Training & Behavior

The Saturday market is chaos, the kind of chaos that turns a calm dog into a tornado on a lead, the stalls and the smells and the small children with sausages at exactly mouth height. Rufus used to spend the whole trip lunging at the gaps, tangling my feet, dragging me toward the baker like a springer with a single mission and no brakes, and I'd leave sweaty and apologising to strangers.

I'd read about the heel, the formal position, the dog glued to your side like a shadow, and I tried it, and it failed, because Rufus is not a shadow, he's a springer, and gluing him anywhere is a negotiation he wins. So I borrowed a different idea from a trainer who worked gun dogs, the between-the-legs position, the dog threading through and walking under you, close, controlled, and out of the path of the sausage children.

It looked absurd at first. Me, a man with a dog between his knees in the veg aisle, stepping like I'd invented a new dance nobody asked for. But the dog, once he got it, loved it, because close to me meant close to the action without the panic of the gaps, and the market, which had been a tug-of-war, became a walk he could actually manage without being yanked from every stall.

We practised at home first, the boring bit, me standing still, a treat between my feet, him threading through for it, repeat, until the thread became the habit and the habit became the thing he offered when the world got loud. Then the quiet street, then the market edge, then the full crush of the cheese van, and by the cheese van he was walking under me like he'd been born to it, calm in the only way a springer gets, which is busy-but-safe.

The trick is the dog can't bolt if he's under you. There's nowhere to go, no gap to hit, no sausage at mouth height he can reach without relocating my entire body, which he's learned not to do. It's not submission, it's just geometry, and geometry, for this dog, beats every command I'd shouted that he'd ignored, because commands need compliance and the legs need only presence.

People stare, still, at the dog between my knees, and I've stopped explaining. A few have asked, and I've shown them, and one older chap with a collie went off and tried it and came back to say it worked, which pleased me more than it should. The market, once my weekly penance, is now a walk I look forward to, the dog tucked safe, the sausages uneaten, the strangers unapologised-to.

Rufus still gets excited, he's a spaniel-type and excited is his default setting, but excited-under-my-legs is a manageable excited, a dog with a job and a place, not a dog with a gap and a mission. The Saturday market taught me that the answer to a chaotic dog isn't a tighter grip, it's a position he can't argue with, and the position, it turns out, was between my own two feet all along.

The sausage children still wave sausages, and Rufus still notices, but under my legs he can't reach them, and the tug-of-war that was the market is now a walk he manages, busy but safe, the only calm a springer gets, which is the calm I'd been chasing through every shout he'd ignored.

An older chap with a collie tried it after I showed him and came back to say it worked, which pleased me more than it should, because the Saturday market, once my weekly penance, is now a walk I look forward to, the dog tucked safe, the sausages uneaten, the strangers finally unapologised-to.

The cheese van is the final test, the smell of it drawing every dog within a mile, and Rufus walks under me past it now with the calm of a dog who has a place, not a gap, and the vendor, who used to watch me get dragged, now watches me walk past hands-free and raises an eyebrow that I take as approval, which I'll take from a man who sells cheese to dogs and knows the difference between a walk and a wrestle.

I've started suggesting it to other owners of lunatic dogs, the ones who get dragged through the market like luggage, and a couple have tried it and come back looking relieved, which is its own small reward, the quiet smugness of a man who found a fix for a problem the trainers with the clickers hadn't quite landed. Rufus, for his part, walks under me past the cheese van like he was born to it, calm in the only way a springer gets, which is busy-but-safe, and the market, my penance, is a walk again.