Training & Behavior

Pip used to grab the lead. Not hold it, the way a good dog might, but snatch it, the instant it came off the hook, a puppy blur of teeth and webbing, a game he'd invented where the lead was a toy and I was the losing player, every morning, at the exact moment we were meant to be leaving the house calmly for a walk he'd then ruin by being a maniac about the thing that meant the walk.

It was funny the first time. By the thirtieth it was a small daily fight, a wrestling match by the door that left us both annoyed and the lead damp, and the walk, which should have started the moment we stepped out, started instead with a wrestle and a lecture, which is the worst possible tone for a dog who reads your mood like a headline and decides the whole outing off the first line.

I stopped offering the lead as a toy. I'd pick it up, hold it behind my back, and wait, and if teeth came near it, it went away, the lead vanished, the game ended, the walk paused, and Pip learned fast, in the way puppies learn the things that affect the walk, that grabbing meant no walk and waiting meant the best part of his day. The lead became a thing he received, not a thing he took, and receiving, it turned out, required the calm he'd been skipping.

The word came next, wait, said before the lead appeared, and the wait, practised at the door with nothing at stake, became the habit that held when the lead did appear, because the word and the calm were welded in his head before the webbing ever did. Now he sits, mostly, tail going but paws still, and I clip him and we leave, and the door, once a wrestling ring, is just a door, and the walk starts the way a walk should, with a dog who's ready rather than a puppy who's won.

It's a small thing, the lead, but small things set the tone, and the tone of a walk decides the walk, and the walk decides a good chunk of the day for a dog who lives for the next one. Teaching him to wait for it instead of grabbing it was teaching him, quietly, that good things come to the calm dog, which is the lesson under most of the lessons, the one I keep reteaching because puppies keep forgetting it.

Pip's a year older now, and the grabbing is a memory, faint and a bit funny, like a story about a dog I used to own and no longer do. He sits at the door, waits for the clip, trots out calm, and I clip him without a wrestle, and the lead, the humble webbing he once treated as a prize to be won, is just the thing that means we're going, which is what it should have meant all along, before a puppy decided otherwise and I let him for too long.

The lead is just the thing that means we're going now, which is what it should have meant all along, before a puppy decided it was a toy to be won and I let him for too long, and the door, once a wrestling ring, is just a door, and the walk starts the way a walk should, with a dog who's ready.

Pip's a year older and the grabbing is a faint funny memory, and he sits at the door and waits for the clip and trots out calm, and I clip him without a wrestle, and the webbing he once treated as a prize is just webbing again, the humble thing that means the best part of his day is starting, which it does, now, without a fight.

The hook by the door still holds the lead, and Pip still watches it, but the grab is gone, replaced by a sit that took a month to teach and a second to forget every time I got lazy, and the walk, which used to start with a wrestle, now starts with a clip and a calm step out, and the lead, humble webbing that meant a fight, means a walk again, which is what it was for before a puppy decided otherwise.

The lead, once a toy to be won, is a walk again, and the door, once a wrestling ring, is just a door, and Pip, a year on from the puppy who grabbed everything, sits and waits and trots out calm, which is what I wanted from the first morning and couldn't get by shouting. The lesson, that good things come to the calm dog, is the one under most of the lessons, and Pip, who keeps forgetting it, keeps reteaching me to be patient about the forgetting, because the grabbing, like most puppy things, was just a phase I made worse by fighting.