The Wiener Sit/Stay….sort of

                                                           
It is generally considered very important to teach your dog basic commands such “sit”, “stay” and “lie down”.  This will ensure that you can keep control of your dog in dangerous situations and know that she will be where you put her when you come back to her. It also reinforces the hierarchy of command, with you as the  Alpha dog.

Of course, we’re not talking about Wiener dogs, here.

          Franny, the smart one, was 11 years old before she showed me her sit/lie down/stay moves.   I am not sure where she learned it.  Maybe she read it in a book.  Maybe she learned it from Fritz, who I taught it to when he was 5.   Naturally, having been brainwashed by 6 Dachshunds, I never consider teaching them something so obviously demeaning to their sensibilities as “commands”, or at least not seriously.   All Wieners enjoy the irony of working for wieners, literally, but that’s not to say they’ll do what you want when you want.   They will, however, as Franny likes to point out with an arch look, nearly always do what you want if they want to do it too.   The fact that she’s missing the point goes a long way to explain Weiner thinking.

          But to illustrate: Fritz always enjoys a game of tug of war more than anything, especially with an item of clothing I am particularly fond of, or, if he must, with a dog toy, so I bribed him to do sit/lie down/stay  and, thank God, “Give!”  one rainy afternoon just so I can get things away from him.  (This is a handy thing to teach Dachshunds, since they have a habit of instantly swallowing anything they think might be taken from them.  Like a sock.  Or a whole squawking chicken.)   Franny and Izzy were the only other Wieners gracing our home then ,and  Franny, of course, looked on horrified at this show of  Un-Wienerness, especially coming from one she looked up to and admired for his bold  white teeth and big, muscular haunches.  So she tried to get Fritz to stop indulging me by dancing around the room with some other toy the minute our game commenced.  As it happened,  Fritz never paid her any attention.  Uber-Weiners, after all,  do not deign to notice Underdogs unless they are having a better time with whatever game, treat or toy is at hand, and no one is having a better time than Fritz when he gets to sink his teeth into something delectable and wrestle it from my hands.

           So imagine my surprise one day, when, treat in hand, I placed Her Franniness on a pillow that was warm and dog-rank from lying in the sun, and completely losing it for the moment, told her to  ”sit”, and she sat!  Perhaps she was just as stunned as I, because I recklessly followed with “lie down!”  and she immediately laid down!  

           Naturally our Fran was not performing for free.   She wanted the Organic Filet Mignon Chewy Stick that works out to $10 a pound and is designated Human Grade Food.  ( Of course, it is no such thing.  They just haven’t come up with a believable label that tells you this dog food is actually more nutritious, safer, and better tasting than Human Grade Food.)  

          Now here’s a training tip for all you Dachshund owners.  It’s a little secret Weiners are loath to let get about, but the fact is, they’ll do just about anything for their cookies.  You just whisper the word “cookie” in a high wind with tornado warning sirens going off, and the deafest Weiner in the world, that one that doesn’t hear the vacuum cleaner heading right up it’s lazy rump, will instantly come to attention.   Unlike Less- thans that run, fetch, sniff out, guard your warehouse, herd your cattle or ride on your bicycle handles, Weiners only work for cookies.  That’s why most of them are fat.  The one Weiner that isn’t fat is the especially gifted one, like Franny, who’s learned to game the system.   She always holds out for better cookies.  

          I don’t know why Franny finally  did a sit/lie down/stay.  Maybe she just wanted to show me that all these years she could have done it whenever she wanted to.  Maybe she thought she’d give a little something back, after all those cookies.   Knowing Franny and her predeliction for practical jokes, though, my guess is that, in true Weiner fashion, she just waited 11 years to deliver a punch line.                                                                                              

The Wiener Dog “Lie Down!” Command

The “Come!” Command

There Are No Words

Dog songs

The sound of a few Weiners howling in anguish because you are leaving them—AGAIN!—is heart wrenching. As intended. I know Mercedes starts the chorus because I can hear her piercing ” ARFARF!!” the two seconds after the door closes on their beseeching, disbelieving little faces, rather like an orchestra leader tapping his baton to get everyone’s attention. Then Izzy, not to be outdone, begins to utter the short barks that linger a little in the air preparatory to a sliding scale howl. I’m usually halfway to the car at this point, beginning to run, actually, since I really can’t stand to hear any more.

