Blog 5.Teacher Bodhi

Sometimes life's best teachers have 4 legs!

While drifting through the pandemic doldrums, we welcomed home our son, a handsome mini-golden doodle named Bodhi. Let me tell you, I instantly regretted it. Yes, he’s sweet. He’s smart. He’s a total jerk.

Yet his jerkiness is my fault. I half-assed my responsibilities. My fantasy about dog stewardship didn’t match reality. Out of the gate—stupid Instagram—I expected him to be an exemplary citizen: frisbee champion, ocean lifeguard, and protector of children and the elderly.

Instead, I got a baseboard chewing, pillow humper. Go figure. One possible explanation is that the day before we ripped him away from his family, he had slept in a furry pile with his seven siblings. He was learning how to be a dog, among dogs–his natural order. As much as I don’t want to admit it, there are no bad dogs, only bad owners.

Get it Together Humans

Bodhi needed straight-forward dog simplicity, a need I was ill-equipped to fill at first. Dogs live in the eternal present, inhabiting a do/don’t do, go/no go world, nothing more. You can’t fake it with them, and Bodhi knew I wasn’t meeting him where he was.

As a result, he became uncertain of his boundaries. Without clear lines defining acceptable behavior, Bodhi came to rule the house, only he didn’t want that role. To compensate, he picked up every neurotic dog behavior you can imagine—put ‘excessive’ before each one—tentativeness, guarding, and barking. He needed his humans to get it together, and fast.

Enter the Boss…Walk

Skipping over my poor dog parent phase, here’s one thing we learned: the boss walk. Boiled down, it's nothing more than a walk with purpose. It has rules to keep him, but mostly us, in check.

Because dogs respond positively to confidence—obvious not obvious—our actions must be assertive and sure-handed. This is why our exact route is planned before we head out the door. And for 45 minutes Bodhi and I hustle. Eyes front and no distractions, aka squirrels. Problematic areas like corners and crosswalks are much smoother now.

For a reward, he gets to sniff around and do his thing. Then, we charge on home. It may sound severe, but he loves it and the trust between us grows everyday. He feels important and knows someone is in charge.

Check Your Head

Here’s what I learned, dogs take cues from the energy we send out. They sense whether we are calm, anxious, or angry, and reflect it back to us. To keep our relationship going in the right direction, the most important thing I can do is get my head right before he and I hang out.

Our man/dog relationship is definitely on the upswing, but it hasn’t all been perfect. Some walks are absolute disasters. When this happens, I invariably complain about how he’s regressing and that he needs more work. Ah humans, we love our stories. Then I catch myself. Bodhi is fine. It’s me who isn’t right, invariably caught in a swirling anxiety tornado of pointless crap. This is when his ‘bad behaviors’ pop back up, like barking at cyclists and Teslas, direct fallout from my lack of presentness.

So we stop and give the human a timeout. Bodhi is incredibly patient. While I gather myself together, he seriously just sits beside me. He has nowhere to be, and, honestly, I don’t either. I only think what I need to do is important.

After I take a few breaths, we get going again. Even though my speed doesn’t slow down, my energy is calmer. The tension loosens from my face, neck, and limbs. Then without fail, Bodhi tests me, nipping at my hand to see if I’m really serious.

Leave it. Off we go.