That’ll Do
I have second dog syndrome, and Coda is my fourth shepherd. I am such a beginner. Again. At 11 months old, Coda remains an enigma and a challenge. One friend, listening to my admiring, yet rueful description of her, said that she sounded like a young raven or a crow. Beautiful, smart, wary, clever, and as shiny as a patent leather shoe. Even though she’s pure black, she reflects light. She learned early that if she dropped a marrow bone from some height onto the concrete floor of our house, she might knock the marrow right out of the bone. A corvid trick she’s applied to all her toys, though she hasn’t yet learned to drop rocks into something to raise the water level, like the old Aesop’s fable. That’s coming, though.
She’s so fleet of foot that she seems to fly, sometimes. Terrifyingly, at times, it’s away from me. She has a rear end that looks more like Betty Boop’s than a raven’s tail, so how she moves so fast is a mystery. When she’s walking, it waggles like an off-kilter planet, with loose unctuousness. She loses that waggle when she speeds up. All of a sudden, she’s low and straight and swift, like a panther.
Coda can be utterly charming—flinging herself on me with abandon, wanting me to put my head down so she can lick my ears, or lying on her back, her white teeth flashing, eyes rolling, bubblegum pink tongue lolling out of her mouth, leaping over to her crate, and pushing the door latches over, and flipping the door open with her nose, so she can get ready for the peanut butter bone I’m preparing. Occasionally, she will gaze up with such affection when she’s heeling that it gives my heart a brief hitch, and I momentarily see what our relationship might be like. Her nose and her hunt drive? Both are over the top. I’ve trained her on old bones, on buried hides, on faint scent that so faint I wonder whether she’ll recognize it. She does; focusing on scent work isn’t a problem. But right now, unless we are training in an abandoned warehouse, she is constrained on a long lead or parachute cord. I have little rope burns around my ankles and my fingers, though I’ve created training gloves out of gardening gloves.
I’ve never had a German shepherd who didn’t reliably come when called, who thinks that chasing wild things is far better than tug toys, better than smelly liver treats, far better than anything I can offer. Far better, especially, than me. Perhaps I can be more exciting as pee on a tree, as one K9 trainer exhorts me to be, but I can’t be more exciting than a bunny running. Prey drive, her breeder, Kathy Holbert, told me, is tough. Coda comes by it honestly, genetically; now she needs to re-channel it, and I need to help.
It’s going to be slow. Obedience, obedience, obedience. Swift correction and redirection when she starts to stare and hackle. At our house, for Coda, every day is a bunny day. For her, it would be worth it to go through the closed window. For me, it’s not so much of a bonne idée. I correct, ask her to do something to refocus on me, and reward. Games when possible. In the meantime, I feel like an old-fashioned parent, the not-fun one, imposing new boundaries, restricting freedom. I have friends inside and outside the dog world who tell me that this is my challenge, like a difficult daughter who will, as an adult, help me run with the wolves. I just want her recall to come back to where it was when she was six months old. I want her current Away From Me (apologies to all experienced herding dogs), to become a That’ll Do.