LabradorRodeo

My black tights, which I am wearing today because it’s raining and I’m in a skirt, do not enjoy the velcro strap from Lomax’s puppy jacket, which made ferocious contact as I was hurriedly removing said puppy jacket so said little dog could pee quickly so we could get out of the rain. No good, I say. No good.

Last night Lomax and I attended a barbecue — hot dogs, of course — in celebration of Bella, a sweet little female Lab who’s being turned in for formal training today. After a nice out-of-jacket, off-leash few minutes of greeting and sniffing and running with lovely Bella, Lomax was once again relegated to working status.

I could tell it was hard work for Mr. Happy (one of his many nicknames). I had him back on leash and in jacket, sitting or lying at my feet, the rest of the time we were there. He does love everyone! Perhaps it’s simply the force of his wagging tail that propels his happy hiney out of a nice sit position, but calm greetings are still a challenge for us. I know he’ll get better at it — Bella’s people were saying that two months ago, she was the same way, and that something just clicked one day in terms of maturity. She sat beautifully still…perhaps contemplating her impending time at college?

It was a fun evening, and good practice for both of us. All I could think, though, was that this “night before turn-in” will be upon me before I know it. I am already dreading the moment I will switch off my bedroom light with Lomax next to my bed for the last time. It will be a horrible and beautiful thing, letting him go.

I spent the rest of the evening watching TV with Amy and cuddling on the floor with an exhausted dog. Good work, little man.

I’ve shared with you some of Lomax’s little quirks, and a few of our outings and adventures, but now that I’ve had him for a full month (well, okay, just over a month, and I’ve been meaning to post this but the past week has been busy), I thought you might be interested in an overall report on his behavior.

We’re constantly practicing obedience: on my breaks at work, while we’re waiting somewhere, on walks in my neighborhood, all the time. And when it’s just the two of us, he’s stellar. Excellent heel position on a loose lead, very attentive, not ground-sniffy, terrific recall when we’re playing or when I put distractions in his way. Even in our obedience class, full of other dogs big & small, young & old, male & female, intact & “fixed,” he does incredibly well when the two of us are called out to solo, as it were. It’s obvious he enjoys working.

But the second there are other dogs in motion anywhere near him, all that goes out the window. It takes several stiff leash-pop corrections to get him to pay attention, then he’s good until one gets too close. When the whole obedience class is walking at once, he’ll all of a sudden stop a perfect “heel” in mid-stride and jump into a play stance as though he’s about to pounce on the dog walking in front of us. We were out walking tonight, and he was magnificently on the ball until he heard someone walking a tiny yappy-dog about a block behind us. Mid-stride, he wheeled around and wanted to go in the other direction. I had to correct him twice, keep him moving, talk to him the whole way and make him turn a corner and do some obedience in order to get him re-focused. It’s like someone flips a switch in his brain.

I took him up to the monthly puppy class at GDA last weekend, and felt like he was a completely different dog than the one who’d been with me at home that morning. Of course, the school is full of the sights, sounds and smells of literally hundreds of other dogs, so the distraction factor is higher than usual. We did a little recall test with him, just a trainer with some toys, and me and Lomax — he did okay, but wasn’t his usual attentive self. I wondered if I was doing something wrong, but the trainer reassured me that Lomax is actually doing well for only having been with me for this short amount of time (after having spent ten months bonding with another puppy raiser).

The last couple of weeks have been tougher than the first few, and I’m wondering if something clicked and he’s realizing that he’s not just a guest here but actually a resident — and testing me (whether I passed or failed in his estimation, I am now wise to his plan). I’m also wondering if, since he was used to living with another dog or two, he is more distracted by dogs now because he misses having regular playtime. Mostly, I am wondering how much of this is me not being tough enough on him, and how much is simply his age and intact status.

From the beginning, there were things I was expecting him to do well and things I was expecting him to be challenged by, because I had asked his last puppy raiser about a thousand questions. But for whatever arbitrary adolescent dog reason, he has surprised me in a few areas.

For example, I heard he had a “water bottle fetish” of sorts, so I purposely set him up and tempted him left and right: I left several bottles on low bookshelves, I stood near him with a water bottle in my hand and my arm down by my side, at his face level, et cetera. I practically dared him to go for it. I even swirled the water around and pretended I wasn’t paying attention. But he has not once, to this day, even cast a sideways glance at my dear friend Arrowhead 24oz Sports Top Bottle.

Things that have quickly improved:

• Perpendicular sit: for the first few weeks, he’d “swing out” to the left (perpendicular and looking at me) when I told him to sit, and I constantly had to put him in the correct position next to me. Now he’s great.

• Heeling on the stairs: upstairs is nearly perfect, downstairs is generally very good unless he REALLY has to pee, early in the morning. (And can you blame him?)

• The sneaky soldier-crawl: we’re working on keeping him where I put him in a stay by giving him a blanket as a boundary. When he streeeeetches or rolls (“I’m staying, technically. I didn’t move my butt off the ground. What’s six inches to the left between friends?!? Look how cute I am!”) and moves over the edge of the blanket, he gets a correction. Getting better all the time!

Obviously, this is all a learning experience for me too; I know I’m not doing everything perfectly, and everyone has bad days. But I think Lomax and I are well on our way and building more trust all the time (even our teeth brushing is improving!), and the support and encouragement of the other puppy raisers in my group has been invaluable.

