My earliest memories of family dogs began when we lived in the beachside suburb of Blacksmith in New South Wales. I have memories prior to that time, but they don't include dogs. My mother tells me that my Grandmother was a dog lover and the dog that she owned then was a Scottish Terrier named Willem II. At the same time my step dad, in memory of a white Boxer named Kelly that he'd owned as a boy, had bought home another Boxer that he called Champ.
Willem was named after a type of cigar, and while I remember seeing cigar tins around, I don't remember seeing anyone smoking them. My grandfather, a Scotsman, also often had a particular brand of Scotch Whiskey that was decorated with a trinket around the neck of the bottle that had a tiny black Scottish Terrier and what I thought at the time was a white Scottish Terrier. I was later to learn that the tiny white dog was actually a West Highland White Terrier.
While I don't remember too much by way of interaction with these dogs, it's clear that we had something in common in that we were pretty much left to our own devices, and so we roamed the neighbourhood. I do recall, however, feeling some kind of connection with them when our gaze met. I don't remember seeking out their company so much as just being happy to interact with them if we happened to be in the same place at the same time.
I remember that as a time of a level of freedom that kids these days don't seem to have. I can remember exploring the neighbourhood, the banks of the Swansea Channel, pretty much letting my curiosity draw me in any direction. As I think about it now I can smell the sea breeze, tinged with the odd wisp of fish carcasses that the fishermen left behind after cleaning their catch, and the sounds of the waves crashing on Blacksmiths Beach just down the road. Lots of people out in their yards so that a wandering child wasn't out of eyesight from one adult or another for too long a stretch of time. Not like today, if you go for a walk it's rare to see people out in their yards.
I was only just learning to read at school, so books hadn't yet become a major part of my life. My younger sister had arrived, but at four years and 8 months my junior, she was still too little for me to play with. I didn't get into any trouble while wandering around that I recall other than being stung by the occasional bee in the clover on the footpath. My Grandmother had taught me how to remove the stings and I was fairly proficient at that.
Unfortunately Willem and Champ were not as good at staying out of trouble.
Willem developed a habit of chasing cars, and I recall stories of my grandmother hiding behind a grassed bank and throwing rocks at him whenever a car approached to try and dissuade him from the chase. When that didn't work a run was built for Willem at the side of my grandmothers house to stop him from going near the road. I remember feeling sad that he had to be locked up and uncomfortable at his pining to get out every time we walked past him going to or from the house. I felt uncomfortable at how his run got muddy and slick in the winter storms when I would fall asleep to the sound of the wind whipping through over head electrical wires with restless thoughts of him outside.
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(Later when I studied training I had a mentor who specialised in Drive Theory and when I understood the anatomy and function of a drive, I knew why my grandmother couldn't get Willem to stop chasing cars but also how she could use that very impulse to chase cars as a powerful reinforcement to help him stop....sounds like double dutch at this point I know, but make sure you keep an eye out in the training section, because I'll introduce the trainer that I consider my mentor in this area and also his material.)
Those were the days when the bear used to come on TV at 7.30pm to tell all the children to go to bed, and my grandmother kept me to that schedule when I stayed with her. I'd forgotten about this until more recently when I lived in Western Australia for a short time...they still have the bear at 7.30pm wishing the kids a good night!
My grandmother died at the young age of 52 and my grandfather was shattered at the loss of her. She'd taken such good care of him that he didn't even know how to match an outfit. She'd always laid his clothes out for him. He couldn't take care of Willem, in fact looking back now I believe that my grandfather had gone a little insane over the loss of my grandmother. He would not let himself admit that she had died. Rather he told everyone that she had left him. In some way that seemed a greater comfort to him than facing her death; perhaps because that would allow him a glimmer of hope that she would come back.
I wanted to go to my grandmothers funeral, but funerals were not the place for children back in those days. I got into trouble for crying over it because I was apparently upsetting my grandfather. I sat in the car watching my little sister outside the crematorium on the day of my grandmothers funeral and saw smoke that I thought might be her spirit leave a chimney and waft into the sky. That night I dreamt of her and woke up. I made my way out to the thunder box toilet out in the yard and it was a dark clear moonless light and there was one star that seemed larger than the rest. Someone had said that heaven was in the sky and that is where my grandmother was going. I guessed that since that star was the biggest and brightest, it must be the newest and so it must be my grandmother. Every night for years after when I woke in the middle of the night, I'd look for that star and take comfort from it.
