It took only one glance, and I immediately knew she was the one. There was something about the way she looked at me as I stood in front of her cage at the shelter. She was lazily resting atop a four-foot high concrete ledge when I spotted her. As I approached, she lifted her head and looked me straight in the eye as if to say, "I'm no ordinary dog. This place is just temporary until I find a real home." An hour later she had a real home, with me.
The caretaker at the shelter called her Gypsy since she'd been found wandering aimlessly on the lakeshore. I named her Maggie, a down-home name for this down-home looking creature. She was golden brown with soulful eyes, floppy ears, and a hangdog expression on her face. Her lanky, muscular body weighed in at 68 pounds, and she looked to be about eighteen months old.
As we spent the next few days getting to know each other, I found Maggie to be a trusting and affectionate ball of energy. She seemed quite intelligent, but there was nothing civilized about her. The lazy demeanor I'd seen at the shelter had apparently been just the boredom of incarceration. She didn't respond to any commands in either English or Spanish, but cowered when I picked up a stick to play fetch. I could see we had a lot of work to do.
Over the years I've trained lots of dogs so I wasn't too concerned. I prefer large-breed dogs, and I'd figured out early on that it was important to train my canine companions while they were 20-pound furballs so they would obey me when they grew into 180-pound giants. This was my first time starting with an older dog. Maggie had never taken orders from anyone and wasn't too clear about why she should start now. She had no idea why I yelled and carried on just because she ate a few doormats and liked to say hello with her feet on my shoulders. Maggie's idea of a graceful entrance was to run like the wind rushing through the door, leap over the back of the recliner using the unfortunate lap that happened to be in it as a springboard to propel herself over the table and land with a thud about fifteen feet from where she'd last touched ground. It was an amazing sight but an unwelcome behavior in my living room.
Despite her uncivilized nature, I liked her. She has a gentle spirit and a loving heart. She doesn't mean to be bad; she just doesn't know she's not being good.
When raising puppies, they learn at an impressionable age what scores brownie points or provokes disapproval in their beloved masters. With a street dog, they're just doing what they've always done without anyone much caring one way or the other. That is, unless they cross the path of someone who expresses disapproval with a stout stick or the nearest rock. A street dog's main defense at these times is a quick nip and a speedy getaway.
When I raise my voice at Maggie, she blithely continues whatever she is doing, hearing a meaningless "blah, blah, blah" somewhere in the background. When I tried stepping on her back foot to discourage her jumping on me, she liked the way I caught onto her game and bit my foot in playful response.
Slowly, I'm learning from Maggie: Just as it takes time to build a solid foundation for a rewarding friendship, it takes time to develop the bonds that foster obedience. I'm learning to be more patient, accepting that she needs time to unlearn the old before she learns the new, unlike a silly little puppy with nothing in its head that I didn't put there. I'm learning to communicate with her in ways she can understand. I carefully listen to her so I know better how to get her to listen to me. Strange as it sounds, I send her mental pictures of what I say along with the words. Pictures are universal, and dogs are remarkably intuitive. Maggie and I are becoming loving companions. I no longer think of her as uncivilized, seeing her now only as exuberant. She still doesn't sit every time I ask, but then I don't play each time she asks either.
