She was in one of the deluxe pens at the Sacramento animal shelter and she had a doggie room mate. That was good, we decided, because it meant she liked other dogs. Her personality type, according to her profile, was "goofball." Mostly pit bull, part kangaroo. When we met her she was all gangly puppy legs and bouncy energy. There seemed to be a goofy sweetness under the bounce. Her decidedly disorganized behavior, we concluded, could be rearranged to our advantage with some proper puppy training. We named her M'haile, which is pronounced "Miley," after the grandchild of a colleague of Michele's. We met the child while we were visiting France and we liked the name.
M'haile is about as rambunctious as our last puppy, but about four times as big. She chews everything in sight. She has a has occasional fits of high-pitched barking. She has a lovely face and a beautiful light-brown brindle coat. She has also, in the last 24 hours, become a source of marital strife.
Michele, my astute, problem-solving wife, is frustrated because she feels she has not been able to solve the problem of M'haile. The puppy refused to go out for exercise with Michele this morning for reasons that were not entirely clear at the time although, in retrospect, I hypothesize the following causes, one of which is definitely my fault. One is that she may have sore paws from a perhaps too-long hike on Sunday. The second is that I took her out for what may have been an ill-advised bike ride at about 10 o'clock last night. Dogs, of course, do not ride bicycles but, this being Davis, they are often seen trotting alongside human cyclists. M'haile is so energetic and long-legged that a bike-run had seemed, until recently, the most efficient way to channel her physical exuberance. She did not want to go last night but I, playing the stern parent, refused to take no for an answer. Once M'haile realized staying home was not an option, she reluctantly came along, but she lagged a bit. I realized she wasn't fully committed to he enterprise, so I kept it slow, but I was determined to tire her out so she would sleep through the night. Then came the sprinklers. They water the greenbelts and parks at night during the summer. The sprinklers make a hissing sound, like angry cats or small dragons, and M'haile is morbidly afraid of them. I practically dragged her past one set of hissing bushes and then decided to alter our course so as to avoid any further demons. It wasn't easy. They kept popping up everywhere. Pretty soon M'haile was frazzled and I was ready to call an exorcist. We made it back home via streets.
So, there I was, standing in he kitchen at about 6:15 this morning when Michele came in the front door angry, frustrated and indignant at M'haile's recalcitrance. I does not help, of course, that she is reading an inspirational book about some over-achiever with plenty of time on his hands who has managed to turn a pack of 40 criminally insane dogs into docile, obedient, model canine citizens. It also did not help that I failed to offer any support or comfort at the crucial moment. In my own defense, I was not fully awake. In fact, I was in the middle of grinding that which would have rendered me fully awake when the crisis hit. Michele stormed upstairs, got herself showered and dressed for work and sped off to her favorite local coffee house to comfort herself with strong cafeinated drink and a cinnamon roll. So I mised my chance to throw my arms around her and reassure her that she is indeed a brilliant lady who has encountered only a momentary delay in her progress toward solving he puppy problem.
Later on I took M'haile out to Barovetto Park for her long-leash training. She did well and then I took her on a longer walk along he bike trail, also using the long leash. I wanted to introduce some distractions. There were a few, including two rabbits, several bicyclists, two other dogs and a skateboarder. Each time she was drawn off by the distraction, I dashed off in the opposite direction, giving her a surprise jerk on the neck, as I had been instructed to do by my dog-training guru, Catherine Thompson. The goal is that she finds it more compelling to pay attention to me than to me than to anyone or anything else. I can see it beginning to work.
Tomorrow morning I will accompany M'haile and Michele on a walk and try to help repair relations between my human soul mate and my new puppy love interest.
Comments