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The Dog Whisperer
Friday, September 15, 2006

Rain, rain, go the fuck away! Rain + boot = suckfest, but, unfortunately, I need to go to the post office today. I have to mail, get this, a rain coat back to Eddie Bauer. I wish I had ordered the petite in the first place. Sometimes I can get away with regular size, but this time the arms were just too long. Monkey long. The only other jacket I have to wear in weather like this (rainy and a tad chilly) is at my grandmother's house. I left it at my uncle's house in Connecticut last May, so he brought it to Grandma's, and then I never bothered to bring it home, since it was summer and who needs a fleece-lined rain coat in the summer? Ugh.

I'm finally reading Cesar's Way: The Natural, Everyday Guide to Understanding and Correcting Common Dog Problems, by Cesar Millan, aka The Dog Whisperer. I decided to read it after Kyle sent me this article from Slate. I bought the book a while ago, but I was too unmotivated to read it, since it's written in a narrative way that made it useless for my purposes; I only wanted to read the parts I needed to fix my dog. It's a good thing he wrote it that way, since it forced me to start at the beginning, which is actually rather interesting. I watched The Dog Whipserer show a bunch when it first aired and was intrigued by his method, but I couldn't figure out how to apply any of his techniques to Lulu. I knew her problems stemmed mainly from how we treated her, i.e., like a human child instead of a dog, but I didn't know how to tame the wild beast. Not to mention every time I tried to train Lulu, Kyle would come home and immediately erase any lessons from her tiny chihuahua brain with his overabundance of unconditional love.

This time it seems different though. Before I finished chapter one, I started using the "Sssstttt" thing when she went nuts barking at a kid making noise out in the hallway. Usually, I either ignore her (One method of dog training I've encountered says you should only give your dog attention when they do good. You're supposed to ignore bad behavior. Sure, I'm going to just ignore her when she jumps on our dining room table looking for crumbs. Good idea, dog trainers.) or I yell at her, which makes her think I'm as angry and scared as she is and I'm just joining in on the barking. That'll get that damn shrieking kid to go away! This time, as we sat on the couch and the kid screeched, Lulu immediately got anxious and started to bark. I hissed "Sssstttt!" and, I kid you not, she stopped barking and looked at me. I was as amazed as the writer of the Salon article. She immediately turned around and barked at the door, but I said "Sssstttt" again and she looked at me and then lay down and did her "inside voice" bark, which is a little growly bark that no one out in the hall can hear. Then she just shut up. I couldn't believe it.

Later in the day, when I was at the opposite side of the apartment, she started barking at someone in the hall again. I walked out of the room and said "Sssstttt!" and she actually turned around and trotted toward me! What the heck was going on? I really didn't care as long as she stopped barking.

The kicker was when we went out for our walk. There was a man in the elevator when we got in. The "Strange Man in the Elevator" scenario usually ends in disaster, because Lulu goes nuts if anyone looks at her or talks to her. She doesn't even like people talking to me. So we got in and I made her stand next to me. She looked up at me, kind of like, "What should I do, human?" And I said "Good girl," and stopped looking at her. The guy asked me if I broke my foot and I told him it was fractured and he made a pained face and we were actually having a conversation and my dog wasn't trying to kill him! The elevator stopped and more people go on, so I picked Lulu up (I really need stop doing that, but it's so early in our reformation, I thought she couldn't stand to be that close to all those yummy looking ankles) and she didn't even growl at anyone. She didn't freak out when we all poured out of the elevator and she was okay when I put her down outside. Not a peep. No lunging. No hysterics. The walk went pretty well too. She did get a little crazy when she saw some dogs across the street, but I was able to make her keep walking, mostly by dragging her along beside me as I acted like everything was okay.

I can't believe how well things are going and I haven't even finished the book!

Now if I could only train Kyle to put his beer bottles in the recycle bin...

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