The journey with Yola is fairly epic. She is now an 80 lb. mini-Beast, 90% German Shepherd and 100% Puppy. I've been genuinely struggling with her of late, as much physical as mental and emotional. She can anger me like no one else. Our biggest debate is leash pulling.
For quite some time, I've been showing her that I am her alpha. When she was a mere 3 months and 35 pounds, I'd show her who was boss by running faster and further than her. I'd run her 3 miles until she collapsed with exhaustion, simply flopping on the ground and refusing to move.
By the time she was 5 months and 50 pounds, however, she had far outpaced me in the running department. I'd run 8 miles on steep trail, and the entire time she'd sprint circles around me, chasing every squirrel, bird, and buck she could find. I conservatively estimated that she sprinted 2.5 miles for each mile I ran. It's still a goal of mine to find her adolescent distance limit, though I think it will require me running upwards of 20 miles in a stretch to find it. Stay tuned.
Along this quest, I started running off trail here in Marin. Yesterday morning I was gleefully galavanting down a steep slope, in the tall wet grass, unable to see my feet. I was revelling in the fact that Yola was a bit scared of the steep terrain, and I charged onward...
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| Yola on trail, atop Mount Tam |
And I charged... right into a nasty hole. As my foot absorbed the surprise impact, I heard a sickening crunch of bone on bone, and collapsed in agony. I screamed not just from the physical pain, but from the emotional agony surrounding it. So much of my life and joy revolves around physical activity: acrobatics, running, hiking. In that instant, I saw the next few months of practice and teaching evaporate before my eyes, and it HURT. My barbaric yawlp echoed across the valley.
I then lay there still for a few minutes, allowing the soft tissue to recover, hoping it was simply a minor sprain. Within an hour, timidly hobbling down the mountainside, I knew it was worse than that. I call Bec to come pick me up in the car. Argh.
The rest of that day, I lay upon the couch, my foot covered in ice, pondering what could have possibly gone wrong, and what lessons I could learn from this. Here's the short list I wrote:
LESSONS, DAY 1:
- Slow Down
- When you push too hard, things break
- stay on marked trails
- persevere: teach my acro classes even when crippled
- corollary: enlist help of friends
- obtain health insurance
- visit my brother in Grand Rapids
Fast forward 24 hours. In ankle brace, moving far slower than 1 mph, I take Yola on her walk. 90% of the pulling behavior has magically dissapeared. Who knows why. I rationalise that it's because she has no way to match pace with me that slowly. When it takes a full three seconds for me to descend a single stair-step, she is forced to take one simple step at a time, and look at me quizzically, waiting for me to ambulate, before taking her next step.
LESSON 2:
by slowing things down to ULTRA-SLOW,
the training is actually starting to work.
This lesson translates to the playground as well. Where I once had 1 in 4 odds of being able to leap and tackle and catch her mid-stride when she didn't come right to me, now I have only one option: patiently wait for her to come to me when called. A dog will simply never come close to an angered owner; The only way to lure them is with kindness, sweetness, and or food... or in Yola's case, the most effective manner of all, a ball or stick, the promise of play... which brings me to Go Fetch, what I actually feel is at the true core of all the training.
I had an epiphany the other day regarding "Go Fetch"... When Yola was a mere 2 months old, she accomplished that skill flawlessly and perfectly, retrieving the stick and bringing it right to my feet every time. Somewhere along the line, she decided that it was more rewarding to parade around with the stick and growl than to bring it back for another throw. This has generated an immense amount of confusion and frustration on my part, and my general solution is to make her sit 30 feet away from me, then approach her slowly and make her give me the stick. Sometimes I get it and sometimes she runs.
Once again, being a gimp simplifies this game greatly. As I am largely immobile, she either brings me the stick, or we stop playing. That simple. While she still has yet to bring the stick right to my feet, we are getting a lot closer.
And so my latest:
LESSON 3:
Stay Still, Remain Calm, and
train from a place of Power.
The story continues...
Stay tuned.
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