However, one time I left my keys outside on the table next to the front door. Quickly turning around, I sneaked a peek into the window, and this is what I saw: six Weiners sitting in a crude circle, looking and sounding for all the world like an orchestra tuning up as they leaned into each other, adjusting pitch, and keeping an eye on Izzy who apparently was conducting from the couch. Except for Fritz, who was doing his Ray Charles impersonation, they all seemed to be more concerned with impressing each other with their tone and range than expressing the tragedy of my exit seconds earlier. Phoebe, still a puppy, kept trying out different pitches, giving Izzy sidelong glances as if for approval, while Franny would occasionally bring in the flute section with a glass shattering high pitched Weinerwhine/ howl that made my hair stand up. I think she knew I was at the window.

Needless to say, I was a little surprised. All the times I had left to do errands or go to work, their piteous cries following me out the door and bending me with guilt, and here the little buggers had just been enjoying the hell out of themselves. Furthermore, they stopped all at once about 3 minutes after I had left, which paid the lie to the idea they were pissing and moaning the whole time I was gone. (OK, that was a poor choice of words. They don’t need to get any ideas.)

Franny is looking at me as I write this with one arched brow, her way of saying, “Really? What a weenie”. Not to be confused with Weiner, obviously. Since she has my attention, she decides to activate the Weiner Mind Meld, making her eyes as big as possible and staring directly into mine, sending HBIC* over the mental airways. I try not to laugh. But I do, so she bounces off the couch and onto the floor, does a quick spin and bounces back onto the couch to execute a rapid fire tatoo on my chest, making me appreciate once again my foresight in falling in love with 8 pound Dachshunds and not 80 pound Labrador Retrievers.

Franny deploys the WMM when she wants me to do something for her, like get her Franny Food (the much coveted canned version), let her out, take her upstairs to wallow in our bed, or give her a cookie. Or, my personal favorite, just to see me jump. I like to think that when I leave and she joins in the community sing- a- long with what can only be described as a scream, it’s because I’ve slipped beyond the power of her gaze. Actually, I know they all have their reasons: Mercedes starts it because she is truly upset; Izzy because he finally gets to lead in something; Fritz because Izzy is leading; Phoebe because she thinks it’s a party. After that they just get into for its own sake. Come to think of it, Mokie is the only one I’ve never actually seen join in. One gets the sense that Mokie just doesn’t give a rats ass what the others are doing. Mokie has her own agenda,which mainly involves food and status, and trots along to the beat of her own little drum.

* Head Bitch In Charge

The Tao of Franny

When I first laid eyes on Franny she was a petite, light red, silky smooth- coat puppy with long ears, a black nose, and a mouth with a slightly disapproving downturn at the corners. Her eyes were huge. She looked like a tiny doe. Unlike her sister, who came prancing out to greet me in the breeder’s small enclosure, Franny parked herself in the corner as far from me as she could get, head low, eyes looking up at me suspiciously, making it pretty clear I wasn’t going to qualify as her sun, her moon and her stars any time soon. I mentally got ready to check the ” fearful or unfriendly” box and continued to play with her sister, waiting to see if Franny would scootch over to investigate things. Eventually she did, but she didn’t approach me so much as circle me , sniffing for flaws. Obviously I wasn’t ringing her bell, but then she wasn’t exactly ringing mine, either, partly because she had a kink in her tail, and partly because rejection by a Weiner puppy is the kind of personal cut that reminds you of high school.

Both the puppies had the same gorgeous looks, but it turned out her sister was already spoken for, so I was left having to decide about Franny. She allowed me, with a huge quavering sigh, to pick her up and hold her. I asked about the bend in her tail and the breeder explained that sometimes the tail wraps around the hind leg in utero, and so developes a kink. (It can be hereditary, too, and is so common in Dachshunds that although undesirable, it is not considered a fault.) Sometimes, she said, you can smooth out the kink with your fingers, and she suggested I try that. So I ran my fingers firmly down the soft baby bones of Frannys diminutive tail until she gave a yelp and an affronted look that made it pretty clear nothing was going to get smoothed out, except maybe my face. I don’t know if the fact of me hurting her or the fact that one tiny yelp could stop me from continuing made the most impression on our Fran. Suffice it to say she had my number either way. At any rate, I was set on getting a purebred puppy that would grow up to breed with Fritz, assuming he ever got off the teddy bears long enough to accomplish that feat, and she was extremely pretty, so I bought her, attitude and all.

Now there’s nothing wrong with a puppy with attitude, and the puppy that runs to greet you right off the git go isn’t necessarily your best choice. The pup that holds back a few moments to assess you and the situation is the one you want, as long as they decide they like you and come up ready to play and lick your hands. Eternal optimist that I am, I hoped the attempt to unkink her tail had a lot to do with her skipping the lick-your-hand stage, so I put her in a little crate and began the long drive home.