Willem went to live with my Aunts family and their Corgi, Izzy (Isadora something-or-other Phillipdale - I can't remember her full name). He lived happily to a ripe old age in a good backyard, with my three cousins and of course a doggy pal and Ginger the cat.
I don't really know how Champs end came about.
Champ didn't chase cars at all, but he did steal the neighbours shoes or kids toys that were left out. We'd open the front door of a morning and there'd be a pile of offerings waiting on the doorstep. There were complaints from neighbours and. Apart from that he was pretty well behaved for a large, boisterous breed. I don't remember him knocking me over even though he was very energetic. I guess an energetic dog that has the run of the neighbourhood doesn't build up the ballistic level of out of control energy that the same dog would if he were locked in a yard. He could have certainly done damage if we had an unfortunate collision, at the time I recall him being as tall as me.
In any case, it soon came to the point where the neighbourhood complaints were becoming too frequent and my step dad re-homed him. Within a month of Champs leaving we were on one of our frequent road trips to Sydney to visit relatives and as we drove past an acreage property, my Dad pointed to it and said "That's where Champ lives now". I asked if we could call in to see him. I wanted to know that he was OK. My Dad said 'no', but I never forgot to keep an eye out for that property on each trip hoping to catch a glimpse of Champ to know that he was healthy and happy. In my Childs mind, Champ would be missing us too and maybe one day would think to wait by the gate to see if he could catch a glimpse of us.
Although I had a level of concern for both Willem and Champ, the next dog to cross my path was a puppy of my very own. More than just concern for another living being, this puppy impacted me in a very deep way and awakened a thirst in me for things, that at the time, I couldn't have defined.
But before that puppy came along, I had an experience that changed my idea of the world in a shocking way. Up until this time I pretty much just got along with life as it was - rolled with it as it presented itself. I spent a lot of time at my grandmothers or great grandmothers places because both my parents worked.
One of the things that I loved to do while I was playing by myself was climb. There wasn't a structure around that I didn't wish to scale. It wasn't just the scaling though, I had somehow developed the notion that I could fly....if I just got high enough and flapped my arms hard enough, I'd simply not fall to the ground. I have to tell you - if positive thinking really worked - I'd be very well known by now and there'd be a cartoon character in my image. I'd broken my shoulder by swinging as high as I could on a set of swings that my dad had made in the back yard and jumping off at the zenith of the swing believing that I could just land on a tree branch like the birds did. I made it to the branch all right, but unfortunately it broke and I fell to the ground. My parents were forever yelling at me to get down off things.
On one fateful day when I was climbing on outbuildings, I took the little girl from next door up on to the shed roof with me. Climbing the rocky banks of the Swansea Channel and rocky outcrops on the beaches had made me sure footed and I automatically tested my footing for solid and supported placing as I climbed. Not so the little girl from next door, I watched in horror as she walked out onto a dodgy area of the shed roof without testing her footing and froze in terror and disbelief as she fell through the roof. I heard her scream, and I heard her hit the ground with a thud as the decrepit areas of the shed roof crashed to the ground around her. I made my way to the hole in the roof where she'd fallen through terrified at what I might see, while she continued screaming and attracting yelling adults from all directions.
As I stood transfixed by the scene below me where the little girl sat screaming I saw the jagged hole that had been torn in the side of her face, my mother holding a tea towel to it and yelling at me to 'get down off that bloody roof'.
I made my way to the opposite side of the shed away from the gruesome scene and the sight of my injured friend so that I could use the fence to climb down. I was shaking, feeling weak and thought I might urinate, defecate and vomit all at the same time. I saw a leg reach out to the fence and only had a faint notion that it was mine. It didn't look like my leg though, it was white and translucent, where the leg that I was used to was suntanned, it was weak and shaking, where my leg had been strong.
In the days after the story was repeated around the neighbourhood and for the first time I remember feeling flawed, deficient and ashamed. My little friend appeared again a few weeks later. The side of her face distorted by the stretching of her skin to close the edges of her jagged wound. In my mind the hurt I had caused her would never go away because her ragged and lumpy scar would mar her face forever. Her parents were angry with me and she was not allowed to play with me any more.
Soon after we moved to another suburb and I remember feeling relieved that I could leave that place behind and go somewhere where nobody knew what I did. The memories were too uncomfortable for me to contain and process on my own, and I partitioned them off in an area of my mind that I didn't access again for many years until I sought the source of the underlying feelings of deficiency and shame that hid just below my anxiety.
And true to the purpose of this blog, to be the best I could be as a dog trainer, I had to find the source of my anxiety - because that impacted not only my learning, but also my ability to work well with dogs.