Usefulness at last

Maggie will be two years old next month. When we first got Maggie, we didn’t know much about dogs. I had dogs when I was a child, but they were outside dogs with their own lives. I’d never had an inside dog whose every breath, it appears, has to be taken in either Hedon’s or my presence. One of Maggie’s nicknames is “Barnacle,” and I tell you she has certainly earned it and owned it.

Because of our inexperience, Hedon and I spent a lot of time watching TV shows like “It’s Me or the Dog” with Victoria Stillwell and “The Dog Whisperer” with Ceasar Milan. We also got some dog training books and the like. We got lucky with Maggie. She’s a sweet dog by nature and hasn’t given us much trouble that we ourselves didn’t cause.

Maggie spent her first three and half months with us at home, since we were taking time off between jobs. One of our biggest goals was to get her potty trained during that time so we would not have accidents in the truck. We honestly thought we might not be able to accomplish the potty training, but she got the drift in time for it not to be much of an issue in the truck.

What with having a lot of time on our hands at home, we started training her early on many other things as well. Maggie (in fact, beagles in general, we have read) is easily motivated by food rewards. It was a snap to teach her to sit, lay down, wait (for a short while), jump up, turn around, etc. Maggie seems to like doing tricks, especially when it means getting little pieces of her favorite treat, dried chicken. Since her early days, she’s learned how to roll over, shake hands/paws, do a high five, and the like. Hedon has been working with her on playing dead for months, and she has recently seemed to finally get it. But who knows. She’s less enthusiastic about tricks like rolling over and playing dead.

Maggie is remarkably smart, knowing a huge number of commands that aren’t tricks but make life easier such as letting go of objects, leaving things alone, getting in the passenger seat, getting a toy, moving out of our way, sitting before getting out of the truck or leaving, etc. I’ve found her capacity for learning and understanding quite wondrous.

Maggie has also been adept at training Hedon and I. For instance, when she wants me to quit typing on the computer and pay attention to her, she’ll sit down next to me then rise up on her haunches in what I call the “Meerkat Pose,” lean against me, and throw back her head and gaze up at me with her soulful brown eyes. It always works. It’s too damned cute to ignore.

She doesn’t use this ploy on Hedon, however. To get Hedon’s attention she simply shoves her head under Hedon’s hand and rubs her head back and forth until Hedon begins to pet her. She has recognized that it’s best to just be upfront with Hedon, while I, apparently, require more sophisticated schemes like the Meerkat Pose.

Maggie’s behavior is by no means perfect, but it has improved dramatically over the last six months or so. We assume it’s because she’s getting older. And though Maggie has learned much, as have we, and while we love her to death, Maggie really isn’t much use beyond being adorable and lovable. And that’s enough, but still … we used to think we might be able to make her useful in some real way.

In the early days, we had thought Maggie would be a guard dog in the truck. Turns out, Maggie thinks it’s her job to guard us from other dogs, domestic animals like cows, and wildlife in general, barking loudly enough to startle away any bear who might be thinking of raiding our cabinets. People, however, are not to be worried about. To Maggie, all people are to be cozied up to, and unless a criminal has a fear of being licked to death, they are free to pilfer our truck at will.

For a short while, we thought we had found a fine job for her: cleaning up pieces of food that get dropped on the floor and bed in the truck. Maggie is great at this, and enjoys making her rounds after every meal or snack, hoovering up most crumbs and the like. However, along with crumbs she winds up eating some of my hair that has found its way to the floor. My hair is pretty long. The result of this is that occasionally when she poops, one of my hairs will have worked its way through her intestines and ends up hanging out her butt with a clump of poop attached to the end of it. This dangling poop always disturbs Maggie (understandable, I suppose, but still), and she then proceeds to butt-scoot her way across the truck trying to dislodge the dingleberry hanging from the hair. And all of this results in much mayhem as we try to pin her down to pull the hair with attached poop clump out of her butt. It’s pretty undignified for everyone concerned, to say nothing of nasty to clean up, and therefore negates the advantage of having an automatic crumb-hoovering dog.

We used to have fantasies that we could train her at home to fetch us fresh packs of cigarettes and Diet Coke, our two staples. Since the kid grew up and moved out, we’ve had to fetch our own stuff, and this has left us in some dismay, what with the fridge being a lengthy 20 feet or so from our recliners. We thought Maggie might fulfill this role, but it was not to be. If we leave the cigarettes where she can easily get to them, she tears them to shreds the instant we turn our backs. And she’s too small to drag a two liter of Diet Coke from the kitchen to the living room, to say nothing of being to short to reach the freezer and fill my glass with ice. This dream has died.

Just when we had given up hope of usefulness, something new has developed, something so wonderful, that I’m a bit superstitious to write it here and perhaps jinx it. Still, I can’t contain my excitement. Here it is: we think that by some miracle, and strange alignment of other training, that Maggie is now capable of retrieving dropped objects for us. Fabulous, you’re thinking! I know!

It’s so irritating to be writing something, and you lay your pen down for an instant and the next thing you know, it’s on the floor. Now you have to move everything aside, get out of your recliner, bend down and get it, then get back in the chair and rearrange everything again. Argh. What a chore.

But now, here’s Maggie. Maggie always hears when something falls on the floor. It now appears that all you have to do is point in the general area of the fallen object, tell Maggie “Get it,” she trots over and snags it, then you tell her to “Come”, and when she does, you hold out your hand and tell her to “Let go.” And she does!!! She puts it right in your hand. I tell you, this is some kind of miracle.

It’s particularly useful when you’re driving. Drop a lighter or something like that and it’s gone until you can pull over and find where it has bounced to and hidden itself, or god forbid, make whoever is not driving get up and come risk limb and neck to hunt around for it. But no longer. Maggie can find it right away. Just yesterday, quick as can be, Maggie retrieved Hedon’s fallen lighter for her. Sweet!

Maggie has achieved four retrievals so far. I’m pretty hopeful that this hasn’t just been a fluke. Can you imagine? Adoreable, loveable AND useful. She’d be like the Holy Trinity of Dog.

And it’s got me wondering. Maybe I’ve given up the dream of Diet Coke fetching too soon. If we had 20 oz. bottles instead of two liters, and kept them on the bottom shelf of the fridge, and somehow attached a small handle low on the fridge door, and had an ice maker installed about a foot above the floor … hmm. It’s worth thinking about.