Why We’ll Never Invite Cesar Over for Tea

When it comes to dog training, it’s hard to top the masters: Barbara Woodhouse, Cesar Millan, and the Monks of New Skete. But when we got Xander, we hadn’t heard of these guys, and really, for Xander, we didn’t need them.

We had friends who used the methods, kept their puppies strapped to them with a leash for weeks on end until the dog learned to follow their every move and accept them as alpha. I thought they were a little nuts. After all, these were domesticated dogs, not some cub right out of the wolf pack. Don’t they have a natural inclination to please humans?

Uh no. I take it all back now. I was wrong. Get lazy with the dog training and this is what you get:

Sure, this looks cute, until you sit on one of these chairs while wearing black pants.

Yes, that's our (unmade) bed. Clearly dog training isn't the only area of laziness around here.

Why sneak around and eat those slippers when everyone's asleep when you can start chewing on the strings right now?



Husband sometimes teaches classes at the local university. That is actually someone's homework. Fortunately in the digital age there are always electronic backups.

Maggie Discovers She's Magic

A few days ago, I decided to pick up a bottle of wine on the way home from work. I called Husband to see what he was in the mood for.

“Something’s wrong with Maggie. You need to get home,” he says.

“What? Is she sick again?”

“I don’t know. Just come home.”

So I raced home and flew through the door—to be met by happy, bouncy, perfectly normal looking Maggie.

“What’s wrong with her? She seems fine,” I asked Husband.

“Just look in her crate.”

It took a few moments, but then I realized, I was staring at the tags and hardware from Maggie’s collar.

Let’s break this down.

At some point during the day, Maggie gets her tags caught on the crate. There’s probably a minute or two of panic and she eventually pulls her collar over her head. Then she stares at it for a minute and thinks: “Hooray! I made food!”

And then she eats the collar. The plushy, eco-friendly, hemp collar I had bought her about 18 mos. ago in a fit of yuppie weakness.

It took a few days, but eventually it came out. In big chunky pieces.

I’ll spare you a photo of that.

Why My Next Dog Won’t Be a Hound

Well, it’s happened again. We slipped away for a few happy days of vacation, leaving Maggie in my parents’ capable hands. Everything was going swimmingly, until we went to pick her up.

“She was sick yesterday,” said my mother. “She threw up a few times overnight, but she seems fine today, so I fed her.”

Uh-oh. Rookie mistake. Because Maggie can, and often does eat anything, she has semi-regular bouts of gastric distress. You’ll wake up at 2 a.m. to the sounds of retching and then it’s a race to drag her down the stairs and out into the yard before the inevitable happens. And then it’s time to play forensic examiner, squinting at the disgusting pile of goo and trying to figure just what the hell she ate that came up. “Oh, that’s just some carpet padding,” I am frequently heard saying to my husband, who’s far too squeamish to look too closely.

Actually, when the object can be identified, we’re overjoyed. Thing ingested, thing purged. Problem over. But when it’s just a meal that’s being expelled, that signals trouble. That means there’s a virus or something chemical that’s been ingested that portends a day or two of fits of vomiting and other ejaculations more vile. That means carpet cleaning and swearing and arguing about who’s going to clean that up and restless nights, as you lie there, listening for the particular gagging sound known in our house as “horking.”

Best case scenario, Maggie fasts for a few days (unwillingly) and then goes on the chicken and rice diet (ravenously) for a few days more. But frequently she refuses even to drink, gets dehydrated, and then has to go to the vet, where we spend a small fortune nursing her back to health.

Over the years, we’ve gotten a bit savvier, keeping the visits to about once per year; a quick examination, a blood test, a shot of subcutaneous fluids, some antibiotics and prescription bland food and we're done. But this time, Maggie surpassed her record. After bloodwork and exam, the vet put Maggie on an IV—a state from which vets are reluctant to release your dog, we soon discovered, until any chance of relapse is long past.

So, 36 hours, a night at the emergency vet clinic, and about $900 later (yes, you read that correctly—and our vet is one of the more reasonably priced ones in the area), we finally brought Maggie home. Who, after crashing for one day, tried to eat the straps off my purse. (She failed.)