We were about 3 minutes into the drive when Franny started shivering, whining and puking. By the time we got home and into the house, both our nerves were shot and she had bloody diarrhia, so a trip to the vet was in order the next day. The vet prescribed medication for parasites and a regimen of cooked chicken and rice in place of puppy chow. So that very afternoon there I was boiling a nice chicken breast and a pot of brown rice for my new puppy, humming happily in my Eternal Maternal Mom mindset, while Franny looked on with what I must have noted somewhere in my subconscious as a calculating sort of interest eerily reminiscent of Fritz.
Franny was pretty happy to eat her chicken and rice for a couple of days, but on day three she showed no interest in her food. Alarmed, I added a little cottage cheese to the mixture, and she daintily consumed a portion of that. Two days later, she stopped eating again. A little rich unsalted chicken broth added to the mixture brought her back to the bowl. By the end of the two weeks, as her bowels became normal, I was offering her not just chicken, rice, broth and cottage cheese, but lean cooked hamburger and eggs as well. My husband drew the line when I started to fork up some of his filet mignon one night, because only he, as the son of a Midwest veterinarian and therefore with special powers, realized that at this rate we would soon be making reservations for her at Chez Marcel.

Having raised Fritz for two years actively thwarting his every move towards dominance, it may seem odd that I didn’t send the same clear signals to Franny. But you see, there was something different about her, a kind of head- down persistence you would expect to see in a Texa Longhorn bull, not a tiny Weiner dog. She got Fritz, who was clearly affronted that she even breathed the same air as him, to let her sleep with him after only a few nights of begging. She threatened to happily starve if she didn’t get the same kind of food we were eating, foreshadowing a whole new industry of human grade food preparation that would spoil an entire generation of canine moochers. That trick gained Fritz the consolation prize of a few bites, too, which may explain his tolerance for her over time. She also looked at me all the time, as if she had an urgent need to impart great tidings which I would receive intact and be grateful for if I just stared deep into her eyes. My natural reaction was laughter, which she took for submission. This, I realized years too late, was a behavioral feedback loop that guaranteed she would rise in her own estimation to great, unassailable heights of importance and grandeur.

Franny, need it be pointed out, is extremely smart. If intelligence is the ability to adapt to one’s invironment in such a way as to maximize one’s well being, then our Fran is a little Weiner genious, earning the respect even of The Cat which is, as I write, sitting in pride of place on my lap effectively keeping 6 Weiners off to the inglorious side. But I digress. As I soon learned, once Franny figured out there was something she wanted and I could and would get it for her, it was game, match, set. I could have stopped it at any time just by ignoring her, but curiosity to see what she would do next always won out.

A special diet, as it turned out, was just the beginning. For example, the first time I happened to throw her some warm blankets out of the dryer, she jumped in them with exuburant delight and burrowed happily around for several minutes until she had constructed the perfect Franny nest. Charmed by the sheer joy she exhibited, I got into the habit of giving her warm blankets, and so now that’s one of those little services she’s come to expect. She also expects to be fed Franny Food. This is what we call the occasional $2.79 can of high grade dog food she gets when it looks like her weight is dropping. The other dogs just have to hear the words “Franny Food!” and they come running for their pathetic one-bite-off-the-fork share. The rest of it is for Her Franniness, and she expects me to park her butt upstairs away from the others to spare her nerves while she eats. Franny’s nerves are one of those things to which she and I pay great attention.

Similarily, if there’s a squirrel stupid enough to run into a pipe and squeak hysterically because, let’s face it, successful fight or flight is no longer an option, Franny will let the other dogs lather the squirrel and each other up while she runs back to the house to bounce on my chest and compel me to follow her outdoors. It is a great measure of her need to control me that she never runs full tilt to the hunt or looks fully back to make sure I’m coming, but paces herself only slightly ahead and at an angle to me to ensure I won’t get distracted and veer off on some other, less Franny- friendly errand. Arriving, she will look pointedly at me and then at the end of the pipe, for I am to understand that a completely flipped out squirrel is trapped in there, and my job is to tilt the pipe up in the air until the squirrel conveniently falls out at her feet like a snack in a vending machine. I have only done that once in her lifetime, and the squirrel did get away to drive the Weiners to madness another day, but Franny never forgets, and lives to see me do it again. The other dogs are not so dim that they do not know a good thing when they see it, too, so now when the clarion bark is sounded and they all go rushing out the door to see what needs rending and tearing, (do get over right now the Disney myth of the “killing blow”), one dog will always assume the rear guard position and sit in the center of the drive looking back and barking at the house. That would be my cue to come and assist. I mostly ignore it now.

