucy Heyman, whose champion Lover Boy is Cleo’s dad.  She thinks they are the best of all possible dogs.  As she described them—their lion’s-roar bark, their loyalty and protectiveness, their charm and sense of humor, their fleet and agile forms—I began to suspect that many of the things I love about Cleo are traits shared by Bedlingtons in general.

So I thought I would ask readers to compare notes.  I’m going to suggest a few identifying traits, and I hope readers will share their own experiences with their Bedlington Terriers, corroborating, debunking or adding to my own insights about what makes Cleo (Bedlingtons?) special.  So here goes.

You know you have a Bedlington when you are three thousand miles away celebrating your sister’s sixtieth birthday and you reach your hand into your jacket pocket and realize you have accidentally brought with you a poo bag and a handful of dog treats.  You experience a rush of joy at the thought of how lucky you are to share your life with your dog, then you tuck everything back into your pocket to have ready when you see her again.

You know you have a Bedlington when finding the right groomer is a years-long, crowd-sourced quest.  If she knows what a Bedlington is supposed to look like, can actually make the Bedlington look like that, and is also kind and patient, she is worth her weight in platinum.  I would sooner give up my own hair dresser than lose the wonderful groomer we have finally found.

You know you have a Bedlington when every day she teaches you something about loyalty.  As I write, even now, Cleo is on the chaise behind me, her head turned over the back so that she can watch me.  Yesterday, I left the house to visit a friend.  I got into the car and started it before I realized I’d forgotten something important.  I hopped out and ran back to the house.  When I opened the front door, Cleo was standing exactly where she’d been when I said goodbye.  She was watching the door in case I returned.

You know you have a Bedlington when your dog is your model of patience.  All through the difficult days of the last few weeks when almost every minute of my workday was filled with meetings or classes, Cleo patiently lay on my office couch, happily greeting guests or accepting the cuddling of students when she could, napping and quietly contemplating the birds in the canyon when there was nothing else to do.

You know you have a Bedlington when the shrill squeak of a ground squirrel can turn an eager-to-please, loving dog into an obsessive basket case.  Our campus is overrun, especially one ravine that is the Shanghai of ground squirrels.  Cleo will stand, quivering, at the edge of this ravine, staring down at the colony of varmints.  On Friday, Cleo’s friend Betsy and I paused to watch her.  Betsy turned to me and said, “I bet I could outrun Cleo down that bank of iceplant.”  It’s easy to be fooled by that lamblike physique; the fact is that Bedlington Terriers are fast, agile, sure-footed and excellent jumpers.  Betsy took Cleo by surprise as she ran past her and leapt down the first incline.  Within two seconds, Cleo was three yards ahead.  She bounded through the iceplant, reaching the bottom of the ravine in seconds, then, seeing a student by the art building on the other side, ran up the far slope, leaving Betsy to struggle along behind her.

You know you have a Bedlington when a thirty second adventure of running through iceplant is followed by thirty minutes of sitting on the floor of the office while your mom painstakingly separates burrs and foxtails from every inch of your Velcro-like hair.

But listen, don’t let me mislead you.  Though I suspect that Bedlington Terriers all share these qualities, I can’t help but believe that Cleo is the most magical, most sensitive, the smartest and funniest creature that ever lived.

We Are All Boston

I can’t promise how much this post is going to be about Cleo, so I would understand if you decided to stop reading now.  The thing is, there are critical times for our country that I just can’t turn my back on; it feels disrespectful.  I was reading Facebook posts the other evening, and I found myself getting irritated at people who were still commenting on brownies baked, games won or lost, concerts attended.  I didn’t want people to stop doing those things.  In fact, I was glad they were.  I just didn’t want to hear about them. 

I get obsessed.  It’s for people like me that NPR devotes its entire broadcast of All Things Considered to biographies of the Tsarnaevs, that the New York Times has minute by minute updates to their interactive maps of Boston neighborhoods, or that MSNBC replays Rachel Maddow’s amazing geography lesson on the quilt of countries surrounding Chechnya.  I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time on Twitter lately; that’s where you go if you want the real moment by moment reporting.  Sadly, you have to weed your way through some tweets from the lunatic fringe, but if you’re willing to take a mental shower every now and then, you can find out more from the guy tweeting from his third floor apartment than you can from Reuters.  After all, they’re getting their news from him, too. 

Speaking of which, wasn’t this week an amazing benchmark of some profound changes in this country?  Within minutes of the explosions, Instagram and YouTube had uploads of photos and videos.  I’d be interested to know, was this the most massively crowd-sourced manhunt in history?  It didn’t take long for some heroes to be recognized, either, welcome bright spots of hope and inspiration.  And, yes, there was a lot of misinformation that got out there, too, but a stunning amount of that was from professional news sources. 

