The Mountaintop School for Dogs and Other Second Chances (8 page)

But I could see a moment later that this was a couple their dog could count on to never split up. They sat in their living room in front of their videocam and described how, after their dog was shocked once, he would not go out of the house. Together, they had to carry him out to do his business. The husband finally threw the collar in the wastebasket, but even then the Wiemaraner waited to go out on his own until after that trash bag was brought to the curb for the regular pickup. He scratched at the door to go out and peed on the bag as the trash truck was approaching.

In the video, he lay at his owners' feet. He was sleek and gorgeous. His coat was gray-pearl. The couple said he didn't make eye contact with either of them for days and days after the shocking. They wanted to put up a real fence, but the owners' association wouldn't let them. It was an open-land development. You couldn't even have an outdoor clothesline or put drying racks on your patio.

They didn't feel comfortable anymore walking their dog in the neighborhood, because dogs would come running across lawns, then stop short to avoid being zapped. They didn't like looking at the faces of those dogs. They knew now that invisible fences are based on the memory of administered pain. And meanwhile, as the dogs were wondering why they were the only ones around with a device on their necks, squirrels would be entering and leaving those yards, and cats and chipmunks, and the occasional fox, wild turkey, woodchuck, and also birds and windblown leaves, and toy airplanes, balls, shadows, rays of sunlight, butterflies, children, the whole family.

The couple planned to move away. Just before they made their video, they said, their computer was infected by a virus. They had a hard time getting it off, but the experience had made them realize their dog's memory of shocking was the same thing: a virus in the hard drive of his brain.

Their video was on a blog they'd started, with lots of links about not only invisible fencing but all kinds of
training devices administering pain or acute discomfort.
I clicked on them all, even as I wished I wasn't finding out what I was finding out. And all along, I kept asking myself, could it be true? Can you really get rid of bad memories?

I ended up seeing famous photos by William Wegman, because you can't look up Weimaraners without finding him. I lucked out. I hit upon a YouTube clip where two of his dogs are on
Sesame Street,
baking bread. It's called
Sesame Street—Dogs Bake Homemade Bread.

I watched it six times. I loved their ears. I loved their eyes, their faces, their dresses, their aprons. And then I could go to bed. I was feeling a little better about the things I might see in my dreams.

I
HATE OATMEAL
, but that's what was on my breakfast tray in the lobby. Mixed into it was syrup from a can of peaches and also slices cut up into little bits. As I ate it fast to get it over with, I realized that a portion of the wall I faced was in fact a sliding door, made of the same dark paneling. I should have known that the lobby didn't take up all the space of this floor, the way the bunkroom did upstairs, with the sharp angles of its rafters. I should have known there had to be another room.

I hadn't noticed before that there was a metal grab handle. I went over to it. I slid the door open just enough to squeeze through sideways.

The room I entered was an indoor porch or sunroom for guests of the inn. Against the wall it shared with the lobby were armchairs and tables, pushed to the side, for the place had been pressed into service as a training room. In one corner was the only piece of furniture that mattered now, if you can call a large metal dog cage a piece of furniture. This, I would learn, was the time-out crate. In the opposite corner was a stack of heavy-duty plastic storage containers atop a square table used for people playing card games, chess, whatever. The other three walls were mostly windows, long and wide, unshaded, with glass so clean I almost thought no glass was there. I was blasted with white sunlight coming in from a world of snow, and the dogs were nice enough to let my eyes get adjusted before they went crazy that I was there.

Oh my God, here were my dogs!

What I didn't know at once was that Giant George was in there too. I didn't turn around to check for the presence of another human. In his hand was his phone, and he was catching me on video as I was mobbed.

The pattern of being knocked off my feet held true. But I shouldn't have thrown out my arms and waved them about. That was a mistake of enthusiasm and a lack of self-control. And I shouldn't have let my next move be an attempt at a crouch, in the start of going down to their level, like to hug them all at once—well, three of them. Hank was too busy pacing.