At eleven years, Franny has taught me just about everything she feels I need to know to make her a happy dog. Of course, she is looking at me now out of the corner of one eye, having arrived at some point next to where I am sitting and typing. They all do that, suddenly appearing on the couch like guest ghosts that I neither see nor feel until they are all present and the air is suffused with a sonomulent heaviness that makes everyone, including me, decide to take a nap. Except Franny. Franny may appear to be sleeping, but she knows if I turn to look at her. Her dark brown eyes will slowly open and she will squint at me, as if testing for soundness the chains she has forged between her heart and mine, making sure they are still intact and indestructible.

Hee hee

Yummmm.

Yes, I ate it.

Status

 
        There’s a pecking order in the Weiner household, and that order includes anything that breathes and eats.  So not only do each of  the hounds have their place, every newcomer  is ranked and treated accordingly.   A bug  mistaking  a corner for sanctuary or a dog bowl for the Mother Lode, will  quickly be assessed as  impotent, worthy  of a couple  hunt moves and then summarily dispatched.  Likewise, visitors  to the home will be sized up and dealt with.  Franny  likes to move toddlers off  the couch with an explosive snarl  and a harmless pinch of the teeth– quite effective– and  for  the visitor with more inherent status, like a grown man, she  waits  to  see if they evince a liking for her, then returns the favor with ankle love bites.
       Then there is The  Cat.  Several years ago we rescued an abandoned ranch cat who had been living on her own for 3  years.  That made her a  Zulu warrior princess in  name and deed, and that’s what we called her.  Wild Zulu had survived coyotes, bobcats, mountain lions,stray dogs, crazy hunters, ice and snow.. even so,  Zulu and the Weiner Gang understood the pecking order within the first 15 seconds  of Zulu’s arrival.  The Cat was, without discussion,  designated the Lowliest of Low Hairballs With Claws.  The claws were accorded some respect,  so she was allowed to live as long as she stayed out of the way, didn’t interact with the People too much, and didn’t eat the Weiner’s cookies.  This was the pecking order, but  by  flattening her ears and staring yellow malevolence at  the barking dogs , Zulu may have been sending  the message that the pecking order would remain fluid.  
          For 3 years Zulu resided in a state of perpetual perfect patience on the porch,  hunting the woods and fields by night, sleeping by day in her little cat house atop a  cabinet.  Of course, she was wary of the dogs, having assessed quickly and correctly the perils, and didn’t even look for much attention from her humans.  She kept to herself, and  after the first year or two, the dogs seemed to have forgotten about her.
         But, of course, they hadn’t.
         Except for the occasional dust- up,  Zulu stayed out of the dogs’ way  for so long the dogs were lulled into thinking the Truce, as it was known, would be permanent, and The Hairball, as she was known, would stay in her place.  But there came the day she went from ignoring, and being ignored, to snaking a long black arm out of her cat house and snagging my hand as I passed by.  The message was clear:  ”I’m here.”  Surprised and pleased, I delicately pried the tips of several pale talons out of my skin,  scratched her under the chin, and  made little kitten noises at her.  This quickly became routine.  That same summer she also began getting up in the push-out window that opened from the kitchen onto the utility porch.  High above them, she eyeballed The Clowns, as they were known,barking and jumping around with a complete lack of dignity while she studiously sheathed and unsheathed her claws. Before long  she was lapping milk from a bowl on the sill.  She got tuna.  She came more frequently, to  sit  and watch  the clown show beneath her.
        None of these little moves up the popularity chart went unnoticed.  Weiners have exquisite radar for Special People Love, so as Zulu got more attention,  Mokie and Izzy went  back to checking  her moves. They chased her back up the rock wall onto the roof  every so often, and she, in  her wisdom, went along with their nonsense, never taking the velvet gloves off the  claws that could teach a couple of clueless  Dachshunds what ninja knives in a hurricane looked like.
