The Everett Method of Dog Training

Written in 1974, never published
©2022 Elder Road Books

I’VE HAD MANY PEOPLE smile and compliment me on what a nicely trained dog I have, as she heels smartly at my side. I grimace every time. Oh, when I think!

True enough, Gwen isn’t half bad. As long as we are in our own yard and the cat is locked safely in the house, and no other animals, children, or miscellaneous distractions are present, she obeys well. She will heel without a leash, catch a stick (although we haven’t gotten to bringing it back yet), sit, lie down, and generally be a good sport about things.

I once heard that the only way to keep an Irish setter from sitting in your chair, wearing your slippers, and smoking your pipe, is to get her a chair, slippers, and pipe of her own. I determined not to let that happen with my dog. As just a puppy, Gwen showed a marvelous respect for me. Of course, that was when I was bigger than she was. She knew that until she out-weighed me she had better stay in line.

It was at this time that she started eating everything she could get her teeth into—the Christmas tree, for example. Of course, as all such stories go it was my fault.

In the first place. she had been so good and so quiet that when Paula and I left for town, I forgot she was still in the house. Now what is a poor puppy to do when she wakes from her afternoon nap all ready to play with her master, and discovers that she is all alone in the house. That is, all alone with the exception of the two cats who have always been allowed in the living room when she wasn’t.

It was Bobbin the Black, I’m sure, who first made the bound from kitchen to dining room to the sacred living room. Gwenn hesitated two beats and then bounded right in after him. Arriving in the living room, she must have been awe-struck. It was the first Christmas tree of Paula and my married life. We had gone all out to trim the eight-foot giant with hand strung cranberries and popcorn. Special care was taken in baking and decorating dozens of cookies to grace its boughs. And four special decorations were there—one for each Christmas Paula and I had been dating.

Well, Gwen knew what cookies were for and promptly forgot all about chasing the cat. Cookie after cookie went down her graceful red throat and soon the cranberries and popcorn were strung around the dog instead of the tree. In her haste—and I’m sure, not realizing what she had done—she bit the head off this year’s straw angel decoration. Bolting for her room when she heard my car in the driveway, she pulled the tree over and dragged popcorn strands through the dining room.

It was too much for Paula when we got home. Gwen was sent to her room, and I was sent to mine.

After that, we discovered that she had become far more discreet, tip-toeing to the living room when she was sure we weren’t looking, taking just one of the freshly baked replacement cookies from the tree at a time, carrying it to her room, and munching on it contentedly. It was not until I cleaned out the back porch and discovered the pile of ornament hangers piled neatly behind her food bin that I ever realized anything was up.

My greatest feat in training Gwen was accomplished quite by accident, I assure you. In the fog of a dreary Sunday afternoon, I was forced, much against my own will to dig out my septic tank so the honey-dippers could operate on Monday morning.

Now, Gwen has always had the bad habit of bolting out the door whenever it was opened and running full tilt through the back yard. Sunday evening, she was let out for her nightly constitutional and was streaking toward the back yard before I even thought about the consequences.

I heard her chain collar hit the lid of the septic tank at the bottom of the hole. I leaned over the hole and called “Gwen? Gwen are you all right?” Reminiscent of a scene from a Lassie movie or perhaps Wuthering Heights. “Heathcliff. Heathcliff!”

One muddy red paw came over the edge of the hole, then the other. With a yip of consternation, the rest of her muddy body followed.

All evening she lay around trying to clean off what mud I wasn’t able to in the bathtub. She kept giving me “what-a-nasty-thing-to-do-to-your-best-friend” looks all evening. But she no longer bolts out the back door in a mad frenzy toward the back yard. She now walks sedately beside me until she is quite sure the world is not going to fall out from under her.

There is still one area I wish I could train her in, but it will wait until a more opportune time. After all, it is an old pipe, I never wear slippers anymore, and who has time to sit in an easy chair anyway?