The Joys of Owner/Handlerhood

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220 – March, 2015

By Chris Robinson

 There have been numerous times in my long history as an owner/handler in field or performance events when the dogs and I have hit all the high notes and been awarded, at least in my mind, a Bravo Zulu for our efforts. (Editor’s Note: For those readers who are not or were not sailors, marines or coasties, a Bravo Zulu from your commanding officer means “well done.) There have been other times, just as numerous, when I have wondered why any reasonably sane person would not only willingly subject themself to such humiliation but would fork over big bucks for the privilege. No matter from which angle you choose to view this, if you are even a tiny bit objective, it would have to fall under the heading of “not too bright.”

Competing in performance or field activities with a dog has been described as a trip on Fury 325, the roller coaster in North Carolina that is generally acclaimed as the world’s tallest. You work very hard to reach the top of the hill and then, in seconds, or sometimes at the next event after you have just experienced a total triumph, you find yourself in the bottom of the well. In the many years that I have been writing about the various breeds in performance or field activities, I have also heard numerous tales of woe from owners who have been seriously humbled by their dogs at an event. While it is often handler error that sunk their chances of a win or a qualifying score, just about as frequently it was a dog mistake that sent them home long before any ribbons were awarded. Dogs, bless them, possess an uncanny ability to determine the most embarrassing situation possible in any performance or field event and then skillfully maneuver you into that trap.

Now and then, such as in the sport of herding, they are aided and abetted in their quest to subject you to the maximum indignity by another animal. This is exactly what happened to a pair of herding people I know. In the first instance, the aider and abettor was a billy goat that had a nasty pair of horns and a temperament to match. For reasons known only to the billy, he reserved his greatest ire not for the dog but for the goatherd handling the dog. As a matter of fact, he pretty much ignored the dog having apparently decided that the dog posed a far less appealing target than did the person holding the crook.

As the handler and her dog approached the goats, the billy shouldered his way to the edge of the herd and squared off with the dog’s owner staring at her, according to her description, with the same sort of cunning malevolence that she had only seen once previously and that was in a movie theater when she witnessed Robert Mitchum’s spine chilling portrayal of Harry Powell in “The Night of the Hunter.” Lowering his head, shaking his horns menacingly with rumbling, angry bleats emanating from somewhere deep in his throat, the goat never took his eyes off the goatherd. Whichever way she moved, he countered that move with one of his own.

When his staring, horn shaking, evil bleating failed to drive her out of the arena, he reared up on his hind legs, apparently to gather some extra momentum, and charged; clearly intending to skewer her with his needle-like horns. Deciding in an instant that discretion was the better part of valor, she attempted to hightail it out of harm’s way. Then, however, her dog entered the fray and started chasing the goat, nipping at his heels. To say that the dog’s efforts did nothing to protect his owner would be a considerable understatement. Rather, the dog goaded the goat to even greater speed in his charge.

Spurred on by roughly a quart of epinephrine her adrenal glands had dumped into her system when the goat charged, she managed to scramble over the arena fence a split second ahead of the goat’s threatening horns. She said when the goat was chasing her it gave her an inkling of how Charlie Chaplin must have felt when the lion chased him out of the cage in the old silent movie “The Circus” except that she didn’t quite have to scale a tent pole in her escape efforts although she said that if it had been necessary, she had no doubt she would have done so. Fortunately, she said, she didn’t have to test that possibility as the fence was sufficient to halt the billy’s charge whereupon he trotted back to the rest of the herd stopping a couple of times to turn back, glare and shake his horns at her.

“You cannot imagine,” she said, “The feeling of total elation that I experienced a few minutes later when the billy was roped and led away from the area, furiously bleating every step of the way, by two guys who could have passed for the heavyweight members of the U.S. Olympic Wrestling Team. I only hope that his ultimate destination that day was the butcher’s rail.”

At another herding trial, the aider and abettor was an unknown cow who had answered the call of nature the night before in the field where the herding event was held. As the dog and his owner walked up to the handler’s post, the owner failed to notice that something had distracted the dog and he had stopped to do some serious sniffing. When the handler realized he was making the trip to the post by himself, he turned and called the dog, albeit in a harsher tone of voice than he usually used with the dog. The dog, apparently insulted by the sharp command from his owner, came barreling toward the guy and only the owner’s quick step away from the dog’s vector averted a collision. Unfortunately, the field in which the trial was hosted had held a large herd of cattle that had only been moved out of the area the night before. What’s worse, the trial was held early May when spring grass in the northern tier states tends to exercise the maximum laxative effect on bovine guts. So, instead of a nimble sidestep when the dog’s owner moved aside to avoid being hit by his dog, he stepped in a highly liquified and very greasy puddle of cow effluent and the next thing he knew, he was flat on his back in that same mess. He said later that he could testify under oath that when he fell, his dog immediately skidded to a halt, spun around and returned to his owner to stand over him and laugh at him. With his shirt and arm liberally plastered with cow dung and knowing that the handlers who were waiting their turn to go would not be happy about having to wait while he cleaned himself up, in the finest theatrical tradition of the show must go on, he and the dog completed their run without any further incidents although he said that the judge did keep her distance and it did not escape his notice that she always managed to remain upwind of him.