I know that real love means looking out for the best interest of the other party, which means you sometimes have to be firm (as they say at the school, “persistent, consistent and insistent”). I love him as much when I’m correcting him or putting medicine on his face as I do when I’m cradling him and rubbing his tummy. Judging from the way he wags his tail when I bring him out of a dead sleep just by whispering his name and telling him he’s a good boy, I think he loves me too.

…and boy, are my arms tired.

No joke. When I’m done with this dog — or he with me — I will surely have the scariest biceps this side of the governor’s office.

Lomax isn’t very noisy. I don’t think I’ve heard him whine once, save for the occasional low-volume, split-second “hmEE!” sound he makes when he’s elated to see me and itching to play.

But even his breathing makes me happy. When he comes out of the kennel in the morning, the first thing he does is stretch. Then he picks up the nearest chew toy and circles me for as long as I’ll stand in one place. With his ears back and butt wiggling so hard and fast you’d think it would impair his forward motion, he circles and circles, breathing out this amazing sort of half-snort:

“Ffffff. Ffff-ffff. Fffff-ffff. FFF!”

He should have been born into the “F” litter. Maybe he has a secret dog name that he’s trying to communicate to me. Maybe it’s Frank, or Fabio. Or maybe it’s just “Fff.” I suspect, in fact, that they all have secret dog names.

Dog One: “Greetings, General Fff!”
Dog Two: “Captain RrrRrr. How are the troops looking today?”
Dog One: “Excellent, sir. Though I am a bit concerned about Corporal HmEEEEE-HweeeEEEE-HmEEEEEEeee — he seems upset about something.”

GDA doesn’t really have a breeding program. They just call the “breeder” dogs up to the facility every once in a while, give the Labs a good brushing, and build new puppies out of the hair.

Perhaps the most amusing thing about puppy raising is that sometimes, people (who obviously don’t actually read Lomax’s “Puppy In Training” jacket) think I’m visually impaired.

Especially when I’m wearing my black sunglasses and walking him down the street.

The bold ones ask me, “So, if you don’t mind my asking, are you totally blind?” But it’s the hesitant ones I most enjoy, the ones who just shoot a sideways glance toward my face as we’re passing. Is she or isn’t she…?

A friend suggested I use this to my advantage in situations where Lomax and I are denied access to a store or restaurant by a cranky merchant. “Just stare blankly, feel for the door and say in your sweetest voice, ‘I’m so sorry to have troubled you! God bless!'”

Heh heh heh.

The hound and I attended a conference for work today, which was held at a nice Embassy Suites hotel near the airport. It went well. The rain had mostly stopped, so I didn’t walk in to a room full of strangers with a smelly wet dog, which was a relief.

He did, of course, stink things up on his own once I positioned him beneath the table…which was a laughable occurrence (at least for me) because my roommate was remarking just last night that Lomax has been quite mild on the gas-o-meter for the last several days. So much for that. Problem was mostly solved, however, when I put him in a “down stay” in the corner of the room. His occasional stretches, yawns and Lab-trademarked sighs were met with the usual lower-lip-out, head-tilted, silent “awwwwwwwww” faces from my more dog-centric co-workers. Good times.

Anyway, as we left the session for a little walk around the center court of the hotel’s lower level — which was decorated with nifty ponds complete with koi, turtles and ducks (!) — I noticed there was a glass elevator.

So I took him right in (he’s quite accustomed to solid elevators) and pushed the button corresponding to the fifth and highest floor. And as the doors shut and the elevator moved up, I had a very brief moment of panic, which went a little something like this:

“IDIOT! WHY DID YOU PUSH THE FIFTH FLOOR BUTTON? WHAT IF HE FREAKS OUT? BARKING OR WHINING OR PEEING FOR FIVE FLOORS COULD HAVE BEEN BARKING OR WHINING OR PEEING FOR ONE FLOOR!”

It was then I looked down to observe Lomax reacting as he seems to react to just about anything: with head held high, tail wagging and a goofy, tongue-out smile.

On Saturday night, Lomax and I attended a “drive-in” movie event on the soundstage at the studio where I used to work. It was a fun evening; we celebrated the tenth anniversary of the company with a screening of the original Creature From the Black Lagoon (in 3D, as you may have surmised by the photo) and a delicious carne asada taco feast.

While we were mingling pre-screening, I attempted to take Lomax out to the parking lot for a visit with “Kenny Asada,” captain of the grill. Barbecuing requires fire. And where there’s fire, there’s smoke.

And smoke, apparently, is a sign to the furry one that he needs to save my life by pulling as hard and as quickly as he can to get us outta there. It was like the Flintstones trying to start the car.

He didn’t bark or whine or put his tail between his legs and freak out, but he was clearly aware that there was some kind of dangerous thing happening over near the grill. I managed to calm him down and get him back inside (trying all the while to act as though this were nothing for him to worry about, a completely normal situation…because, after all, it was). There was a little smoke on stage, too, and he was not happy about that, but when we were safely out of range of the fire, he snapped right back into his usual happy self.

My roommate thought it was a wonderful and heroic thing that Lomax was trying to save my life from the terrible fire. She said, “That’s a good thing!”

“Sure,” I replied. “Until the blind person wants to go to a barbecue.”