Copyright (c) 2000 by Michael Finley

Dog and Master

Back when my daughter Daniele and I used to walk dogs at the Humane Society, I surprised myself several times by taking strange risks. Almost as if I were guided by voices, I found myself unleashing a big dog, who looked like she really needed a few moments of play, and let her run free in the crusted snow of Como Park.

It was a risk because I did not really know these dogs. They could easily have run away from me. The very fact that they were at the Humane Society suggests that that was how they got there – they were runaways. If I had allowed a dog to escape, it would likely have meant the dog's death, and certainly the end of our privileges at the center.

So what was I doing? And how did I know these dogs, many of them doomed to die in the weeks to come, would allow me to releash them afterward and return them to their cells?

Which brings me to the predicament of this book.

What do you do when you want to give the dog as much freedom to run and play as possible -- but you don’t trust the dog?

There are two separate problems here -- you, and the dog.

First, you. Or in my case, me.

I know hundreds of dog owners, and very few fret about their dog's happiness as I do. For the majority, it's no heartache to keep a dog in a kennel at night, in a fenced in yard by day, and on a leash at every other moment.

I'm not that way. My standard poodle Beauregard has beautiful long legs that want to run, and I love to see him galloping across an open space. Every dog I have had, I wanted to give the gift of freedom to. For me, it’s the most fulfilling part of having a dog -- seeing them express themselves. Which they do better off-leash than on. Running free is the happiest experience a dog can have.

Twenty years ago, I decided to allow my first dog, Casi, to roam free in the night streets of Minneapolis. I believed she needed and wanted freedom, and freedom was my gift to her. I felt American wanting this freedom for her. But it was a gift that resulted in her death, at the wrong end of somebody's car fender.

I have said things that strike some people as heretical: that death was not too great a price to be a real dog, if only for a few years.

Responsible friends challenged me on this. Where did I get this notion, and what right did I have to impose it on the creatures in my charge?

Good question. And it's the reason I wrote this book. It's about reconciling the ideal of total freedom with the constraints of living in the real world, and the shortcomings of the dog itself.

Then, there is the dog. For better or worse, the law treats all dogs the same -- as noncitizens, with no rights whatsoever. In most places, having a dog off-leash is illegal.

There are good reasons for such laws. Dogs scare people. They get into fights with one another. Unleashed dogs are harder to clean up after. And they harass other wildlife -- cats, ducks, woodchucks, you name it.

In a perfect world, it seems to me, really well-behaved dogs should be allowed to do anything they like. Really wild, dangerous dogs should by all means be controlled.

Which leaves dogs like Beau. Beau, is a funny, appealing dog in nine out of ten ways. He is curious and pleasant with adults, and patient and pleasant with children.

But he's tremendously dominant with other dogs. His great burden in life is having to impress other male dogs at every opportunity. It's not his fault -- it's in his nature to be that way. But the behavior that results from this predilection is unbearable to many people -- growling, face-making, sexual humping of other males.

As a young dog, Beauregard's dominant tendencies tested my wisdom as an owner, and my odd ideas about freedom, to the absolute maximum. We're a funny match, indeed -- a fabulous, freedom-loving dog with rotten judgment, and a master who is pretty much the same.

Dominance is the most difficult of all dog traits to correct. It can be done by simply breaking the dog -- punishing him with beatings, shaming, or electroshock every time he growls or intimidates. The problem with this solution is you wind up with a broken dog.

No, the solution is a renegotiation of the relationship you have with your dog.

This book is the story of a dominant dog and his loopy but loving owner, and how the two of us renegotiated our relationship.