Skidboot 'The Smartest Dog In The World' (10 page)

"Skidboot, get up!" Again, like a released arrow, he shot to his feet and pointed his nose to the sky, one ear cocked, with that same unfathomable, bright gaze that looked slightly deranged, but was, David had come to see, a kind of pleading, as in
ask me something, ask me anything, let's just do it!

David and Russell spent the next half hour trying to figure out who had cued Skidboot on dead dog behavior, and the best they could figure was that it had been part of their conversation, using "dead" over and over. But how would Skidboot know what "dead" looked like? Had Russell shown him? Throwing himself to the ground, playing possum? Russell shook his head, "no," maybe David had? David firmly denied it, being on crutches and not inclined to horseplay. Barbara, equally puzzled, recalled Skidboot watching that episode of Hawaii 5-O, the one with the shootout. They scratched heads, speculated, agreed that if it were the shootout scene, then Skidboot would be listening for gunfire, not the words "play dead."

Like dealing with a person,
David thought, and it began to sink in, ever so slowly, that he was looking at a will to succeed about as powerful as his own. This dog was trying so hard to tune into David that he'd spun the dial past dog, clear into some other realm. And just as David poured affection and wisdom and teaching moments into his stepson, Russell, he now had another responsibility wagging itself silly in the corner, one he might be able to satisfy with a milk bone or a toy, but not really. That dog was relentless. Life, David noted, is full of surprises. One of which arrived the next day.

Barbara, looking through the mail, saw it first. She put down her cup of coffee and failed to pick it back up again. She noted that the clock, stuck on 2:35 pm, needed a battery. Seeing the slight rust blooming up the side of the refrigerator, the unswept area along the shelf that she'd missed, so many things to keep track of, she didn't want Russell within earshot; it made no sense to upset the boy. She brought the foreclosure notice over to David.

You have fallen behind in your mortgage payments. If you do not bring your loan current within 30 days of the date of this letter we will start legal action which may result in the foreclosure of the property.

Her sigh rustled with resignation. It chilled him; he felt her trying to catch her breath. On instinct, he crumpled the letter, then thought better of it and unwadded it. David and Barbara looked long and hard at each other, factoring their life's events, trying to gauge, out of these new circumstances,
how serious.

"What now, David?"

"I don't know, but I'll think of something."

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The Breakthrough

So far, Skidboot's training had been haphazard, something David pursued part-time and mostly to avoid any repeat of the dead chickens. He wanted to teach Skidboot manners, that was all. But one afternoon he read something that changed this approach, in fact, changed his mind completely about Heeler dogs, his dog, and the relationship of man to beast–forever. The article turned up in
Farm Life
and described the difference between two types of dogs, headers and heelers.

Headers were fetching dogs, the ones used to keep livestock milling around in a group. A header shot to the front of the herd to nip and bark at the animals, forcing them to congregate, to turn right, turn left, buck, dart or stop. Headers were whip smart, highly trainable, and could practically run a herd alone. Wolf-like, the header would circle, nip, pounce, prod the cattle, boss of a dusty herd that he kept between himself and the cowboy.

Heelers, on the other hand, were just as headstrong, in fact, they had no "quit" at all. Once embarked, it was hell to distract them or change their minds. But they operated differently. Instead of coming at the animals from the front and working them toward the cowboy, they worked from the back of the herd, driving them from behind toward the rider.

Now that's interesting.
David idly tossed a milk bone to Skidboot, who streaked across the floor, skidded to a stop and buried his snout in the treat. David watched him, then tossed another bone. Just as Skidboot started after it, David moved in behind the dog and closed his big hands over the dog's haunches. Like flood water over a dam, Skidboot surged ahead, yet David held him back.

Skidboot, frantic, turned to nip David's hands.

Each time, David said "whoa," then loosened his grip.

Skidboot buckled nearly into a ball, then shot forward, trying to escape, but David gripped his sleek back into lockdown, hissing, "Whoa!"

Three times it happened: "Whoa" then the hard grip. "Whoa," then the grip again. By the third release, Skidboot paused, and in that instant, David said, "go get it," and Skidboot streaked toward the biscuit. Midway, David calmly repeated, "Whoa." Unbelieving, Skidboot stopped dead still, inches from the milk bone, trembling.

"Go get it." Skidboot snapped up the treat, too excited to eat, knowing this was more about power than food, more about learning than just chasing chickens.

David, equally excited, marveled at what he'd uncovered. He'd been
behind
the dog, not in front. Heelers worked from behind, and he'd worked with the dog's own oddball global positioning system. He'd have to tell the rest of the family that if anyone wanted to tell Skidboot to "sit" they should make sure
to do it from behind.
The same for "lay down" or anything else they could think of. As time went on, they began to substitute treats, then one day a stick, which the dog gnawed, flailed with and chewed to an arrow shaft. The next, a biscuit that disappeared without even a gulp. But the foremost treat, the item Skidboot seemed to treasure above all was a stuffed animal. Although "treasure" for Skidboot meant snarling at the toy, ripping it to shreds, then shredding the shreds while tossing his head around and growling deep in his throat, snarling like a trapped beaver and generally making such a dust-up that they had to go outside under the shading oak tree.

What a day! Sunny, with the usual clouds converging to the West, thunderheads like freighters colliding on the horizon, then sinking down below the skyline. Jerking himself out of the reverie, David had a fence to mend and made sure that the wire clippers and fencing pliers were packed in with his supplies. Fence mending, metaphors aside, was a skill as old as private property, and in Texas, had been the job of the old-time cowboys who would "work the line" for weeks, never coming back to the ranch house, surviving harsh winters rolled in a bedroll, gulping inky cowboy coffee—mostly grinds—while patrolling hundreds of miles of barbed wire. Since sheep men, Indians and others, too, hated the fences, seeing them as a way to collect fierce tumbleweeds and strangers' livestock, everyone tried to bust through them. The lone rider's job was to maintain the fence, no matter how isolated, freezing cold, lonely or hungry a job it seemed

"Skidboot, let's go to work!"

David knew that he was a hard worker, a man whose mind snapped down around some impossibility like a bear trap. And once locked on, he turned relentless. Nothing could get him off. He guessed if he'd been a dog, it might be a pit bull. It was with this same snarling determination that man and dog faced each other that August day. Both bright-eyed and stubborn, one bound to win and the other to cater.

"Get it!" followed by "whoa!" followed by "get it!" and so on, broke the stillness, and after about ten tries, the dog knew to pause within seconds, after which would follow, "get it." David fumed, "sit," then sailed out a biscuit. The dog leaped, a salmon flinging himself skyward, until David stopped him in midair with "whoa!" Skidboot's ears keened for the sound of the command—he
loved
that command! His ears swiveled like radar, spanning after David as he moved.

Finally tired, David told Skidboot, "go play. Go outside, relax!"

Normally, Skidboot would have shot through the opened door, banged the screen and sailed toward the chicken coop, but this time, David held the door open and Skidboot skulked through, eyes pinned on David. Once outside, he sat disconsolately, as he realized that he was a different dog, a dog that aimed to please and as such, was trapped by the wishes and whims of another. And David, instead of the usual terrible impatience when it came to Skidboot, found himself smiling.

"Enough for today!" David finally said. "Go play!!"

What was happening here?
A mathematician might identify it as the Babylonians vs. Greek method, in which the Greeks—like professional dog trainers—had general rules of behavior. They based their rules on the Euclidian idea that all theorems could be ordered from simple axioms. Rules were key. You only had to know the rules and you could work from there. The Babylonians, on the other hand—t
hat is, David
—discarded the rules to work from scratch. They knew all the theories and could apply them if necessary, but by observing, creating from scratch, doing and redoing, they would reach startling conclusions.

