Meet the Goombahs

It's 9 a.m. and Romy, my nine-year old German shepherd had her breakfast and is lying on the couch with her head propped up on three pillows. She is staring at me. Romy has been with me for all but her first six months; and of course when I got so sick before the transplant both she and Oz, my three-year old male, stayed with my friend Pat. At the risk of making my other dog trainer friends mad, she is the finest dog trainer I've ever met, and I've met many. It's probably her patience that helps, but she has an intuitive feeling for animals that is absolutely uncanny.

Pat has worked with all types of dogs, and when someone I know is having a problem with for instance a Rotty, she'll listen and then say, "Well, in my experience Rottys . . . " or "Brittanys don't normally have this short attention span, but this one has a bit of a problem." She kept both Romy and Oz for at least nine months while I was too ill to have them; but Romy is her mom's girl and is pretty indifferent to anyone but me. Romy thinks I'm simply mahvelous.

I think that's what I love about dogs; their total commitment to you no matter what your mood. If I want to hang in the living room and watch TV, they hang in the living room. If I go sit on the porch with my inevitable cup of coffee, they want to hang out in the sun near me. If I decide to go the bedroom and read, they go to the bedroom, although they prefer napping over reading.

Oz is a handful. He is also a howler. My brother, a songwriter, was visiting here a few months ago and a friend came up for the day to see him. They started howling. Oz looked confused, then threw back his head and howled along. He's hilarious and predictible. If you howl, Oz looks confused then decides, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" and throws back his head for a full-throated yodel. It always makes me laugh.

Both my dogs are trained in Schutzhund, a dog sport originating in Germany where dogs perform a variety of maneuvers, including off-lead obedience, running a track to find a hidden object, scaling walls, and most important, biting a bad guy in a padded suit. Oz just turned three and he's so full of testosterone that I'm having a hard time handling him. Yesterday he put his foot on my chest and pushed me, as if saying, "I'm the boss, remember?" Just like a guy.

Romy is part Czech, from the Border Patrol lines imported by another great trainer friend of mine, Zdenek, www.alpineK9.com. Oz is from German parents, in fact his father was the top Schutzhund in the world in the late 90s and Oz appears to have just as much ability. The Catch-22 is that I don't have the expertise to take him to the top.

So what do I do? Sell him to a more experienced handler who can take him at least to nationals? Doing so means I lose input on how he is treated, and while the people I train with are very humane, believe me, I seen things happen at competitions and in training that are very unfair to the dog. The group I work with, Riverfront in St. Louis, Mo. www.rwdc.org, train almost totally without correction and are a great bunch of people. But people who compete are, gee, competitive, and if their dogs don't perform, well, the dog often takes the blame. I was at a handler training in Illinois with a past member of the world Schutzhund team. His dog didn't obey him immediately and he hit him on the top of his head with a closed fist as hard as he could. The dog just looked at him with an adoring look, "Hey, whaddid I do?" A German judge was standing with us and said in his halting English "Why you hit the dog?" My sentiments exactly. "Because he won't out (release the object)," the handler said, a flaw in training that cannot be corrected, in my humble opinion, by harsh corrections.

Or I could neuter Oz, but I can't bring myself to do that and besides, Zdenek would never speak to me again. My friend Barbara took a lovely little Aussie stray Pete in to a spay/neuter clinic to be neutered so she could place him (few will take an unneutered dog) and the vet butchered him. Pete almost bled to death and has been in and out of the hospital now for several weeks. (If you want to donate to the vet bills, let me know as they are about $1,000 and climbing.) But Pete has cojones, or did, and Barbara, when I asked her how his placement in a new home was progressing, said "Forget it, I'm keeping him. Pete has more heart than any dog I've ever met." You go, girl.

Remember that with dogs, 90 percent of the time when the dog screws up, it's handler error. Recently a police dog in Prescott Valley hopped out of the officer's car at his house and promptly took off down the street and chewed on a woman who was walking. The problem? The handler underestimated the dog's drive, which was probably stimulating by being in the car thinking "Hey, I'm working now and I see a bad girl," and seeing the motion of the women walking. The cop may have just opened the door without thinking, and let the dog out without getting eye contact and reminding the dog, "Hey, dude, I'm the pack leader and I give the commands." That's the point with working dogs: You have to think all the time or a deadly accident can occur. Qwest, the dog, is back on duty after two extensive evaluations, although I'm not convinced his credibility with that department is shot as far as the public is concerned.

Living with high-drive dogs is not easy. I'm always vigilant to be sure I either have the dogs on leash or in an environment where I have about 1/8 mile of clearance from other people and dogs. It sometimes tires me out. But I've lived alone for years and having two dogs willing to literally take a bullet for me (ask Zdenek--Romy backed him up just the other day because I was lying down when he approached and I think she sees me as particularly vulnerable when I'm reclined). Zdenek trained Romy early on for home invasion complete with starter gunshots and door kicks, car jackings, all potential "bad guy" scenarious. She isn't sure, years later, why she doesn't trust him, she just knows she doesn't. He brings her beef hearts and she takes them, but always keeps her eye on him. I feel pretty darn safe with the goombahs around.

Having said all that, I've decided that these will be my last German shepherds. The older I get, the more I miss my Dallas, a Belgian malinois (pronounced mal-in-wah), a cousin to the German shepherd smaller and light brown usually with dark masks. Dally was my ex-fiancee's demo dog (he was a trainer) and when we split up, she had begun to get quirky as Malinois are inclined to do, so we agreed that I take both her and Romy when I left, and because of that I never regret our relationship. He also introduced me to Skull Valley, where I live, and where the first time I came here I knew I was home.

Dally was almost a perfect dog. (Every dog has glitches, just like every person.) She was incredibly intelligent and loyal. We used to put on dog-training demonstrations with her and part of the act, and it was for real, was "Now, Dallas will read lips." The crowds loved it.

Dally was great around kids but hated to be led by her collar. I was at a meeting with her one night (she was my Home Group, Hip, Slick & Kool at the Arid Club in Phoenix, mascot). She was outside with a bunch of kids. I heard a sharp bark and a kid crying, so I ran out. "She bit me," he said when I asked him what was wrong. Dallas never bit anyone, so I asked, "Are you sure she bit you?" He had no marks on him.

"No," he finally admitted, "but she put her teeth on me." I'm sure she did, because if he pulled her collar she would eventually put her teeth on him to warn him away. I never left her unattended around kids after that. Dogs are lawsuits on four legs, no matter how minor the incident.

As my mother become sicker and sicker with Alzheimers disease, Dally was her constant companion and grounded my mother. If Dally was there to pet, everything was A-OK. When Dally died before she did, she'd ask where she was and we'd lie. "She's next door swimming, mom," or "I think she's upstairs napping," we'd say. I'm crying as I write this because I loved my mother (and Dallas) so much. They are so intertwined in my memory that I don't know which I grieved harder at their deaths, Dally or my mom.

Mom was a true Christian. She never said a harsh word against another human being. If someone was particularly difficult, the most she would say is "I feel sorry for him." She just didn't judge but I seem to have failed to inherit that gene.

So back to the dogs, who ground me. They have been the most stability I've ever had in my life. They force me to be responsible. But most, they love me with brown-eyed gazes that say, no matter how I feel, that I'm the greatest. And all for a bowl of kibble a day.