Читать книгу From the Dog's Mouth - Wavecrest Imprint - Страница 8

I will tell you exactly how Mister G started letting me chow down when I was hungry instead of just when he wanted me to. All the fancy dog trainers told him to pick my food bowl up after a few minutes if I didn’t eat it, kind of with the attitude, “You’ll show the dog who is alpha boss!”

Then, lo and behold Dada read an article in Time Magazine, “Dog Training and the Myth of Alpha-Male Dominance” in which the American Veterinary Association bashed Cesar Millan, that big britches from Hispaniola, the supposed high and mighty, king of king and lord of lords Dog Whisperer. According to AVA President Bonnie Beaver, know-it-all Cesar pins a dog on its back and holds it by the throat, which she said was downright cruel. (Dada was never under a swoon to the charlatan, thanks to the first time Dada saw him stroll through lover’s lane with his pack of robotic mongrels). As a matter of fact Daddy and I think that when most people get famous they are on their way to Elvis’ Heartbreak Hotel.

We are supposedly in the wolf pack line of evolution, but the founder of the Minnesota-based International Wolf Center, says, “Dog trainers have the wolf story all wrong, too.” He further says, “Wolves in the wild actually live in nuclear families, not randomly assembled units, in which the mother and father are the pack leaders and their offspring’s status is based on birth order.” Don’t you just love it when how we have been thinking for centuries gets turned on its ear?

This changed everything about how Dada I got along. This expert on canine behavior was like Dada’s therapist friend Peggy who counsels her clients with patient-centered therapy. Letting a patient unravel his own crazy mixed-up life from childhood forward makes sense to me. Just like in nuclear families, canines must fight to make ourselves understood by our keepers.

Thank God for Time Magazine. Mon père stopped listening to all the so-called authorities and big pieces of stuff dogcrats (as he calls Dog Whisperers, trainers, vets, et al.) and started listening to me.

One fine day—almost like a Puccini moment in one of his grand operas—Daddy’s 911-sized meltdowns about me not eating came to a screeching halt. (Can you hear the cymbals?) Amidst a colossal tirade a miracle happened. Humans talk about miracles all the time, but we dogs consider every minute of every day a miracle. Frustrated and filled to the brim with rage my keeper hit a wall. At the high note of his outburst he simply fell mute in mid-cry. He took a few deep breaths. Then he exhaled. His Napoleonic hunched shoulders relaxed. He went into the great room and lay down on the snowy white carpet and cried. He did not boo-hoo like one of Mrs. Hornblow’s crybabies. But he cried out of frustration that he could not make me eat. I went over and licked his face and stretched out beside him. He turned his head and, nose-to-nose, toes-to-paws, looked into my eyes.

Here is what I said: