Part of me wished that Boo could follow in Dante’s oversized and comical footsteps, but whenever I considered training Boo to be a therapy dog, I kept returning to the stark reality of his slow progress in learning any reliable foundation skills. I doubted his ability to pass the Pet Partners’ evaluation, let alone handle the higher levels of distractions that the work itself would present.
No, Boo was destined to be simply a very loved, very pampered pet whose favorite place to sleep was in bed nestled between Lawrence and me in a position we called the snug-a-Boo. (I’m certain a good number of deep gasps greeted the revelation that my dogs are allowed up on our bed. The usual reason given for keeping dogs off furniture—it makes them aggressive or dominant—isn’t supported by research; in fact, there is evidence to the contrary. A survey of 2,000 dog owners conducted by Drs. Peter Borchelt and Linda Goodloe, both veterinary behaviorists, showed no correlation between sleeping on furniture and aggression; it also debunked a few other dog myths. Dogs who are allowed up on the furniture, however, need to have a verbal off command and a great settle command. The first night your dog goes out to perform some kind of proctology exam on the local skunks, as Dante used to, you will be thrilled you can tell him to get off the bed and go lie down somewhere else—preferably far away from you!) Between us, Boo would press himself against one of us (snug-a-Boo) and reach out with his feet to push against the other (poky-Boo). Snug-a-Boo was a truly marvelous way to fall asleep—face buried in thick, warm Boo fur—while the one receiving poky-Boo woke up the next day with a back full of pointy, little Boo paw prints.
Nevertheless, I still needed Boo to be socialized and well trained. By now, he was pretty good at tagging along with me on a reasonably loose leash. The only exceptions came when he saw a person or another dog, at which point he became a plow—so intent on reaching his goal that no bag of peanut butter could distract him. One evening as we left the store after I had just finished teaching, Boo, who had come along just for the social outing, was prancing along nicely beside me when he suddenly started pulling in the opposite direction, with no people or other dogs in sight. Ordinarily, I would have just kept walking, perhaps giving the leash a little tug, until he was back with me, but this night his behavior baffled me, and I decided to let him follow his bliss. He steamrolled past two aisles, turned down the third one and plowed ahead to the middle of the aisle.
There, halfway down the third aisle, were two giggling little girls, probably about three and four years old, huddled together in a Dickensian sort of pose, pointing at Boo as he beelined for them. Boo did not have much experience with kids, so I tried to slow him down, but he was a dog on a mission, an unstoppable force, until he reached the girls, at which point he stopped dead in his tracks, turned his body slightly, opened his mouth for a gentle pant and just stood there, as the giggling girls proceeded to poke him, pet him, grab him, prod him and eventually hug him.
I was in shock. This was not the Boo who was usually a whirligig at the end of the leash when hoping to get the attention of people and other dogs. It wasn’t just that this was really good behavior—this was behavior that usually required an extraordinary amount of training. When you’re a small child, the sight of a dog the same size as you, or bigger, bounding directly at you can be terrifying or really fun. No matter which, the child usually beams excitement through the air to the dog, communicating, Oh boy, let’s play! or Oh no! Even dogs who remain calm around adults can have a hard time not getting overly excited around kids, which can lead to the potential for injury. Dante, the prodigy dog, still had trouble moderating his exuberance around little kids. I’d been working with him for years to make his small-child greeting consistently soft and gentle, but Boo, running on instinct alone, with no shaping, luring or training, blew the genius dog out of the water. I almost broke down in tears. Boo was telling me exactly and unequivocally what he needed and wanted in his life: kids!
I wasn’t sure I could give him that, as Lawrence and I weren’t going to have children. Knowing that abuse follows from one generation to the next, Lawrence believed the best way to keep himself from becoming his biological father—maybe the only way—was to avoid having kids. His early childhood had been so dark that even the remote possibility that he might inflict a portion of that darkness on another child terrified him. I also knew that the combination of my medical history and his newly discovered medical issues made it unlikely we’d be able to produce a child no matter how much Boo and I wanted one. I had long since realized that my life would bring me what it was going to bring me and that there was no requesting special-menu items. I was just amazed that I had found someone to marry me in the first place. I figured that if children were going to sneak their way into this family, it would be at the discretion of a higher power.