I wanted to hate the perpetrators.  I honestly did.  In fact, I guess I did hate them for awhile.  At least until they were identified.  I can’t even write here what I wanted to happen to them when they were caught.  It smacked more of revenge than of justice.  I watched that loop of Suspect 1 and Suspect 2 walking through the crowd over and over and over.  The thought that accompanied each repetition was, “They’re just kids!”  I don’t know what I expected, or why their youth makes this all so much more painful.  Except I guess I do.  Dzhokhar, the nineteen-year-old, is just a year older than my seniors.  He’s exactly a year younger—they share a birthday—than my step-son.  The life of a nineteen-year-old should be full of hope and optimism, teenage angst coped with through edgy poetry, adulation of Burroughs and Cobain and Plath while all the while knowing that you’ve got a corner on understanding what’s wrong with the world, and you’re going to fix it.  Fix it, not destroy it.

Those bombs weren’t hand-crafted and strategically placed to effect the most property damage.  They were meant to do what they did—tear flesh.  How do we get our minds around what motivated these guys?  How can we ever understand the desire to destroy so many lives?  Strangers’ lives, at that.

I have an ache in the center of my chest, around my heart.  It began with the thought of the families finding out that their daughters and son had been killed.  It grew with the image of the ashen young man clutching his tattered legs as he was rushed down the street in a wheelchair, his face a mask of haunted disbelief and horror.  Scores of people, their lives unutterably changed, waking to months and years of healing and rehabilitation.  A sadness so profound rises from the stories of a mother, father, sister in denial, clutching to the reed-thin belief that this was all a setup and their boys were somehow innocent.  An uncle, overcome with anger.  A wife and her parents retreating into their house and battening down the hatches.  A daughter—a daughter!—how does she grow up knowing what her father has done?

We wait for answers, but they will never be enough. We’ll never have the peace of thinking, “That’s why they did what they did, and this is how we’ll avoid something like this ever happening again.”  We’ll never feel satisfied. 

And so I follow a shared link on Facebook to the video of the catsucking on the vacuum hose and I laugh until that is why I’m crying.  I try extra-hard to really look at people on the street and greet them warmly.  Who knows if they’re feeling sad and alone.  John and I engage the checker at Trader Joe’s in a conversation about her life.  We recognize the humanity in those around us.  We share a moment of tenderness for the old guy crossing the street, bent low over his cane as he walks with his old dog, graying muzzle hoovering the sidewalk for interesting scents.  At critical moments, I tear myself from the computer screen and lie down beside Cleo with my face against her warm chest.  I feel the soft fuzz of her curly hair, the roughness of her pads as they press against my cheek.  There is love and optimism and exquisite comfort in those moments.

So I guess this post was about Cleo after all.

Brains and Beauty

I have a friend who wrote a popular dog-training book called Imagine Life with a Well-Behaved Dog.  This title has stuck with me from the first moment I heard it, I think because the well-behaved dog I imagined always seemed more fiction than reality.  Take Buck from The Call of the Wild who lies around adoringly staring at his master, eschewing the C of the W until his master dies and frees him to explore the tundra.  Or Pilot, the faithful dog who trots around after Mr. Rochester all over Derbyshire and who is the first to recognize Jane Eyre when she returns from her self-imposed exile.  And speaking of recognizing, let’s not forget Argos who, after twenty years, is the only being to spot the disguised Odysseus returning from the Trojan War.  That is one long-lived dog!  And what about Toto who seems to understand (and do) everything Dorothy says to him?

In real life, though, a dog that would actually listen to me seemed too much to hope for.  And then I met Cleo.  Listen, I’m not going to suggest that this all happened magically.  We’ve put two solid years into obedience classes.  I pretend we continue to go only because the camaraderie is such fun for both of us, but we’re still learning an awful lot each week.  Sometimes on our walks, we meet people whose dogs are pulling and tugging and darting around like out-of-control kites with legs.  “What a well-behaved dog,” they say with wonder and admiration.  John and I let Cleo take all the credit.  She works hard; she deserves it.

But you know, In the last couple of months, it really does seem as if the dominoes are clicking into place for her.  She learns new commands faster, responds to known commands more accurately and is just more tuned in overall.  In class last week, Pluis introduced two new hand signals, one for heel and one for stand.  The first two times we tried them, we combined the signal and the verbal command.  Cleo was initially confused by the gesture for heel because it turns out it’s the same one I’ve been using as a release from heeling.  Oops.  Gotta retrain myself and her on that one.  She got the gesture for stand on the second try.  I was so amazed I said, “Wow!” instead of “Good.”  Cleo was busy checking out the Parson Russell who joined class just last week, so she didn’t seem to notice.

