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Keep Calm And Carry On
KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON....
I was surprised the other day when someone who follows this column and who last week visited the House of Mutt for the first time to drop off a beloved Labrador of their own, commented on how lucky I was to have a dog as calm and as balanced as Hector.
Balanced: yes. Any dog who welcomes so many others into his den without fretting, fawning or flipping, has to be a pretty well-balanced, secure sort of chap.
But calm? Calm isn’t really a word I’d have used for the blond ball of energy and (albeit now gently ageing) muscle that is and always has been, Hector. He’s one of those dogs who sailed past the ‘will calm down at 18 months’ stage and blissfully steamrollered ‘certainly by 5 he’ll be starting to feel it’. Now in his ninth year, he remains as fit, strong, exuberant and enthusiastic as ever he was.
He would also, given half a chance, be as inclined as ever to continue his adolescent trick of bouncing dogs he meets on walks. This bouncing would be enthusiastic, amenable and well-intentioned – but, as with Hector himself, also fairly muscular.
The reason he doesn’t (well, not often ...) is that we’ve learnt to spot the warning signs and redirect his Kanga-like enthusiasm before it’s too late. Every bounce/bad behaviour has a warm-up period – which may last a seconds or a minute – during which time the dog’s contemplating an action but is still open to discussion as to whether to carry it out or not. Generally, the secret to curbing bad behaviour is watching out for those tell-tale signals and then acting before attentive obedience loses out to blind exuberance. Once Hector has set off to say hello, there’s no calling him back – but get his attention before he launches and you’re able to saunter past without a care in the world.
This is a trick we employ a lot here at the House of Mutt and is, I think, the main answer to all those who ask how we manage to walk five, six, seven dogs at a time without losing control.
Watching, basically - and knowing when to stay calm and when to ‘leap about a bit’ (as my father is want to say, in that beautifully understated English way)
There isn’t much chatting on a House of Mutt march. Whoever is in charge is in charge of a small pack of very precious dogs, many of whom have only recently been introduced to one another and who are being asked to accept a new and temporary pack leader. It’s the job of the walk leader (heavens, don’t things sound official as soon as you give them a title!) to stimulate, inspire, control and direct this disparate little group – and the only way you can do that is to be aware of exactly what it is they’re up to, all the time.
So, a delightful Dogue de Bordeaux (think Hooch, from the film Turner & ...) who was staying last week: practically perfect off lead, but on one or two occasions she’d pause, scent the wind and adopt a certain ‘umm that’s interesting’ pose. The sort of stance that meant business. Understanding that this one-time hunter was in the process of picking up a very tantalising signal in the opposite direction from us but was as yet undecided as to whether we were more interesting or the smell, enabled us to get ‘lepping to redirect her enthusiasm away from the odoriferous temptation.
Similarly, a frustrated terrier, neutered late and still pining for whatever it was that had up until that point been his guiding light: determined to mark his new territory when he came to stay last month. Not wishing to see the Old Rectory drown in a sea of dog wee, we set about watching this little man like a hawk. A few sniffs and a walked circle preceded every attempt at marking. So: notice the sniff, distract on the circle, save the soft furnishings!
Simple – when you’ve time on your hands and eyes in the back of your head.
Anyone know an out-of-work alien-type looking for work....?
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