For at least the first few months we had Lola, we did nothing to train her. She was well-behaved already - she didn't chew anything up (well, a few teeth marks on the furniture legs), and she was completely housebroken - and we were wary of even raising our voices to her, lest she lose the precarious confidence that we were trying to encourage. Eventually, it became clear that she wanted nothing more than to please us, as she demonstrated on one of the last days I was working from home.
I had parlayed my freelance work into a full-time contract with an architecture firm back in Adams Morgan, and my work load was increasing to the point I needed to be there every day. Expecting to have far less time in Lola's presence from then on, I decided to try to get her to recognize a few basic commands, figuring I could spend the better part of the day on it, if necessary. I prepped a baggy-full of treats and set to work. Twenty minutes later we were done.
She really did know nothing to start. I tried sit, lay down, etc., and she just stood there. Then I said "sit" while pushing her rump down and she sat. Then I repeated it and she did it right away. We worked through "up" to get a treat, and "lay down." I noticed that she was picking up her paw and extending it to me a bit, so I said "shake" every time she did that. We added "come" and "stay." I then ran through all of those again in random order and she did every one perfectly. When Tim got home that night, I showed her off. She had learned six commands in twenty minutes, with "shake" as the coup de grâce. He was amazed.
Encouraged, we decided together to teach her to "roll over."
Didn't happen.
Lola never really understood what we were going for there. Maybe it made no sense to her, because as soon as she got to her back, that's where she wanted to stay. It was a great position for getting belly rubs, and why would we want to pass that up to get her flat on her tummy again? So we relented, and "roll over" became the cue for her to get a belly rub. Seven -ish commands in one day.
Her obedience was put to the test the following fall as she played among the leaf piles I was building with my rake. She was rolling around in one pile and had gotten a little tired, so I grabbed a bunch more leaves and blanketed her with them, leaving not much but her face sticking out. She was so cute I had to get a picture, but the camera was in the house. "Stay," I said firmly and backed away. Satisfied she was not getting up, I ran into the house and found the camera. Thankfully it had film in it. I had little hope that Lola would wait for me to return, but not only was she still in the leaf pile, she had not changed her pose at all. Like a professional model, she remained motionless and I got my perfect picture.
During that first year in Mount Rainier, Lola entertained us with another magic trick, this time escaping from the yard into the neighbor's next door. The fence was only three feet high, so it was not inconceivable that she could jump it, but there were four directions she could go leaving our yard, and she was always at the house to the east of us. Thankfully, that one was also fenced in and there was another dog in there for her to play with, but we needed to solve this problem just the same.
Inspecting the fence line revealed no holes or even soft spots for her to push under the chain link. No digging was evident. It fell to us having to witness her escape, which finally happened after the fourth or fifth time. I was watching her out the bedroom window when she caught site of a squirrel running along the top of the fence. She ran parallel to it until it got to a scraggly old tree that was actually pressing against the fence, and canted at a severe angle. As the squirrel scrambled up the tree and leaped across the gap to the neighbor's house, Lola followed as best she could. She pressed her back paws between the tree and the fence and in a far less graceful manner, quickly deposited herself into the neighbor's yard, where she proceeded to seek the squirrel out along the house's roofline. The mystery was solved, and I had to jump the fence myself and lift Lola back into our yard. A well placed piece of scrap chain link proved an effective barrier, and eventually the tree was removed.
Mount Rainier is one of the small incorporated Prince Georges County towns right on the northeast boundary of Washington, DC. With its rows of cottages, and neighbors who had lived there for decades, it has a small village-y feel despite the presence of some big city problems. It has been gradually invigorating its downtown around its arts district status over the last fifteen years, but at the time we lived there it was sorely lacking in options for dining out. Really, it lacked any place at all to dine out, unless you counted grabbing a Twinky along with your 40-ounce from Bass Liquor and hanging out on the corner. The closest place where we could find an actual restaurant was College Park, some distance up Route 1. A favorite was Plato's Diner, where we could get decent comfort food, or we would hang at one of the pubs on the strip right next to Maryland University and mingle with the hot college guys.
One night we brought Lola with us just to walk around the town, and while passing through the strip mall toward the Wawa convenience mart, we encountered a man who looked not unlike Brian - heavyset with long gray hair and beard. As soon as he saw the dog, he crouched over and applied a beaming smile to his face, but Lola stopped and looked at him quietly. Then, without warning she lunged at him with a ferocious bark, her leash yanking my arm out to its extent and nearly throwing me off balance.
To his credit, the man laughed it off and moved along, but I was stunned. Lola hardly ever barked at all, and only through play had we even heard her voice. With her terrier face, we had expected something on the higher-pitched scale, but her bark was deep and throaty, as full bodied as a dog's bark gets. After her death, we only then decided to try to figure out what breeds she might be, and German Shepherd had made it to the top of our list as the potential "something bigger than a terrier" component. There were a lot of clues: the intelligence, the fluffy slightly curled tail, the red-brown undercoat mixed with stray black hairs, the ears that wanted to stand up, and the fur that shed like she was under contract to supply all of Ireland with enough yarn to serve their winter sweater demand.