With no kids on the horizon at home, all I could do was try to get Boo to a point where he could be a visiting dog like Dante. Then, he could have as many kids as he could visit. The problem would be training Boo so he could pass the Pet Partners’ evaluation. There were probably never two more dramatically different dogs than Dante and Boo. Dante, smart as a whip, trained so easily that much of the time I felt like he was the one training me. But with Boo, the not so smart one, training sometimes seemed like trying to train a two-by-four. Dante, smart, empathic and energetic, could be a clown on one visit—employing his special Scooby Doo trick that always amused everyone as they watched him barely balance his ninety pounds on his two hind legs, his ears flopping as the rest of him wobbled—and then on another visit he could intuit the right thing to do while still keeping his focus on me and following my commands. Boo, on the contrary, had trouble focusing even without distractions, and it remained to be seen whether he could perceive the needs of clients at all: were his low-key, easygoing interactions an expression of empathy or just a function of his disabilities?
I had reason to hope because little Boo was making progress in his training when out and about with me at work, and he wasn’t making potty mistakes in the house anymore. He had learned how to signal to us that he needed to go out. This was the longest it had ever taken me to get a dog to be 100% potty-trained, but I found it encouraging. If Boo could make training headway in this, then maybe the other skills necessary to be a therapy dog were also within his reach.
But, as always, my hope was offset by my worry that Boo, with his limitations, might be more fearful than the average dog. So, knowing that happy socialization was especially important for him, I made sure to bring him to work with me even more often now. This enabled me to proof his foundation skills and generalize them in increasingly distracting environments. (Proofing is the act of determining the quality of a behavior through testing it in various environments; this also strengthens the behaviors and generalizes them to all situations.) It wasn’t enough for him to sit on command at home; he needed to be able to sit on command anywhere.
Dogs don’t generalize like we humans do. If you’re in a classroom and teach a child that 2 + 2 = 4, she understands that 2 + 2 = 4 wherever she goes, whoever’s asking. If kids had the same approach to learning as dogs do, childhood education would look something like this:
Day one: 2 + 2 = 4.
Day two: 4 + 4 = 8.
Day three: Field trip! In the mall parking lot, 2 + 2 = 4. In the candle store, 2 + 2 = 4. In the furniture store, 2 + 2 = 4. In the food court, 2 + 2 = 4.
Day four: Field trip! In the mall parking lot, 4 + 4 = 8, and once again in the candle store, the furniture store and the food court.
Day five: Field trip to a different mall! In the parking lot, 2 + 2 = 4 and 4 + 4 = 8. Then, in this mall’s candle store, furniture store and food court, 2 + 2 = 4 and 4 + 4 = 8.
You get the picture. It’s time-consuming, but it’s the only reliable way to ensure solid, generalized commands.
Thanks to my happy discovery of the peanut butter puppet, Boo was actually making progress for the first time. Before, he would sit on command at home but never in class, but now he would often sit for practice sessions between my classes at the pet store and sometimes even in other places! Even more exciting, once he’d gotten into the groove of a new place and had a few licks of peanut butter, he would start taking regular treats, which were much easier to carry and much less messy. For the first time, I had the ability to shape, lure and reward targeted behaviors. I was thrilled. It’s a funny thing how our expectations shift: in the beginning, I had long lists of things I needed him to do, and now he could make me incredibly happy by sitting on command in a mildly distracting environment.
Although happy to be working on my new goal for Boo, I never stopped twinging inside whenever I thought of my failure to prepare him for Chuck. The last twinge was put to rest in May 2002, when Boo was one and a half and the call came. Like in the middle of a dream when someone familiar enters a scene they don’t normally belong in, I got a call from my sister. Once again following strict Edwards family rules of engagement, all she said was, “Lees, Chuck’s dead,” and then gave me details on the funeral. I left Lawrence and the boys home and went back to Lombard for what I figured would be the last time. I would normally have stayed with Chuck and his family, but that didn’t feel right. My sister and her husband begrudgingly put me up. Still trying to ingratiate myself with her, I helped them mulch their yard before the funeral service and took them out to dinner afterward. But no matter what I did, the old feeling of “Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out” hung in the air, heavy and impenetrable.
I got to spend some time with Chuck’s family before leaving, and his wife told me that when she and my niece had come home to find that Chuck had passed, he was sitting in front of the TV, which was turned to the sci-fi channel. She laughed and said, “That’s my Chuck.” I got goose bumps. I had taken that day off and spent it watching the sci-fi channel while working on a sewing project. My brother was gone, but it gave me solace to know that we were probably watching the same Babylon 5 episode when he died.
For me, the loss of someone important churns my internal emotional waters, reminding me to keep important things important and not let them get pushed aside by other pressures. At Chuck’s funeral, his wife read aloud a letter he wrote about what he would have done if the illness had not taken him: hug his daughter more, plant tomatoes in his garden and hand-build cabinets for his kitchen. After I got home from the funeral, I thought, You know what? My kitchen has been in pieces ever since Boo came along, and a halfway demolished cabinet was his first playpen. If Chuck’s illness gave me a reason to work with Boo toward a specific goal, I can let his death inspire me to work toward a goal, too. Chuck and I shared science fiction and woodworking. I shared his last moments, even if half a country away, and now I would make that kitchen an homage to him while I focused the energy of my grief on creating something tangible. I thought, I’m finishing that kitchen, come hell or high water. My approach to anything negative is to keep busy, so the pieces of the puzzle that would allow me to process my grief were to finish the kitchen and work toward my dog training certifications. If Chuck could get his CPA facing a fatal illness, then I had no excuse to not get my professional certifications, no matter how inadequate I felt.
Committing to renovate the kitchen while training Boo and pursuing certification was one thing. Actually doing it—conquering the kitchen while continuing to work with Boo and trying to slog through heady learning theory reading material made doubly heady by dyslexia—was something else altogether. We slogged through the kitchen prep work, and once I’d designed the space, laid the in-floor heating and the tile above it and moved the new appliances, it was time for the cabinets to arrive.
In preparation for the delivery, I put Atticus and Dante up in the bedroom, but I kept Boo downstairs as a greeter to continue his socialization by introducing him to as many people as possible.
The delivery guys loved Boo. He made an excellent supervisor, trotting his pony-like trot, ears flopping with each step, following them around the house as they brought in box after box to make sure they put everything in the right place, until he decided that he needed to be involved in more of the process and began following them outside to the truck and back in again. Seeing him so consistently engaged, I allowed myself to focus more of my attention on the seemingly never-ending stream of boxes entering my house—boxes six feet high, boxes four feet wide—trying to find a place for the next box that would still leave us some house to live in. Before too long, I was completely engrossed in the problem: my house is small, and there were a lot of boxes.
When the men were gone, I called for Boo, but he didn’t come. I searched every room with no luck. I let Atticus and Dante out and figured they’d find him in the maze of boxes, but still no Boo. We headed outside to search the property. Still no Boo.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” I said to the driver of the truck when he answered his cell phone, “but there wouldn’t by any chance be an unauthorized canine passenger with you, would there?”
“No, ma’am,” he said. “The truck was definitely empty when we closed it up.”
I called Lawrence at work in a panic. He dropped everything and headed home to help look for our lost little guy. Boo had been gone for at least a half hour at this point, and with his vision issues and cognitive disabilities, he could have wandered anywhere on our ten acres, or anywhere else in the neighborhood, and have no hope of finding his way home. I was trying not to panic. Boo always ran from the sound of cars, but what if he ran from one car only to charge head on into another one? It was time to go driving around the neighborhood and hope to find him still alive. Our house is up a long shared easement about a quarter mile from the road, surrounded at the bottom by woods and a bit of a swamp, most of which is owned by New York City for watershed protection.
Driving down the easement, as I neared the road at the bottom, I saw a small, very dark deer in the swampy portion of the watershed swampland. As I drew closer, I realized it was not a deer but little Boo, happily and nonchalantly sniffing all the new wonderful smells in the swamp. Overjoyed, I went running and screaming into the swamp. I must have looked ridiculous, with my arms waving and flailing about. I picked Boo up and carried him back to the car. In that moment, I realized I was running, I was carrying Boo and I was throwing myself around like a windmill. These were activities that I thought I couldn’t do anymore because of the pain. I was a little sore, but not like so many nights I had spent under bags of ice.
The combination of less time spent pounding my joints on New York City pavement and more time spent moving through the pain when teaching classes, as well as the extra time on my feet working with Boo, must have all played a huge therapeutic role in my increased mobility and decreased chronic pain. Although I was not completely pain-free, I was doing things I hadn’t done in years. I could spend time on my feet as a part-time dog trainer, usually at least two hours in a row. I was also sharing more of the responsibilities for teaching the main H.A.R.T. class—another two hours of being on my feet—and the visit hours. This made four to six hours each week that I was up and about, moving and being moderately active. Because I loved the activity, my brain could overlook the pain. I was experiencing the benefits of animal therapy firsthand.
The revelations I had on the day we almost lost Boo allowed me to step outside myself and watch while I taught and trained and did demonstrations for H.A.R.T. For the first time, I realized that maybe these people who kept telling me I was good at this dog-training thing weren’t making it up. By wandering off during the cabinet delivery, Boo allowed me to see something in myself that I hadn’t known was there. I was no longer the same cripple I had been when I needed a neck brace and the stick just to get to and from work in the city. Maybe I could manage a job that required some physical activity. And maybe I would actually be really good at it.
I was so fiercely trained to believe I was worthless that it was difficult for me to keep hold of this understanding. But my stubborn streak showed itself, and before long I decided that I could earn the credentials that would allow me to call myself a professional, and there would be no argument from anybody.
To that point, the decisions I’d made about dog training—with Boo and with other dogs—had come from light reading and instinct. My own history made me doubt that training through punishment (collar corrections, pinch collars, shock collars) could do much to build a trusting relationship between dog and handler. I knew punishment training wasn’t an effective training tool for me, and I suspected it probably wouldn’t be for dogs either.
As I began to study, I discovered that my instinct was supported by science. I read every book on learning theory, operant conditioning, classical conditioning, clicker training, behavior modification, desensitization and counterconditioning that I could get my hands on. I learned that research on how lab animals respond to positive punishment (pain, fear, etc.) and positive reinforcement (rewards of food, play, affection) showed not just that my intuition was right but also that there were chemical reasons why.
The neurological responses in the brain and body to fear and pain fall into the general category of stress responses. The neurochemicals and hormones produced by moderate to high levels of stress impair learning (unless we’re talking about hand-in-the-fire pain and stress, which is a very powerful learning process, but that isn’t dog training). The techniques of positive reinforcement, however, don’t create those high levels of stress hormones, but they do create chemicals associated with happiness. Both of these factors make learning more likely, more efficient and more reliable in the long term.
I already belonged to the Association of Pet Dog Trainers, which spun off an adjunct organization, the Certification Council for Professional Dog Trainers, founded for the sole purpose of testing and certifying the knowledge base of trainers nationwide while supporting a venue for pet-dog owners to learn about and find these certified trainers. I took the CPDT (certified professional dog trainer) test through the Certification Council for Professional Dog Trainers when Boo was two years old. I must have been crazy: it was a 250-question exam that tested knowledge of learning theory, ethology, training techniques, equipment and husbandry. To even sit for the test, a trainer had to have three hundred hours of verifiable independent training experience as a lead or sole trainer, along with references from clients, colleagues and veterinary professionals. Several seasoned trainers I knew had taken it time and again only to fail and have to retest.
I passed the first time. Maybe I was good at dog-training after all.
I was now a nationally certified dog trainer, and there was no stopping me. I quickly became an American Kennel Club–certified Canine Good Citizen (CGC) evaluator, a Pet Partners-certified instructor, a Pet Partners-certified evaluator, you name it. By the time Boo was two and a half, I was a professional dog trainer with all the credentials one could ask for to be taken seriously: CPDT, AKC CGC certified evaluator and Pet Partners certified instructor and evaluator. Most of these letters and titles don’t mean much to folks outside the dog-training community, but to me and to people in the doggie world, they meant I was legitimate and probably pretty knowledgeable. It was time to formally start my company. Paying homage to all the dogs who had brought me so much, I called it Three Dogs Training.
Now that I sort of felt like I knew what I was doing—and had the credentials to back up that knowledge—I started Boo’s training over again. It was much like the first round for service training had been, with great emphasis on socialization and generalized behaviors, but this time my expectations were more in line with what he could do. I knew his strengths (people) and his weaknesses (learning new skills). I had to begin working with his strengths and then slowly lure him into the skills category.
Boo had an exceptional ability to gently and disarmingly say hello to a small child and then just stand there (the old Boo stare was finally given a purpose!) while the child petted him, cooed, tried to braid his hair or played cowboys and Indians with him. It was just like the days when he would be outside staring into the wind with a look of confused glee, but when kids were petting him, I knew the source of his glee: the love and affection he was getting and giving. As kids in stores and parks petted him, he remained relaxed, mouth gently open for calm, happy panting, without jumping or moving in too close to startle or scare the child and always with his body slightly curved in the midsection, a sure sign of relaxation (in contrast, when dogs are on alert their bodies are usually straight and ridged). For many kids, Boo was the one dog they could pet. Because he wasn’t bouncing all over the place trying to lick them or paw at them, he wasn’t scary at all. For other kids, he was just good company. Boo really was the dog who would let kids nudge him, poke him and pet him anywhere—that rare dog every parent dreams about. (It is important to remember that the phrase “I want a dog who will let my kids do anything to him” is a description of a very rare dog. It’s unrealistic and dangerous to expect all dogs to tolerate everything kids will do to them. Without training, shaping and management, many dogs will eventually try to tell children to stop doing something in the only ways they can, by growling, barking or snapping at the child.)
It took nearly another year of specialized training for Boo before I felt he was ready for the Human–Animal Relational Therapies class. Diane and I took turns teaching the main H.A.R.T. Animal-Assisted Therapy class at this point, and since it was Diane’s turn to teach, I enrolled Boo. I would be able to devote all my class efforts to him and just be a student again, something I hadn’t done in a long time. As usual, I spent a good deal of time in class just getting him to focus his attention on me rather than the other dogs. It was not as hard as before—my bubble sounds were much less frequent this time—but it was still a good deal of work.
The real difference was that I was no longer beating myself up when Boo didn’t progress quickly. I simply worked with him at his speed. If we had to do this class over and over again, we would, and I was fine with that. Boo taught me how to be patient and let things go at the pace that was required. It was a humbling and empowering lesson. Although things may be out of our control in many ways, we have the power to let them be what they must be over time. Boo brought me back to the Serenity Prayer I learned in Al-Anon: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and wisdom to know the difference.” The power of this fifth-century prayer to transform and inform was never lost on me.
Every day when training Boo, the Boo form of that prayer would go through my head: I knew I could never change Boo into the bright intellectual canine wizard that Dante was, yet I knew I could get him to become a therapy dog if I just kept working with him. I just needed to put in the time and have patience.
The Animal-Assisted Therapy, Education and Activities (AATEA) class that Diane and I taught for H.A.R.T.—and now teach for Three Dogs Training—is an intensive class that prepares teams for any evaluation and the work they will eventually do for the two types of animal-assisted visiting: animal-assisted activities (AAA) and animal-assisted therapy (AAT). I also like to include a third category, animal-assisted education.
AAA is the most common type of animal-assisted visiting. The most familiar type of AAA visit is a dog at a person’s bedside in a hospital or nursing home. The staff and client don’t expect anything more than a friendly dog to come by and brighten up the morning, maybe reduce some blood pressure and generally make everyone smile a little more. Although AAA visits are not prescribed by medical professionals and do not require progress notes, they bring enormous therapeutic benefits.
AAT, on the contrary, is a visit during which the client and the dog engage in monitored, goal-driven, professionally prescribed therapeutic interactions whose progress is documented from visit to visit. For example, if an occupational therapist would like a client to work on range of motion for an arm that has been injured, she might ask the client to brush the visiting dog twenty times with his right hand and then with his left. Or if another client is working on fine-motor skills, they might play games like Don’t Spill the Beans with the visiting dog. Once the client puts a pile of beans into the pot one by one, the dog is cued to tip over the pot, dumping all the beans out, so the client can start over. Yes, a staff member could push over the pot, but it’s more fun when dogs do it.
Last, there’s animal-assisted education. Most folks classify educational visits as AAA, but on many classroom visits I’ve done, a teacher directs the activities with individualized goals and documented progress notes for each student, just as a reading specialist might oversee the progress a child is making each time she reads a book to the dog. These visits seemed more like AAT to me.
The next step was to get Boo ready for the Pet Partners’ evaluation. If he passed, I would register him as a pet partner, or therapy dog. The test has two parts: skills and aptitude. A team has to pass all ten exercises in the skills portion in order to go onto the aptitude portion. On this test, each exercise is scored as follows: a team can score 2 (the best possible), 1 (fine), NR (not ready) or NA (not appropriate as a pet partner ever). The test basically requires a doggie Gandhi—intelligent, caring, patient and empathic. I had Boo.
After a few months, we finished our class, and it was time to test. The evaluator, Liz, knew me and respected me—she evaluated Dante and me the first couple of times—so she was a little shocked when she saw Boo. I could see her eyes squint just a bit as she did the comparison in her head between my whiz-kid Dante and Boo. It didn’t matter because Boo was going to be who he was.
The first time, the skills test alone stressed him enough that he didn’t manage to do his basic commands, and we didn’t pass. I had expected that, and back to work we went. We went to pet stores and the vet’s office, and some dry cleaners and other small shop owners let us in. In each venue, we ran through the basic exercises in the skills portion of the test, sometimes in order, sometimes out of order. I wasn’t going to give up yet.
As Boo’s training continued, his world at home was getting better. For one thing, his relationship with Atticus was improving. Their favorite game was played out in the yard: Boo would stand very still and eye Atticus. Atticus would stand equally still and eye Boo. I could almost hear the music from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly playing in my head as they made their standoff like Clint Eastwood (or in this case, Eastwoof) and Eli Wallach. Then, in a short sudden movement, one of them would quickly pitch forward and down, then lean in the direction the chase was supposed to go, and they would be off like a shot, running circles around each other and weaving in and out of the trees in the yard, their faces happy and open, tongues wagging and bodies wriggly. At some point, Boo would stop and give up his typical, “Whoo, whoo, whoo,” howling-at-the-moon bark in his coyote-like stance, and the game would wind down. Once inside, they would engage in their mutual passion: begging (I use begging to shape and proof good behaviors). Atticus and Boo were the dynamic duo of sitting politely for any treat at all. After a long day of chasing and buddy-begging, Boo would frequently split his evenings between snoozing on the couch in my office with Atticus and snuggling with Dante and me on the oversized chair in the living room.
More important, though, Lawrence finally seemed to have found his place with Boo, too. Although Boo’s slow responsiveness still frustrated Lawrence, I noticed a definite shift when I started telling him about the folks in the H.A.R.T. class.
“They called Boo a dullard during class again,” I said.
“Who?” His eyes narrowed.
“The usual crew. I’m not sure they were joking. When I try to explain his limitations, I think they think I’m making it all up.”
“They,” he said indignantly, “just don’t know Boo.”
That proved to be a turning point. The more he heard about the jokes, the more he rooted for Boo to succeed in the class and show the snickering strangers how wrong they were. This was not the man who had said, “Fine, but he’s your dog. I’m not taking care of him.” This was a man who was growing to love a dog he never thought he wanted.
Just a little over a year after Chuck’s passing, Boo took the Pet Partners’ test again. Our evaluators this time were Kay and another Diane (Anderson). They were enrolled in the first class I helped teach with Dante, and once they became evaluators, they did evaluations for H.A.R.T. Again, it wasn’t hard to see them compare Dante with this little black dog who seemed to float at the end of his leash with no focus on me and not hard to see their shock at the obvious differences between the two. As a horrible test taker in general, I was more worried on this occasion than usual. Boo and I had failed once. What if we failed again and again and again? At what point would I have to step back and ask whether this was good for Boo? On some gut level, I knew what an amazing therapy dog Boo could be, and I wanted this so badly for him.
“Breathe, Lisa,” Kay said more than once as we went through the exercises.
“You’re so stressed,” Diane said at one point, “that you keep inhaling and holding your breath. Let it out.” Boo, meanwhile, was his usual, unfocused self through the skills portion of the test, only occasionally turning to look at me when I gave him a command.
“Down” was going to be our make-or-break exercise—our doom, or we would be home free. Boo always had trouble lying down easily even under the best of circumstances, and it was almost painful to watch sometimes. He couldn’t lie down normally because of the cerebellar hypoplasia. Furthermore, on a hard floor, he slipped and slid around under his own weight, unable to get his front legs out easily. He hated the down command on a hard surface, but there was no missing any of the skills exercises: we had to pass them all, or we wouldn’t pass the evaluation.
As always, the test began slowly with Diane approaching for the first two exercises: “Accepting a Stranger” and “Accepting Petting.” Boo was interested in greeting Diane but managed to remain at my side for my handshake and Diane’s petting him. Following the greeting, Diane brushed him and touched him all over just a bit to be sure he was comfortable being touched by a stranger (“Appearance and Grooming”). Happy to be petted and touched, Boo seemed confused as to why he couldn’t interact more with his new friend, but we had other exercises to get through first. It was time for “Go for a Walk.” Boo trotted along with me past the cones, leash loose, ears flopping happily as usual, without corrections like collar tugs or stern verbal instructions. Now that we had proven that we could walk politely on leash, the volunteers entered the picture (“Walk Through a Crowd”). Boo and I had to navigate through the crowd milling about without his being overly interested or fearful of the strangers passing by. “Reaction to Distractions” followed, and Boo didn’t care about the person moving quickly with a walker in our path (or maybe he just didn’t see her). As the clipboard hit the floor for the audio distraction, Boo turned (as did the rest of the room), but I jollied him, and he recovered like a champ.
We had reached Boo’s make-or-break point, as the next four exercises included the dreaded “Down” (the sit wasn’t going to come too easily either). “Sit,” I said, working my cup-of-tea voice (the tone of voice, as Diane Pennington described it, that one might use when offering a cup of tea to a visiting neighbor). Boo miraculously held his sit for the required three seconds, and there we were facing our nemesis.
“Boo, down,” I said, giving my hand signal at the same time, my heart thumping so wildly that it was almost impossible to keep my cup-of-tea voice from quivering. Boo began to bring his front legs out in preparation for bringing his front end down—yes! I thought—but he stopped and got distracted by the volunteers who were waiting to pet him in case we actually got to the aptitude portion of the test. I’m sure he wondered why he couldn’t just go see these nice, smiling people instead of having to lie down in the middle of this cold floor.
“Down,” I said again, my hand signal a little more emphatic, but my voice still very much in the cup-of-tea tone. It’s important to have this tone on a visit because we don’t want to be barking commands at our dogs. It would be inappropriate for a variety of reasons from the client’s point of view, and it could increase a dog’s stress levels on a visit, which we never want to do. If we practice giving commands in a cup-of-tea tone of voice, our dogs learn to respond to calm, gentle commands. Boo looked away from me on the second command.
No, no, no! I thought.
As in baseball, we got three tries. “Down,” I asked him again, hand signal quite emphatic yet cup-of-tea voice still in place, and I waited. The whole room was so quiet that I could almost hear the volunteers willing Boo to lie down.
Slowly, he started to pull his front feet out again, hesitated…and this time continued to pull them away from his body but just halfway. Then, he twisted his back end like he has to so he can fall over the rest of the way. Boom! He was down with a bit of a thud!
He had to stay there for a three count.
“One Mississippi,” Kay said. No one, not one person, in that room breathed.
“Two Mississippi.” Please, Boo, oh, please! I thought and wished.
“Three Mississippi!”