David knew that dog training followed time-tested rules, rules that included leash training for 8-weeks, wearing a no-pull harness, choke collar or using in-the-face water spraying. Other puppy socialization was by pretending to be a fellow dog, yelling "ouch" when bitten, to give the puppy a feeling of success. If he thinks he's won over his siblings, he
might
stop biting. Basic obedience was something the Hartwigs had missed during the ideal puppy training time, up to 9-months. By conventional dog training methods, Skidboot was over the hill, past trainability, which made this conversion, this new behavior—alert, vigorous, confident, obedient—so unusual. Most dog trainers would need from 6-9 months of committed procedures, from fetch and tug of war, to voice training, to even begin to see results. They would train for hours, repeating commands over and over.

"I try a trick once or twice," David said, "and if Skidboot doesn't pick it up, and I mean
right away,
then I just drop it." Skidboot's response time defied reason.

Everyone noticed. First Russell, who tried to distract Skidboot with a hug and a milk bone midway during a training session. One youngster teasing another, David understood, and waited until the commotion died down. Russell kept calling the dog, making little smacking noises to indicate
treat, treat
, trying to draw Skidboot's gaze.

But the Blue Heeler, a sphinx of attention, eyes pinned to the future and muzzle pointed skyward, would not be distracted.

"Here Skidboot, Skidboot, Skidboot." Russell bent himself over upside down to make eye contact.

Skidboot ignored him, except for a quick flick of his tail, as in,
later, Russell, I mean it.
This was beneath dignity.

Russell gave up and clomped down the stairs, dragging his jacket and humming. The new intensity around the place felt good, as if something useful and important had dropped into place. Maybe the money problems would go away.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

A Winning Streak

Bulldogging or steer wrestling, taxed David's muscles, pulled them like taffy as he leaned off Hank, galloping around thirty miles per hour, transferring his weight off the horse onto the huge trunk of the steer he was dogging. Bulldogging first hit the rodeo entertainment world when the famous Bill Pickett, a half-black, half-Indian roping wizard who starred in early Wild West shows, invented a technique so farfetched, so laughingly improbable, that it was his alone—no one else dared try it. Pickett would thunder alongside a galloping longhorn steer on Spradley, his always surprised horse, then grab the steer's head and bite its upper lip, which forced the steer to follow his commands. How did Pickett sense this would work? But the idea of "bulldogging" caught on, becoming a favorite rodeo stunt.

David trusted Hank to hold steady as he reached one long arm out to grasp the steer's closest horn, then, like pulling down stars, reached to grasp the far horn to get the leverage to sling himself out of the saddle, to gallop alongside the pounding freight train of the steer. For more time than is safe, the cowboy stretches out between the steer and his horse, hanging like laundry, his feet somehow still in the stirrups. Before inevitable death, he lets the horse carry him so close to the heaving steer that, with a huge thrust, he jerks his feet from the stirrups and slides along the ground, dirt flying as he tries to brake the steer's speed. He twists its head, but meeting resistance, he throws his weight backwards, slamming the steer into a high speed halt. As the steer spins out, he thunders to the ground.

He'd first gotten into steer wrestling despite his timidity, his low position of last out of seventy doggers and his lack of even a personal horse. He'd scoped out the cowboys who owned bulldogging horses, extraordinary steeds, basically race horses so elite they were beyond most budgets. Not unlike the historic cowboys of the old west, who were often so broke they only had a saddle and had to borrow the ranch horse in order to work. Bulldogging riders might occasionally loan out their horses as long as the recipient could ride.

"Ask old Harold Davidson," they told David. "He'll let you."

When David asked for a loan of the horse, Davidson hardly took the time to consider, just said, "Yes! If you can get your ass out of the box, then go ride!" David shot to the top of the chart in one competition, and after this, his bulldogging success commenced.

Lately, David had raked in prizes for bull wrestling as well as roping, and now, with Skidboot trotting along behind him, was attracting so much attention it felt, well,
blessed
. A new excitement chased through him. Like the faithful at Lourdes, he'd thrown off his crutches and found traction; he was up, riding, and ready for success.

When those little Holstein calves shot out, he was ready with neck rope, two piggin' strings, a horn knot, his knife, and his ankle brace. He knew how to flank and how to coax his horse like his own shadow to follow his every move. He felt confident about catching them and
did
. He knew how to get off, how to flank, and he knew his horse, like his own shadow, followed his every move.