A friend of mine had a wonderful Flat-Coated Retriever that got bored with both the training and the competition at the senior hunt test level. To make things more interesting for himself, he started stealing birds whenever and wherever he could find one. He would run around the field with his stolen trophy until he got tired of showing it off and he would then return to his owner and hand her the bird like nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. Needless to say, when this happened in training, his owner let him know in no uncertain terms that this was unacceptable behavior. She was certain he had received the message as he quit stealing birds in training but at the next test, just to make sure, she warned both the judges and the marshal about his larcenous tendencies and asked them to make sure all birds from previous retrieves had been placed in the gunny sacks behind the line that were there for that purpose.

All went well on the water retrieve and the water blind but her turn to run the land series came late in the day when everyone was getting a bit tired which meant that neither the judges or the marshal were as alert as they had been earlier in the test and a bird from the previous series was only partially in the bag. As the dog and handler walked up to the line, he spotted the partially concealed bird. Before his owner could say or do anything, he snatched it up and took off running around the field showing his booty to every gunner and bird thrower on the field. Several times, in fact. He also demonstrated he was an absolute whiz at keep-away as whenever the gunners or the bird throwers would get close enough to him to take the bird away, he would wait until they reached for it then quickly turn his head so they couldn’t grab it and race away in delight to the next gun station to play the game with another set of suckers. This act went on for more than 20 minutes or, in the words of his owner, sometime well into the next century. Finally, he made a pass along the edge of the gallery to show his prize to all the onlookers. But, like most thieves who, at some time or another, make a mistake that leads to their arrest, this was the Flat-Coat’s downfall. For, in the gallery was a college football player, a defensive back who spent much of his time on the gridiron covering fast and elusive receivers. The Flat-Coat was clever and nimble but in the end, he was no match for the safety who used his sprinter’s speed and his defensive back’s agility to run down and tackle the dog. As his embarrassed owner collared the Flat-Coat, the football player smiled, gave the dog a pat and said he hoped his head coach was in the gallery to see that tackle because it would mean another award of excellence sticker for his helmet.

Shetland Sheepdogs are always rated in the top five if someone is looking for a dog that will excel in obedience and it is certainly true that the breed willingly takes to even the most boring and repetitive training. But, that doesn’t mean that all Shelties are perfect obedience dogs as one of my friends discovered. Her Sheltie sailed through novice obedience with several wins and even a couple of high-in-trials. But, by the time they had reached a skill level where the duo could compete in open, the Sheltie apparently was bored with the entire process and began looking for ways to spice things up a bit. Never in training, mind you, where she was absolutely flawless but always when the entry fee was on the line at a trial. Being a very sociable dog, one thing she particularly loved to do was sneak out of the ring during the long sits and downs to visit the spectators. So quick and elusive was the Sheltie that the judges and the ring stewards were never able to cut off her escape routes as, if need be, she’d jump over the ring barriers to get away and complete her meet-and-greet mission. She also possessed an uncanny sense of timing in that just before the handlers were due to return, she’d break away from whoever she was schmoozing, race back into the ring and, assuming a look of total innocence, take up the exact position she had been in when her owner had left the ring much to the delight of the spectators. With blown entry fees stacking up, however, her owner failed to see the humor in the Sheltie’s social interactions. Since she was unable to catch the dog performing her trick and correct it because she refused to do it in training or even at practice matches, my friend eventually had to give up on getting a CDX on her dog and they switched sports to agility and herding which apparently were interesting enough to hold the Sheltie’s interest as she earned advanced titles at both.

The objective of this narrative is to show those of you who are planning on doing field or performance work with your conformation champions that no matter how thorough and expert your training techniques, engaging in these activities with your dog will provide innumerable and unavoidable occasions in which your dog will make a complete fool of you. It’s wise to keep in mind the advice a really great and highly successful retriever trainer once gave to me. He said, “Dogs believe that keeping you humble is a directive from God which means even the greatest will tank you every now and then.”

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Posted by ralbee on Mar 15 2015. Filed under Current Articles, Editorial, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.