        Instead,  Zulu the Diplomat began distributing gifts.   Suddenly, tiny decapitated mouse heads started appearing at the back bedroom door.  The first time I saw one I was without my  glasses, standing barefoot in the pale morning light, and it  took me a minute peering near-sightedly down  to realize that the tiny perfect black eyes and nose and whisper thin whiskers were actually…yes, yes indeed, that was a real mouse head on the doormat!!  The dogs  didn’t take nearly so long.   Whereas I  usually had to shove them out the door in the morning to do their duty ( they, of course, prefering to squat on an expensive rug ), they now clammered  to run out as soon as the cock crowed.   Before long, Zulu started depositing the whole rodent enchilada. Mokie,in particular, was wild with joy.  She would bounce out of her bed at 5 AM and claw at the door like a contestant on the Price is Right sniffing out a new car.  A little pile of steaming entrails would greet her, and she wouldn’t even glance at Zulu slinking smoothly into the  porch room behind her, snuggling into her little cat bed, smiling her little cat smile.   Later,  Zulu upped her game and started delivering not just mice, but voles and fat gophers, too.  The Weiners were endlessly  entertained by all this, and, of course, they knew who was doing it by now, the Hairball smell was all over the warm and ripe feast.  
        Meanwhile, Zulu continued to live and sleep on the porch, a cold place dogs only visited when they were in a state of disgrace.  Thus reassured, the Weiners  grew complacent in the great game of Status, which, as all dogs know, requires constant reassessment and much political manuevering, snarling displays and butt kissing, something like congressional campaigns. Only Mercedes, who had never quite gotten over her fright at her first look at Zulu, refrained from racing to check out the morning deposit.   She preferred to peek around corners and make sure the Black Devil wasn’t lurking anywhere nearby. As for the others, Fritz continued to ignore Zulu except for the ocassional deliberate OOPS!, bumping into her as if he had lost his hearing and acute sense of smell as well as his sight, while Franny contented herself with narrowing her eyes at her in a bitchy manner. Certainly  Mokie and Izzy no longer chased or threatened Zulu when they encountered her outside.  Why chase away  your personal waiter bringing you your breakfast?
        The Day The Earth Moved was Tuesday, April 5, 2011.  It was  8 am.  The morning was mild, promising warm weather.  The door to the porch was slightly open.  The dogs  were lolling on the  couch, having spent 20 minutes jockeying for position next to me as I sat drinking tea and working  on my computer.  They had  finally settled down, in positions roughly equivilent to their Status: Underdog Franny in her skinny huddled ball under the corner of my robe,  Underdog 2 Izzy half on top of her,  Underdogs 3 and 4, Mokie and Mercedes, jealously eyeballing each other, and Fritz,  as  Top Dog,  laying heavy  as a log across my lap.   At that moment  I saw some movement out of the corner of my eye.  The door was moving open.   A small  black head with perkily alert ears and slitted green eyes was  angling around the door frame, looking at us all.  
       Zulu was making her move.
       Five dog heads slowly turned as one to view this unheard of intrusion.   There was a little ripple of electric excitement as their eyes, ears and noses told them what they could not believe was true, that Hairball was entering their house. In daylight!  Cheeky as a squirrel!   Zulu stopped for a second, feeling their ripple of energy as it flowed over her long, twitching whiskers.  She advanced one paw delicately  into the room, eyes fixed on the dogs.  As mesmerized as the Weiners, I placed one warning hand on Mokie’s stiffening flank.   Mercedes looked on, terrified.    As the dogs leaned out slowly over the edge of the couch to get a better look,  Zulu eased another paw down, and slowly curled her advancing form around the door.  Then in one fluid movement she cleared the door completely.  She sat down, extended a sinewy hind leg , regally swept her tail aside, and started to clean herself.
       Of course, this fine display of feline chutzpah completely disarmed the Wieners, and they, being reasonable dogs, immediately knew the game was up. It took Zulu another couple forays to join the dogs, placing herself in the neutral territory that was the back of the couch.  Gradually she moved from the unoccupied end to my end, and perched  near my shoulder.  A couple more weeks passed, and then one day I found her  sliding down onto my  lap.  Fritz made room for her.  Mokie raised her head, opened one sleepy eye, then plopped back down.  Mercedes jumped straight up from the couch as if the poles had just flipped,but Franny and Izzy just resumed snoring.
       There is a new pecking order in the house now, as regards my lap.   Zulu gets pride of place there whenever she chooses to claim it.   It doesn’t matter that the dogs form a canine blanket over me, Zulu will encroach as smoothly as a tide among rocks until she achieves the desired shore.   Once there, she becomes a rock herself.   Exasperated, I gently try to dislodge her;  cooly defiant, she digs in with her claws.   Waking to the altered landscape, the dogs just look at me.   I am Uber Top Dog.   I should have stopped it.