I should have remembered I'd just eaten oatmeal, and oatmeal reminded them of their treats. So my mouth was of interest, especially to Josie, who slipped through the bigger two and went for my lips. The nipping she gave me was maybe accidental and maybe not.

There was growling. There was friction, jostling. There was an awful lot of barking. I panicked. They were all over me. I had to get away from them. When I licked my lips, I tasted blood. I managed to get myself back to the lobby, and when Giant George stepped out after me, I nearly jumped out of my skin.

“Everyone freaks out when stuff like that happens,” he said. “I hope you don't think you flunked a test of being around dogs.”

The Sanctuary never said anything about testing. I'd made a vow to myself I'd never agree to be tested for anything again, even though all the tests in my recent past had involved my bodily fluids. I turned away from Giant George and rushed upstairs, holding back crying until I made it to my bunk, my face in the pillow so no one could hear me.

When I ran out of tears, I felt it was time to call my former program. I was willing to admit I needed some help. But as soon as I turned on my phone, a text was coming in. The sender was Giant George.

“Evie! Come back down & I swear I'll delete what I video'd & no one will see it not even me. Please come back
PLEASE.
”

Then came a second one.

“I'm 16,” it said. “In case you care, the sled pups left the mountain. I almost went with them.”

I returned downstairs. I knocked on the sliding door.

“Hi,” said Giant George, closing it behind me. “I deleted it.”

“Honest?”

“Honest.”

“Okay,” I said. I looked around. Hank was still pacing, but the other three were quiet in the center of the room. Tasha appeared to be sulking.

“What's the matter with Tasha?”

Giant George pointed to the time-out crate. “I just let her out of there. She tried to knock over the bins to get at the treats. She wants you to feel sorry for her.”

“I don't feel sorry for her,” I said. “Is your name really George?”

“It is now,” he answered.

“Are you really sixteen?”

“Almost. Well, kind of.”

“How long have you been here?”

“A few years,” he said.

“Is your family here?”

“No.”

I saw his unease. He didn't want to be questioned, at least not about himself. That was something we had in common.

I said, “Did the sled puppies leave for sled-dog school?”

He nodded.

“Is it in Alaska?”

“Yeah. Good guess.”

“Why were they here? What happened to them?”

“We had them since their rescue,” he said. “They came when they were tiny. They were taken from a place that, they needed not to be there. It was bad. I'd rather not go into it, now that it's over.”

“Okay. Why didn't you go with them?”

“No reason. Welcome to your first day of school.”

“But I'm supposed to be up on the mountain,” I reminded him.

“Welcome anyway.”

It occurred to me that there wasn't going to be a grown-up professional from the Sanctuary sweeping in to run the show and start training me. This was it.

“Hank needs to get out of the pacing. He needs to learn to look up on command,” said Giant George. “In fact, they all do.”

“Look up on command?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I try it myself?”

“Go for it,” he answered.

How was I supposed to know that if you hold up your hand, index finger pointing upward, like the number one, and a big wide smile is on your face, and you're gazing up at a ceiling, you're inviting your dogs to jump you? I deliberately didn't say anything, such as “Look up, guys,” because of Josie's deafness. I wanted the playing ground to be level. I felt smart for thinking of that.

“Uh-oh,” I heard from Giant George, the instant my arm went up.

Only Hank didn't rush me, and I was down on the floor and three dogs were all over me
again.
Josie was trying to lick the blood on my lip. Tasha nosed me roughly to see if treats were in my pockets. Shadow plopped down across my outstretched legs and made the weak little whine sounds of dogs who want to bark but don't. I looked over at Giant George to see if he was getting this on video. He wasn't. He was strolling to the bins. Hank took no notice, due to his feeling that nothing was more important than pacing. But the rest of them forgot about me and took off for Giant George. They were all looking up at the treats he held in his hand. He lavished them with
Good looking up,
guys,
and
Way to go with learning looking up.
All I could do was listen to the clicking of Hank's nails on the floor as he paced, and the peacefulness of three dogs eating biscuits.