The room exploded in cheers of delight. I almost cried. But Boo and I still had over a dozen more exercises to go through in order to finish the evaluation, and I didn’t want to celebrate prematurely. While I managed to keep Boo in place for “Stay” by constantly praising him, and he happily performed “Come” from the interaction with Diane, we still had the last exercise in the skills portion, “Reaction to the Neutral Dog,” which is often the most difficult. Dogs’ impulse to stop what they’re doing and turn their attention to another dog who suddenly appears is very strong. In this exercise, two dogs have to ignore each other as their handlers stop to shake hands and then move on, but sometimes it almost seems as if the testing dog is like a person lost in the desert who finally sees another person and wants to call out for comfort but aren’t allowed to. Imagine going for a walk with your child, passing another parent on the street with her child and stopping for a brief conversation without the children responding to each other at all! In short, this one is hard for a lot of dogs for a lot of reasons. Given Boo’s affinity for other dogs, it was going to be hard for him, too, but he managed to keep his monkey-dog noises under control, and I managed to keep him close to my side as we passed the neutral dog.
Although we passed the skills portion of the test, Kay and Diane pulled me aside to talk to me before proceeding. As an evaluator myself, I know what Boo and I must have looked like: a scruffy and tousled team who could barely execute a simple down command. Kay and Diane were concerned that Boo would be overly stressed by the more demanding aptitude portion of the test. Most dogs who don’t do well in the skills portion, who squeak by like Boo did, bomb out in the aptitude section. We scored 1s on almost all of the skills exercises. I assured them that Boo would be able to handle the aptitude section. “If I feel he’s faltering,” I said, “I’ll stop the test myself.” I’m sure it was only because Kay and Diane trusted me as an evaluator that they agreed to go on with the testing.
As expected, when the aptitude portion began, Boo was handled more and more vigorously. “Overall Exam,” “Clumsy and Exuberant Petting” and “Restraining Hug” are the first three exercises of the aptitude portion, and a dog might encounter each of these on an everyday visit. Diane touched him everywhere, his feet, teeth, ears, underbelly and anywhere else she could think of, then made increasingly loud, crazy, bizarre noises while she petted him oddly before suddenly giving him a full body hug. I was right there next to him with my hand on his sternum (a calming pressure point), praising every good thing he did and telling him he was the best. When Diane had her hands on Boo, I did, too, supporting him and reminding him I was right there for him. Boo was doing fine with these.
Moving to “Staggering, Gesturing Individual,” I realized that it was here that the difference between Dante and Boo would pay off for Boo. Whereas Dante woofed at this exercise once before when the volunteer actually growled at him, Boo just didn’t care. In typical Boo fashion, he approached the gesturing individual gingerly and with just enough polite enthusiasm, as he had when he approached the little girls in the store. He was then subjected to the “Bumped from Behind” exercise and again didn’t care. He didn’t even look back, as many dogs do. He just moseyed on to the next set of people to greet the “Angry Yelling” volunteers who had just finished a loud, supposedly angry conversation. Boo didn’t care that they had been yelling. He just wanted them to pet him now that they had finished their faux argument.
At last came the “Crowded Petting” exercise. Normally, when I teach classes in preparation for this test, I instruct handlers to always manage how many people pet their dog at once. With Dante, I never let more than one person pet him at a time so I could always know what was going on and be ready to get him out if necessary. Dante was goofy and had a typical wouldn’t-hurt-a-fly mentality, but eighty-five to ninety pounds of startled dog can knock over things and people with ease. But for Boo, the crowded petting was his time to shine. I let everyone pet him at once; this was what he’d been waiting for. His body was tranquil, with a relaxed, slightly open mouth, happily panting as everyone cooed around him.
We completed the “Leave It” exercise as Boo ignored the toys on the floor, and I was left with the last hurdle, “Offered Treat.” Boo often mistakes fingers for treats, and he needed to make the correct choice and not take Diane’s finger. I instructed Diane to hold the treat in her flat hand like she would give a treat to a horse. She followed my instructions and walked away with all her fingers.
Boo passed.
Kay and Diane were stunned and really happy for us. Our scores were wacky—the opposite of a standard successful evaluation. Typically, a team will score 1s and 2s in the skills section, then we see a holding pattern, or the team drops to only 1s in the aptitude section. Boo did just the opposite of normal and still passed!
This is probably one of the greatest lessons Boo can give anyone whose life he touches: you don’t have to be normal to find success. He had had the aptitude all along. It was just a matter of me helping him master his fears and the skills necessary for the test. Like all of us at one point or another, Boo just needed someone to stay faithful to him until he could succeed.