This isn’t the only example of her wondrous brilliance, though.   Over spring vacation, my school provided me with a Dutch door to replace the baby gate I’ve been using for the past two years.  This baby gate was one of the swanky ones with a swinging pass-through for people, but the mechanism to open the little door baffled most visitors.  Parents, students, colleagues would stand staring at the top of the gate in utter befuddlement as I scampered around my desk to let them in, all the while calling out encouraging instructions like “Lift up on the little—no, not that, the other—the grey—never mind.”  On the way out, seven visitors out of ten would catch a toe on the metal railing at the bottom of the gate and nearly go flying into the nearby computer monitor.  So I was pretty excited to hear that the Dutch door had been approved and would be installed in early March.  It really is a thing of wonder.  Students, teachers, visitors have exclaimed over it.  Cleo’s friend Betsy took it as a challenge.  It is she, you may remember, who has been teaching Cleo tricks like High Five, Hop, Army Crawl, Look Pretty, and Close the Door.  A couple of weeks ago, Betsy was visiting Cleo and filling me in on her life of late.  As usual, the bottom half of the Dutch door was closed, the top half was three-quarters open.  Suddenly, Betsy jumped up from the  couch and exclaimed, “I wonder what Cleo will do if I tell her to close the door!”  She ran to the door and called Cleo to come.  The puppy positioned herself in front of Betsy and looked at her expectantly.  “Close the door,” Betsy chirped, standing perfectly still.  Cleo looked at the closed bottom half, then turned back to Betsy.  “Close the door,” she urged again.  Cleo looked up, then leapt, extending her arms towards the top half of the door and giving it a swat with both paws.  It swung about half-way closed.  Before she had fully landed, we were both exclaiming, “Good dog!  You are so brilliant!”  Betsy looked at me, her eyes shining. “That was amazing!” she crowed.  Okay, so maybe she didn’t get the door all the way closed, but sometimes, just the attempt is an awesome accomplishment.

Last weekend, I had a delightful email from Cleo’s Auntie Kim.  All it said was, “Remind me to tell you how brilliant your dog was on Friday.”  Kim had taken Cleo with her to the wilderness area to change batteries in the critter cams that dot the hundred acres.  The two of them often go over there together because it affords Cleo the chance to run around during the school day and they both enjoy the company.  This time, Kim took an unaccustomed route.  Cleo ran ahead, but each time she came to a fork, she stopped and looked back for instructions on which path to take.  Kim (being a scientist both by nature and training) decided to do an experiment.  At the first fork, she simply said, “Left.”  Cleo headed down the left path, turning back for confirmation.  “Yes,” said Kim, nodding.  Off they went.  At each subsequent fork, Kim gave her instructions, including once, where three paths met, “Straight.”  If Cleo took the wrong route, Kim said, “Stop,” then repeated the direction, but this time with an arm extended for clarification.  Once, Cleo was far ahead and Kim called to her, “Wait by the camera.”  Cleo looked around, then trotted to a tree and sat down, directly beside the camera attached to the tree’s trunk.  Kim is not easily impressed, but her tone, as she told me this story last Monday, made it clear just what she thinks of her brilliant and beautiful four-legged niece. 

Cleo caught on one of the critter cams

I want to say a brief but heartfelt thank you to the twenty-three of you who bought the e-book of The Educated Dog in its first two weeks of publication.  Author notification is more than two months behind actual purchases, so I have only just learned that folks from all over the world responded so quickly in that last half of January.  It’s a thrilling feeling!

Mother...Tongue?

For a podcast of this blog, visit: CleoTheBedlington.com

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The next time you’re in a conversation, pause for a moment to give your brain kudos.

When I stop to think about how much information we process in every encounter, and by process, I mean both take in and send out, it’s an amazing feat to communicate at all, let alone to communicate profoundly.   I always tell my students that the reason we study vocabulary, writing and public speaking is because life can be awfully lonely if we can’t describe our inner experience, the life of the mind, to someone else in a way that is clear enough that they can share that experience.  Words are slippery things, I tell them.  Then we often launch into a lengthy conversation about whether my “blue” is the same as your “blue.” 