Crashing hard after the ordeal.

The Difference Between Our Dogs, In Photos

We brought Maggie home in April. And as the spring turned into summer and our garden started blooming, my husband had the idea of getting some nice photos of the dogs, surrounded by flowers. "We can frame them," he said.

Thus began a frustrating 20 minutes of trying to get the dogs together in one picture. It started well, as we maneuvered Xander in position and got him to stay...

And stay, while we chased Maggie around the yard...

And stay, while she did not...

And then she tried to eat the camera...

And that about sums up the differences between our dogs.

The First Six Weeks

There was no real plan to getting our first dog. Beyond a commitment to getting a shelter dog and an acknowledgment that as a working couple the demands of puppyhood were beyond us, we were open to pretty much anything. We had both grown up with dogs and figured, how hard could this be? And for the most part, it wasn’t that hard because our first dog was “plug and play”—Xander came fully house-broken and had a natural desire to please. He learned tricks and graduated second in his obedience class. And if he occasionally blindsided us by unexpectedly throwing himself down and rolling in goose poop during a hike, well, nobody’s perfect.

So naturally when we decided to get a second dog, we expected it to be just as easy, if not easier because we knew what we wanted: female, no bigger than Xander, curious, and playful.

Maggie, or Jersey as the shelter called her, seemed to fit the bill. Salvaged from an Arkansas hell-hole so foul that one of the shelter staff said she “burned her shoes” after rescuing dogs there, Maggie seemed ready for a loving home. Standing in her pen at the shelter, with stitches on her face, a big medical collar, and the sweetest brown eyes, she seemed perfect. When we brought Xander for a see-how-they-get-along-visit, they got along great. So we filled out the paperwork, paid our fee, and brought our new little beagle-hound mix home.

It took about 30 minutes to realize this dog was not plug and play. The first 29 were spent standing in the pouring rain, encouraging Maggie to relieve herself, after which we brought her inside where she promptly defecated. Thus began the longest six weeks of our lives known as “housebreaking.” Trying to train her via positive reinforcement, we spent almost every waking minute out in the yard, waiting for her to go so we could praise her. But, she only wanted to go in the house, on the carpet. To complicate matters, she didn’t respond to praise. Or censure. A boisterous “Good dog! That’s my girl” in cooing tones evoked a blank look. A stern “No, Maggie! Bad dog!” earned the same blank stare. Her contact with humans had been so limited, she couldn’t tell the difference.

We spent weeks mopping up pee and lamenting the state of our carpeting, all the while wondering how we could ever invite friends over again to a house smelling of kennel. Just as we were considering hiring a professional trainer, she finally got it.

But as we sighed with relief and celebrated our victory, we failed to realize that our little dog had learned something else. She had just spent 6 weeks with 2 humans who had regularly fed her, walked her, petted her, praised her, and gave her treats, all while she did pretty much whatever she wanted to. We had focused so much on house-breaking, we had neglected to enforce any other dog-training. And Maggie watched and learned and realized in her little doggie brain that she could totally work this situation.

If I had known then, what I know now…

2005—the year my husband and I entertained the fantasy that our perfectly well-behaved, timid, beagle-shepherd was lonely and that our lives would be better and richer for having a second dog.

What fools we were.

Six years, thousands of dollars, and countless pairs of shoes later, we are the not-so-proud guardians of a beagle-hound mix who will not only eat anything, but do so with glee. Of a middle-aged dog who still needs to be crated when we’re not around, lest we come home to a rug-less house. Of a dog who everyone in our vet’s office knows on a first-name basis, though they can barely remember the name of our other dog. Of a dog who refuses to acknowledge in any way the superiority of her masters—except when treats are involved, and then it’s all for show anyway.

If I had known then, what I know now…would we have taken her in? Probably. There are bigger suckers out there when it comes to pets, but not many.

This is the tale of Maggie the Hound Dog—and her pushover family. I hope it will amuse and divert, maybe even inspire—and not just to swear you off pets for life. For those who choose to read further. I thank you and offer fair warning. There will be vomit stories…