Saturday, February 18, 2012
PARENTS are invariably blind to the faults of offspring, so when I’m asked if there’s any chance Lola might be trained to replicate the tricks and antics of Uggie, the breakout star of The Artist, I’m wildly indignant.
"Why my Lola could have directed the damned film!" Lola, by the way, is a six-year-old labrador-collie crossbreed.
Lola is highly intelligent and I’ve easily trained her to sit, stay, come, fetch, heel, left paw, right paw — surely a perfect candidate for stardom. However, she has ‘issues’.
We meet trainer Liz Mahony of animalsolutions.ie in an indoor arena at Creedon’s Doggie Daycare centre in Cork. Lola sniffs her surroundings nervously. When Liz takes Lola on the lead and moves away, instructing me to completely avoid Lola’s gaze, she begins to whine.
Six years ago, we acquired a foundling, a Jack Russell named Rico and were keen he should have a companion. Two weeks later, Firstborn and I picked up a tiny, coal-black pup from the dog shelter.
Rigid with nerves, she farted noxiously all the way back to the city, finally, throwing up on Firstborn’s lap. On terra firma, she instantly recovered, launching herself at a surprised Rico. He snarled; delighted, she bowled into him. Over the next three years, they became a local fixture, The little emperor and his large empress, she was now twice his size.
She was also sleek, graceful and very fast but retained her puppyish exuberance for all comers, human and canine. Napoleonic Rico, meanwhile, learned to tolerate her dizziness and her using him as a pillow. Three years ago, he was knocked down and killed. I bawled like a child as I buried him in our garden. That night, I hugged Lola, wracked with guilt at my only consolation — at least it hadn’t been her, my secret favourite. Lola lost her former giddiness except when chasing her beloved ball. The former social gadfly became an anti-social hermit, shunning all other dogs. She still adored people but now with a desperate, urgent neediness. Lola became more emotionally demanding than my three children. She’s got movie star temperament but is she star material?
"How long is a piece of string?" says Liz. "It certainly takes time. You start by breaking it down into chunks. Say, you want her to roll right over on to her back. First, you train her to lie down. Then, to roll on to one side. Then, the other side. Three separate movements. Then you bring it all together.
"The same with The Artist, the sequences would have taken time, broken into chunks and then all brought together, using a lot of things the dog could already do. Anybody can teach their dog but it takes patience and a lot of trust between dog and owner. And you have to keep training."
Rightio, let’s get Lola up on that trapeze so. Well, not quite as straightforward as that, Lola’s tragic past and all that.
"It is different with a dog that has been traumatised. It can happen in time but first you need to deal with the trauma. And Lola has turned her grief and abandonment into working the whole time on getting your sympathy. It’s become a bad habit."
I have to fight the urge reassure the whimpering Lola but all the while Liz has been talking, she has been performing T-Touch, a therapeutic massage that improves behaviour and deepens the relationship between dog and owner.
"It’s very grounding," explains Liz. "In the same way, when you’ve been in an accident and someone puts a blanket over you." Sure enough, Lola is relaxing.
We begin by walking her, slalom-style, through traffic cones. Still very wary, she performs competently if unenthusiastically. "Don’t look back at her," says Liz, "when you look back, she stops."
Next, a miniature showjumping hurdle. The dog who effortlessly clears 4ft walls pursuing cats, baulks at this six-inch fence, pulling against the lead or simply walking around the side. Liz takes over, upping the energy, speaking brightly, holding up a treat, guiding the greedily-sniffing dog over the jump, cheering in delight as if it were the Aga Khan trophy. She raises the bar and repeats flawlessly.
"Dogs by nature love to please so if you can tap into that, make it a game and then reward them, you’re on to a winning formula." We run through the rest of the course — steps, tunnel, seesaw, ramps — with varying degrees of success. Well, I’m the varying and Liz is the success but I begin to get the message.
Liz brings in her boxer, Nutmeg, to gauge the extent of Lola’s canine antipathy. Nutmeg is a bundle of energy and fun. Lola on the other hand, only wants to play nasty. My demure, doe-eyed heroine is now a heartless harridan, lip curled, fangs bared, snarling like a demented hyena. Since this behaviour first began, after Rico’s death, I always reassure her.
"Wrong," says Liz, "Nutmeg is not even in Lola’s personal space and yet Lola is acting very inappropriately. If she doesn’t want to interact, she can just look away. That is provocative, plain bad manners, you cannot tolerate it. Tell her firmly to be quiet."
I snap sharply at Lola. She jerks her head in surprise and buttons her lip. She snarls again, I snap. We continue like this for 10 minutes with poor Nutmeg now lying on the ground wearing a look of pained bemusement. Eventually, Lola sits in silence, refusing to catch Nutmeg’s gaze. They won’t be having a sleepover any time soon but Lola has made progress.
"Lola is a lovely dog but she is slightly manipulative and has you absolutely taped, she gazes into your eyes and you melt. I saw another side to her, all alert, ears pricked, jumping over the fence. Then she saw you looking and changed, ‘Oooh, If I’m sad, it gets his attention.’ Then she wouldn’t play with me at all. If you think about it, we all do that to some extent, manipulate to get what we want.
"She hasn’t reached her full potential. You’ve both wallowed a bit in her lousy past but she should be able to rise above it. Dogs have emotions — I’m not anthropomorphising— but animals deserve our respect and if you treat one with respect, you get so much more.
"I think she could be taught to do a lot, using praise, being a little firmer with her. When she went through the tunnel it was to get to you but it was with an eagerness. My own dog wouldn’t do that, she’s petrified of small spaces. Use what you have, praise once you get half of what you want and then raise the bar further. If you have completely won its trust, it can even be trained to do something dangerous and scary — she believes you’re not going to let her get hurt."
Does anyone know where I might get a spandex leotard for a dog, something becoming, of course, and very ladylike?
* www.animalsolutions.ie
* www.creedonsdoggiedaycare.com
The dogs who lit up our screens
Rin Tin Tin
German shepherd found by a US serviceman in a bombed-out French dog shelter at the end of the First World War. Urban legend has it he not only received most votes for best actor in the 1929 Academy Awards, but also died in Jean Harlow’s arms.
Lassie
Lassie’s canine genes were incidental — she was a star, full stop, up there with human fellow thespians. She was played by multiple collies down through the years. And there’s a transgender issue: ‘she’ was actually a ‘he’.
Eddie
Better known as ‘the dog out of Frasier’, he was in fact a reformed jack russell, Moose.
Marley
Benji, Beethoven, Bingo, K-9, Hooch, Skip.
A random selection of box office bow-wows yet we plump for Marley, who out-acted Jennifer Aniston in the film of the same name. While the other mutts mutter, Marley can simply point to the figures as the highest grossing doggie movie of all time.
Scooby Doo
However, factor in animated dogs and Scooby tops the lot, with 2002 smash Scooby Doo and its equally imaginatively titled follow-up, Scooby Doo 2. Though countless millions would opt for, say, Snoopy or Butch from Tom & Jerry over gormless Scooby and his insufferable human sidekicks, once again it all comes down to the numbers.
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