Then there was that bark. Only a few weeks after we had our talk about Lola's possible parentage, while passing a German Shepherd on the street, Tim and I heard it bark and immediately looked at each other. Simultaneously we said, "That's it!" As uncomfortable as I was with Lola's display of aggression, we felt like we had learned a couple important things that night. First, we now felt like we had a good idea what Lola's previous (and hated) owner might have looked like. Second, we now knew that our dog was ready to defend us with her life. We were hers, and she would not stand idly by and see that taken away from her.
Lola's protectiveness was in full swing back home too. She fell right in the watchdog sweet spot where she was generally quiet - not barking at everything that moved - yet quick to sound the alarm when anyone approached the house. Once we made it clear that the person on the other side of the door was not a threat, she was the perfect host - happy and welcoming without throwing herself at visitors.
Outside, she began charging the fence when people walked by, and after making a couple neighborhood girls scream, I resolved to move the fence back to the side yards, but in the meantime, Lola had free reign front to back. A favorite activity of hers was to just lay on the bench on the front porch and survey the neighborhood, or sleep away the day. At night, we would sometimes hear her suddenly scramble off the porch. We figured it must be some sort of animal, but didn't think she would ever be successful in catching anything, especially with all the noise she made.
One evening, we heard the usual scramble, but this time it was followed by a muffled yelp. We threw open the front door and saw Lola standing in the yard, lit by the glow from the lamps inside the house. In her mouth was a sizable rat, now limp. Blood trickled from her lip where it had bit her, but her yelp had been muffled because she refused to let go. That is some serious dedication. I called the vet in the morning and asked if there was anything we should worry about.
"Like what?" they asked.
"Like...any rat-borne diseases that she may not be inoculated for?"
"Uh...she's up on her rabies shot?"
"Yes."
"Well then just make sure it doesn't get infected."
"Fine. Thanks a lot."
I was annoyed by the dismissal, but we had dutifully cleaned the wound with hydrogen peroxide. It healed nicely and no problems surfaced.
Lola maintained her wildlife patrol, and our immediate vicinity was rat-free within the next couple years. Unfortunately, in her zeal, she had difficulty remembering the presence of windows. Coming home one day, the site of broken glass in a front window had us expecting to find our meager collection of electronics missing, but once on the porch we could see the glass had broken outwards. Inside, Lola happily limped over to us, and we found a clean gash right between two front foot pads. Thankfully, there were no major arteries in the path of the cut, as there wasn't much blood on the (ugly anyway) carpet and her foot wasn't even bleeding anymore.
Again with the peroxide; and this time she got gauze binding and a plastic bag to keep her paw clean. Fearing she would just break the window again, we took the entire sash into a glaziers and had it fitted with tempered glass. At sixty bucks a pop (!!) we replaced both the panes reachable from the sofa. Because the cut was on her foot, we assumed she had had her paws pressed up against the pane and maybe pounded on it, but later that year, Lola and I were sitting on the bed while she was gazing outside. A raccoon wandered by, and in an instant, she lunged and put her head clean through the glass. This time, I had the opportunity to yell "No!" but so what? We now had another sixty bucks to spend when money was not exactly abundant.
My presence was helpful this time, since I could keep her from cutting herself again, but I was beginning to sense a pattern. Every negative experience this dog was having since joining our family happened when I was alone with her. I wanted nothing more than to love her and give her a happy comfortable life, but I seemed to draw misfortune to her side. I believed that she knew it too, and although we got along well enough, she had clearly chosen Tim as her leader. Those of you who have owned dogs know that this behavior is pretty typical, but sometimes it's hard not to feel insulted.
The worst incident occurred sometime in 2001, I think, on a hot summer night. The original 100 year old house was one story, four rooms square, with a hip roof that because of the square footprint was basically a pyramid. It sat high enough that there was a walking-height attic up inside it, with a true staircase for access. I had recently made this my home office, but we had not yet outfitted it with an air conditioner, so I had the windows open. On the back of the original box, two rooms had been added with a ten-foot gap in between them - a master bedroom, and a kitchen. Each of these had it's own hip roof, awkwardly joined to the original pyramid.
Sometime later, a third bedroom was added in between these two back rooms, and rather than redesign the roof line to join everything together cleanly, a lightly sloped, nearly flat roof was installed between the two back hips, and the rear window of the attic led right out onto it. My desk was set up with my back to the stairs and window. Absorbed in my work on the computer, I didn't even notice when Lola barked at that damn raccoon again through the bedroom window. I never heard her climb the steps into the attic and step out onto the roof in search of her prey.
What happened next I heard clearly, as a sudden violent scratching began directly over my head and quickly descended toward the gutter line. I was sure it had been the dog as soon as I looked again at that open window. I pushed through it and pulled myself up to the peak, my heart pounding. I saw no sign of her, but I couldn't see down to the driveway where she would have landed. Tears started welling up. I ran down to the back yard where I could see the driveway. I called her name, but still there was no Lola. As I ran back through the house, my face contorted in fear, Tim was alerted to a problem despite my inability to verbalize what had happened, and got sucked out the front door in my wake.
There we saw Lola, standing calmly at the gate, ears at attention. She gave a little wag, and quizzically accepted my relieved bear-hug. Without so much as a limp, she trotted back inside.
Coming up next: "Whatever Lola Wants, Lola Gets."