On a side note, I heard an amazing piece on NPR—Science Friday, possibly?—on the history of blue.  Did you know it is supposedly the last major color word to enter any language?  The color exists so little in nature that humankind simply didn’t need it.  You’re probably thinking what I thought as I listened: What about the sky?  Isn’t the sky blue?  The answer, according to these researchers, is, No.  It’s grey, it’s white, it’s even yellow sometimes, but it is only very occasionally really blue.  Only last week I was moved to say, “The sky is so blue today.”  But is that a learned response?  The fellow on NPR suggested that it was.  He believes we would never call that clear sky color “blue” unless we had been taught to recognize it as such.  Granted, I came in partway through the broadcast, but I remain unconvinced by the conclusions drawn from the research.

But I digress.  Where I was going, at least at this stage of the game, was that words are delicate, flighty, delicious little things.  They can as easily divide as unite.  (Speaking of which, let’s just give a quick shout out to cleave, clip, overlook, bolt, dust—those lovely contronyms, words that are the antonyms of themselves.)  So just the fact that we can find the right words to express our ideas, then receive those of someone else is miracle enough.

Yet we all know that what we say is so much less important than how we say it.  Any doubt about that, try sending a facetious email.  In the early days of public internet, I shot off a deeply ironic missive to a friend about how obvious it is that animals don’t have feelings.  I thought she knew me well enough to be aware that I would never make such an argument.  Let’s just say I didn’t need to hear her tone in order to interpret her response.

So there we are in conversations, seamlessly (for the most part) interpreting words and registering nuance of meaning as we take in tone of voice.  But that’s just a fraction of what our brains are processing!  We’re simultaneously registering and decoding the meaning of gesture, facial expression, eye contact, angle of the head, body language.  In a nanosecond, we’re subconsciously determining how we feel about it all and what it means for us personally.  Add to this the nuances of scent, taste and touch and we’re taking in thousands of tiny details each second.  Move that conversation from your kitchen table to a cocktail party, a coffee shop, a restaurant, a city park, and suddenly you’re taking in quadrillions of details every second.  So let’s give our brains a round of applause!

This line of reflection takes me inevitably to a number of my students for whom social interaction is a mystery on the scale of the ineffable mind of God.  Some of them simply have no social intelligence.  They don’t know that smiling at someone is an invitation to conversation while a scowl is off-putting.  They don’t recognize that a comment about the weather might lead, eventually, to a substantive conversation; instead, they simply “don’t do small talk.”  They haven’t grasped that when someone flinches away from them, that person probably doesn’t want to be subjected to a rib-crushing hug.  Nuance of tone, body language or expression fails to penetrate their consciousnesses.  I’m not talking about students who are on the Autism Spectrum; that’s even more heartbreaking.  The young man with Asperger’s Syndrome who moves through the world in a bubble of isolation as he stares fixedly at the ground, unaware that a world of connection and communication is whirring away just inches from him.  Or the one who charges up to a classmate, standing too close and speaking too loudly as he asks a question about last night’s English homework, all the while making eye contact with his classmate’s left ear or right shoulder.

I started thinking about all of this as I sat in bed this morning watching Cleo make her rounds of the back yard, tail extended straight out except for the last inch which tipped up at a particularly jaunty angle.  She imparts a world of meaning with that tail.  Canine communication may not be quite as complex as that of humans—no contronyms, for example—but no one can say it lacks nuance.  As we walked into the groomer’s this afternoon, she tucked the first three inches tightly against her butt, leaving the middle and tip in a graceful arc away from her body, like a grappling hook.  “I’m nervous,” it said, “but willing to keep an open mind.”  When we went to pick her up from the groomer, she was still on the table in the last stages of being scissored.  Her tail, by this time, was firmly tucked against her backside, the tip curling down and under her tummy, giving a darned good impression of Cleo with a sex change operation.  This tail suggested, with minimal subtlety, “I have just about had it with this nerve-wracking place—water spraying, dryers blowing, shavers chattering.  Get me out of here.”  At night, when we let her out for her last hurrah, she charges out the back door in full bellow, skidding to a halt at the fence.  It doesn’t matter if there is an animal on the fence or not, this is always how she makes her entrance for that last hurrah.  At this point, her tail is ramrod straight, right out of her spine.  I swear, you could put an eye out with that thing.  “I’m fierce!  Watch out for me, varmints!” this tail declares.

There are also, of course, the meanings of the tail in motion: the gentle side-to-side swish of the upbeat-but-sleepy Cleo responding to our “Good morning, puppy!”  The exuberant wag when she greets John as he comes home from a gig.  The minimalist swing as she trots over to greet a guest who has come into our office. 

My favorite of all tail communications is one she surprised me with when she was just a few months old.  It continues to this day.  The thumpa-thumpa-thumpa of a happy, much-loved girl wagging her tail in her sleep.  That speaks volumes without a single word.