Intrepid Cowgirl Teaches Zetta To Get Out Of Her Damn Head

I've always loved animals. I've been an animal sympathizer since I was a wee little girl, listening over and over again to my LP record of Black Beauty. Those kids on the playground, galloping like horses? I was one of those weirdos. Oh yes, I watched Grizzly Adams and thoroughly identified with the man. I've always had one or two beasts living right with me. Lately, though, this living among animals has changed for me--it is deeper.
My friend Jackie is a born trainer. She started with dogs, but now she trains horses, and she is devoted to her herd in such a way that people take notice. Her horse vet told me once that when she dies, she'd love to come back as a horse--so long as she could be one of Jackie's horses. The farm has 11 horses, give or take a few, some barn cats, and 3 dogs. When I am there, we add one dog who takes up the energy of two or more. Lots of animals on the farm and few human beings. I'd say we all like it that way.
When I got Cooper, I had no idea about how to train a dog, let alone train a dog whose sole motivation in life is world domination. I'd put him on a leash and he'd pull and bark and roll around on his back, but when Jackie came around, he's stand up straight and be a good boy. She told me, "It has to come from your heart." As far as I could tell, I was really feeling it in my heart that I wanted this dog to behave, but lo, this dog was b-a-d. And then Jack would show up and furrow her little brow at the whelp and he'd win the national spelling bee. I'd take him home and he was smoking crack with all his homies in my livingroom all day long while I was at work.
Little by little, she taught me basic training skills. She always told me that I was a "pushover" and that what we had here was not a dog problem, but a confidence problem. I was still completely bamboozled as to why he was a perfect angel for her, and then turn into my bright and shining arch nemesis. One day a few weeks ago, Cooper was loose in our back yard in the city and acting like a total asshole and definitely not coming to me when I called him. I stood there in my bare feet and my pink fuzzy bathrobe in the early morning sun and thought about my friend Jackie and all the things she had said to me over the months about training this damn dog. He happily gallivanted around me, bounding to and fro, just out of my reach, the little bastard.
I thought: This dog respects me. I'm the damn leader! This dog does what I ask him to do. And for the first time ever, I allowed myself to feel that, to make it a bodily felt sense. And then?
My arch nemesis came to me and he sat down. I finally got it. There is so much more to the thing than a command and a reward. There is expectation, communication, and a good boundary--just like dealing with human beings. Except your animal friend can know your heart, and that is what he listens to, not your words.
What a magical lesson my intrepid lovely friend Jack has given me. It is her nature, so she can't figure out what took me so long. I'm sure glad she waited for me to get it.