REMEMBERING  SKIPPER,  A BLACK LAB
WHO UNDERSTOOD HOW TO GET OVER
WITHOUT EVER HAVING TO ROLL OVER

TYDTWD, a/k/a Take Your Dog To Work Day
 
By David Maril
 
One thought  crosses my mind every year when I hear of special event dates similar to last Friday’s Take Your Dog To Work Day:  I wonder how, even with the best-trained dogs in the world, order is maintained with so many breeds in closely confined public workplaces.

I can just picture the tremendous chaos that would have ensued if I’d ever brought my dog to the office on a “TYDTWDay.”

Reflecting on my own limited experience in dog training increases my appreciation that these type events can take place without ugly, noisy dogfights in the office.

However, it’s a different world than when I was a kid growing up with, first, a sloppy, always sniffing but gentle Beagle named Golly (Goliath) and later a gregarious, brilliant Labrador Retriever we called Skipper.

In those days, dogs ran loose in the city. Golly had free reign, making his daily rounds around the Mount Washington neighborhood and often returning home with a bag of discarded food he’d picked up after knocking over someone’s metal garbage can.

Poop bags had not yet come into vogue. There were not nearly as many dogs, less traffic and fewer rules and restrictions.

But one thing hasn’t changed — most family pets are intelligent enough to not let you know how smart they are. It works out better for them this way because your demands and expectations are not as controlling. They know how to make you work for them.

When I was 12, my parents decided that Skipper needed to be trained. The problem was that despite weighing 85 lbs. he believed he was a lap dog and would come close to knocking people over upon greeting them.

He also had what I thought was a rather humorous habit — which didn’t go over big with guests — of cleaning coffee cups after people had finished drinking. He’d walk very nonchalantly past the low-level coffee table in our living room and very suddenly slurp up the remaining drop or two at the bottom of people’s cups.

I’m sure coffee isn’t healthy for dogs. But it didn’t stunt Skipper’s growth and he lived to be 14, which is pretty good for a retriever his size.

Just before Skipper celebrated his second birthday, he and I were dispatched for a dog-training course once a week for 12  sessions at a nearby elementary school gymnasium in Roland Park. For one hour each Thursday night, the late Maj. L. Wilson Davis, a retired military man who had a national reputation as a trainer, instructed 100 or so of us pet owners on how to make a dog sit, heel and come when called.

To my embarrassment, Skipper was the worst-behaved dog in the class. As soon as he entered the gym, he’d start pulling on the leash, barking, howling  and trying to attack every dog within sight. Each one-hour session seemed to last well into the night and was pure torture for me.

Halfway through the fifth class, Major Davis couldn’t stand it any more. He halted his lecture in mid-sentence and walked very slowly across the gym to  where Skipper and I were standing. Stopping about 15 feet away, he yelled out, “Skipper, sit!”

The dog immediately stopped barking and sat.

Then Major Davis took the leash from my hand, walked the dog all the way back to the stage and used him for the rest of the class to demonstrate the commands he was teaching.

Skipper reacted to this special attention like a Westminster champion.

At the end of the class, the major brought him back to where I was standing and said, “He’ll be OK. He just needs a little discipline.”

The dog looked up at me and seemed to be asking if I’d learned anything.

The rest of the training sessions went a little better. I was stricter, and although Skipper was still the worst-behaved dog in the class, he was a lot more under control. The big drawback was that, at nearly two years of age, he was already set in his ways and not receptive to radically changing his routines.

When the classes finally did end, Skipper made sure everyone in the family knew he had graduated but was still the boss. He’d obey all the commands — when he felt like it. But if he had other things on his mind, he’d turn his head and look the other way when you gave him an order. And everyone thought that was so cute and funny, they’d start laughing, which encouraged him to be even less obedient.

Even though Skipper would have flunked out of any dog show, he was a great family pet. Besides being extremely smart, a good watchdog, and helping train the family cats to not jump up on the dining room table, he was good-natured and could make you laugh with some of his “undisciplined” antics.

He knew he wasn’t supposed to get on the living room couch and never jumped up on the furniture when people were around. But if he was home alone, he’d take a nap on the couch, and then as soon as he heard a car in the driveway, he’d be at the front door acting as if he’d been there waiting all along. But when you checked the couch, of course there was a warm spot where he’d been sleeping.

Not only was he too smart to be caught in the act, but he’d look up at you as if he was trying to also figure out who’d been on the couch.

Most dogs are good judges of character and know what they can get away with. A friend of mine who has always had dogs, insists they are smarter than humans. He often says that if he and his dog took IQ tests, the dog  would score higher.

His son, however, takes issue with that assessment: “The dog would let you get a higher score,” his son explains, “so you’d think you were smarter and continue to go to work and spend time away from home, while the dog stayed in the house, ate and took naps all day.”

Which is probably true.

But one thing I’m certain of is that if Skipper and L. Wilson Davis were alive today and I decided to participate in Take Your Dog To Work Day, I’d make sure that I took the major in with us.
 
davidmaril@hermanmaril.com
 
Editor’s note:  Take Your Dog To Work Day was created by Pet Sitters International in 1996 in the United Kingdom and made its American debut on June 24, 1999. Held annually, the event asks pet lovers to celebrate the human-canine bond and promote pet adoption by encouraging employers to open their workplaces to employees’ four-legged friends on this one special day. (PSI is the world’s largest educational association for professional pet sitters, representing more than 7,100 independent professional pet-sitting businesses in the United States, Canada and abroad.)

Click here to listen to the Take Your Dog to Work Day Song.
 
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