Giant George took hold of Hank and snapped on a leash. While he was doing this, Tasha jumped him, as if he had a treat in a pocket, just for her. He pushed her away and told her,
Bad move.
She didn't seem sorry. Shadow and Josie looked at her like they were proud of her, like she was the coolest one in the room. Hank tried to start pacing again. But the leash was too short. And that was how it went with my first class.

I watched from a lobby window as Giant George set off in his snowshoes, away from the inn, holding the leashes of Hank and Shadow and Tasha. Josie was in a pack on his back, her little white head sticking up like the head of a toy. Giant George had left the Jeep on the mountain road, so he and the three bigger dogs could get some exercise. I wondered how high up the mountain it was, but I couldn't go after them, not in all that snow.

When they were out of sight, I knocked on the kitchen door. Mrs. Auberchon came to see what I wanted. I was not invited in. I asked her, were there snowshoes anywhere around the inn I could borrow, to go out and practice on? She said there weren't. Would anyone else be checking in? No. No one else was coming. Would I be going up the mountain soon? She didn't know, and would I please excuse her, she had lots to do?

Back I went upstairs. Nothing had come in for me from the Sanctuary. Back I went online. I found myself starting a search for “trainers talking about abused rescued dogs.” I didn't know why I put it that way. It just came to me.

“Trainers talk about abused rescued dogs” brought up one hundred ten million results. So I knew what I'd be doing for a while, which was better than sitting there thinking about what it felt like when Giant George and the dogs left the inn. They didn't look behind to see if I was in the window. It was the same as if I'd turned into a memory, incredibly easy to erase. It was just like I wasn't there. I saw how wrong that was. I
wanted to be there.

A
GILITY TRAINING
.
Many dogs in recovery from abusive situations, including dogs who are broken in spirit, do well with the goal-oriented challenges of an agility course, which may be considered “track and field for dogs.” For some, it's one more thing to be stressed about, while others simply don't see the point.

I could see Shadow doing agility. Josie would be stressed, but she might be good at it. Hank might do well if nothing on the course was wooden. Tasha would look around and say, “You have got to be kidding.”

Alpha.
Another way to say “bully.”

Alpha,
belief in.
Some trainers say dogs are happiest if everyone understands that, basically, a dog is a domesticated wolf, and so there has to be a system of Order, and everyone does better when it's dominance and submission all the time, absolutely, one dominant and everyone else not so much. Meanwhile, if someone is in a corner quivering, afraid of doing something wrong, or afraid they're not submitting the right way, well, they have to learn the alpha knows best, although it's sometimes distressing to see the alpha in action, doing what the alpha's got to do, and that is
fascist.

Clicker training.
There is such a thing as “clicker training,” where you hold a plastic clicker between the forefinger and thumb, in order to condition the dog's behavior by means of clicks. At first I thought this was a joke, like an insider-trainer sort of thing. But it's for real. It reminded me of the TV commercial I saw late one night, when I was clicking through four hundred channels like I was the only person in America who couldn't fall asleep. It was an infomercial for an electronic foot-massage device, where a husband and wife of late middle age sat on a sofa watching TV, in their pajamas, while their feet were massaged by a pair of devices, one for him and one for her, on the floor. I wondered, why aren't they rubbing each other's feet? Why would anyone rather have a foot massage from a gadget than from a person? Why aren't they divorcing each other and finding people who'd like to rub them and get rubbed?

Using clicks on abused rescued dogs isn't widely recommended. Many people say their dogs become obsessed with the clicker, as in, excuse me while I try to grab that thing from your hand, and destroy it.

Conditioning and teaching, differences between.
If you want a dog to look up on command, why not take hold of the chin and give it an upward push? And repeat and repeat and repeat? The dog will get it, and it doesn't take long. But if I were a dog and someone did this to me, I'd begin to learn that being touched by a human isn't all that great of a thing. I'd want to be in charge of my own head and my own eyes. I'd be conditioned to obey a command because I wanted a human to stop touching me, which is
heartbreaking,
which also goes for trainers who don't believe in treats you can eat.