Speaking The Same Language

Sometimes life gives us very tough situations. Usually the situation is easily solved and it is not difficult to see how the situation helped us be a better person. But occasionally these situations turn out in a way that we are unable to see any good in it. Such was the case with one of my favorite dogs.

The first dog I ever trained I named princess. She was a blond daschund mix. My step-dad, Big Jim, bought a choke chain and a leash for me and taught me some basic skills needed to train her. He told me I had to be firm but loving. He said, “Son, you have to be patient with her. You two don’t speak the same language. She does not understand what you are saying but in time she will. She will want to make you happy but you have to help her understand what you want.” Then he said something that really made me think, “Don’t blame her if she doesn’t do something you want her to do. It’s not her fault…it’s your fault because you didn’t explain it in a language she could understand.”

He said no more on the subject. He sent me outside to work with my dog. But his words kept going over and over in my mind. At first I didn’t understand what he meant. But as a few days passed I got a clearer understanding of what he was meaning. It was more about me understanding and knowing my dog than it was about her knowing and understanding me. If I knew her she would know me. If I understood her she would understand me. We would then speak the same language.

Princess and I quickly learned to speak the same language. She was easy to train. I could see the eagerness to please in her eyes. Within a few days she was off the leash and obeying every command I made.

She would walk with me everywhere I walked. Or run along with me every time I went out on my bicycle. When I went into a store she stayed outside sitting by my bicycle awaiting my return…never getting up to explore, stretch, or even chase a passing cat.

One day I wanted to test her so I took her to the sidewalk in front of our house. I commanded her to sit. She did so promptly. I began to walk away and gave her the command to stay. I went into the house and would occasionally look out the window to see how she was doing. She stayed there for about 30 minutes until I finally was convinced she would stay, if I let her, till the end of the world…because she thought it would make me happy.

I loved princess and she loved me. I often rewarded her with dog treats and she rewarded me with wet licks on the face. I would sometimes lay down in the spring sunlight on the lawn. My loving dog would snuggle up next to me, place her head on my stomach and fall asleep with me in the sun’s warmth.

Princess had one bad habit, though. She could not stand to be fenced in. Any fence we had could not hold her. She would climb up one side and instead of jumping from the top to the ground she would climb back down the other side until she was about one foot from the ground and then jump. We assumed she was afraid of heights. Our family loved watching her climb the fence. I was quiet comical.

Then she got pregnant. As her pregnancy progressed we thought any day she would stop climbing the fence. But she didn’t. My mom would stand at the kitchen window and root for her has she painfully climbed the fence to go explore the neighborhood with her belly protruding as though she would pop at any moment. One day my mom called us all to the window to watch her. It took about five minutes for her to get to the top of the fence.  It appeared she was in pain and she was having a hard time figuring out how to get down. As my dad was heading out to help her she jumped and hit the ground with a flop as her legs gave out from under her. As she had jumped she had gotten caught on the spikes of the cyclone fence and ripped a gash in her right side.

She walked slowly to a small shed we had in our back yard. She laid down and immediately began giving birth to a litter of six active puppies.

Sometime after that, our family moved just across the street from the house where we had been living. It was a much nicer house and we were all so glad to be in the new home. After living there a days the landlady showed up at the door and told us she had noticed we had a dog but no dogs were allowed at her rental properties.  She agreed to give us two weeks to get rid of the dog or move. I was heartbroken…we could either move or I would have to say goodbye to Princess.

I was in tears as my dad explained to me that he would find a good home for my best friend and would not allow her to be taken to the pound where I feared she would be “put down.”

Within a couple of days dad came home with some great news. An elderly widow a short distance from our house was willing to take Princess. She was very lonely and would welcome her company. Her yard had a cyclone fence so Princess would be safe. Or so we thought.

The widow called us the day after we dropped Princess off at her home. It seems Princess had been sitting at the fence when she saw our car drive down the street and had climbed the fence and ran after us. She came back shortly after not catching us. Dad explained to the widow that she would get used to her new home and would not continue to climb the fence.

Dad was wrong. She continued her jail breaks. We got to the point that we would stop if we saw her chasing us. I would go put her back in the yard and scold her commanding her to stay. But now my words seemed to be falling on deaf ears. She longed to be by my side more than she desired to obey.

After a couple of weeks of this routine the widow called and said we would have to make Princess stop getting out or she would have to send her to the pound. To keep this from happening, Big Jim gave me a long chain and told me to go chain her up (the dog...not the widow.) He cautioned me to carefully measure the chain so Princess would not be able to get near the fence. Reluctantly, I took a chain to the widow’s house and chained my sweet little dog to a clothesline pole. I planned on leaving her chained for about a week until she was able to get me out of her system.

The next day a tearful widow called my dad. Dad was on the phone for just a moment when he softly hung up the phone. My dad sat down, called me over and sat me on his knee. I knew something was wrong. He told me that evidently upon seeing us drive by the previous day Princess had climbed the fence but this time her new chain had gotten caught on the spikes on the top of the fence. The widow had found her dead later that day.

My faithful friend had died because I failed to measure out the length of chain to make sure she would not be able to climb the fence. Grief over Princess was especially bad because I blamed myself for her death and no amount of consoling seemed to help. I buried her in the back yard under a small tree. I swore I would never love another dog again. It just hurt too bad to love a dog and then lose her.

The sad ending of the story goes beyond Princess’s death. Two weeks after her death we moved.  We had been in that house for only one month.