I'm merely in the midst of formulating this equation, and it does pertain to a puppy so I can't claim that it's universally applicable in life, but let's try to work it out together.
Here we stand, Sugar and I, eyeball to eyeball, though sometimes at a slight remove, more or less as we were yesterday, when we started obedience training, treatless. It would be wonderful to report that Sugar has received absolutely no Pup-peroni for a sit or a down, but that would be false. However, she's only had a few morsels of that delectable jerky. For the truly crucial command, "Come, Sugar," she's had nothing but the hairy eyeball.
This business made me queasy at first. Why would she come without a treat? She knows she'll be fed at the next mealtime anyway. But I was fearful of failure, for both of us. The ramifications of failure would be important. And aside from the asinine ("I can't even get a dog to listen to me"), they could be serious. I could never trust her. She could never trust that my word was law and that therefore she was protected from the outside world because with her cooperation I would always be able to intercede on her behalf. Discipline seems to be the prerequisite for trust between pup and her Human.
So we drilled it. Half a day yesterday with Sugar looking around for hot dog morsels. An hour last night. Several attempts this morning. Several more after lunch when her thinking cap was on but also when she geared up into protein-fueled running mode. Here's the direct report from our last session:
I kneel down a few paces from Sugar. Sugar looks up at me. She's lying down, chewing a cardboard box top, a favorite afternoon pastime. Her look says, "What do you want now? Can't you see I'm busy?"
"Come, Sugar," I say. I don't even try to sound chipper anymore. She knows this is business, not play. I then remember to make the "come" motion with my hand, just because you're supposed to, not because she doesn't know already what come means.
Sugar lets the box dangle from her jaw, a bit of brown paper stuck to her lower whiskers. I don't repeat the word. I don't repeat the gesture, but I do rap the floor with my knuckles, just to impress. A bird flew in the sky, or was it a plane, or a squirrel climbing the tree. Sugar's head followed the clues, and when silence resumed, there was nothing to look at but me. She looked at me, blinked. I sat immobile, three feet away. It would have been a cinch for her to lift her tush and walk over. But no. She yawned. So wide I could see where her tongue is attached at the root. Then looked at me. Suddenly, the not-unexpected fake itch. Must have been a really unquenchable fake itch. I just looked at her, and in my look there were plenty of words: Get over here already, my knees are starting to ache, this is for your own good, I'm not giving up, so you better, and fast, or else I don't know, but please do it so we can be a good couple. Sugar (Poodles are the geniuses and clairvoyants of the canine world) caught the drift, or saw something different in my eyes. She raised her haunches, stretched her front legs long and low, licked her chops, looked me over, then took four tiny steps towards me.
Did she get a reward? You bet she did. She got a fervent kiss on the head, much hair-mussing, and cries of "good baby!" We had passed the test together. We need to repeat it many times for surety, but we both know a threshold was crossed. We had discipline, and that created the mutual bond of trust.
So where does intimacy enter the equation? Well, when I know that I can trust my dog, and my dog knows she can trust me, we become a special team. We know one another on a deeper level. We feel better about each other and life. We are riding the earth together in tandem, a team. Our structure is our intimacy and our intimacy is security.
Thousands of years ago, out of the mists of time, dogs and only dogs, rose to walk with men. Why? No one knows. But hail to the Creator for the beauty of his design.
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