The Curse Оf Hollister House

Hercules was an arrogant little pug who honestly seemed to believe that we’d been paired so that he could train me. And maybe that was what was going on. When Naomi first gave him to me to work with on simple commands such as sit and stay, I figured she was starting me off easy. Boy was I wrong.

“Why is it that when I say sit, you jump around, and when I try to walk you on the leash, you sit down and refuse to come along?”

The dog, with his huge brown eyes, just stared at me all innocent, like he had no idea what I was saying. At first, I’d thought the dog somewhat daft, but the longer we worked together, the clearer it became that he was just messing with me.

“I don’t outweigh many things, but I outweigh you; now come along.” I took several steps toward my goal, dragging the little dog along with me.

“You know that dragging isn’t the preferred way of getting a dog to walk on a leash,” one of the other trainers said.

“I assumed as much, but this dog is defective. He sits when I tell him to heel and jumps around when I tell him to sit.”

The woman laughed. “Hercules does have a mind of his own, but he’s been through the basics and knows what to do if motivated to do so. May I?” She held out her hand, and I passed her Hercules’s leash. She took a small treat out of her fanny pack, making sure the dog saw it. She then told him to heel and started walking, holding the treat just out of his reach. After they’d traveled across the room, she paused, told the dog to sit, and gave him the treat.

“Ah, so that’s what those little pieces of meat are for.”

“Didn’t Naomi show you what to do?” the woman asked.

“She was going to, but then she got a call about one of the goats being stuck in the fence and had to leave to deal with that. She told me to wait for her, but Hercules and I got tired of waiting, so we decided to get started. I thought I knew what to do. I was wrong.” I glanced down at the dog. “You know he is evil? I could tell he knew exactly what to do but refused to do it anyway.”

“You let Hercules think he was the alpha in this situation. Jasper and I are going to work on sit/stay and recall. Why don’t you and Hercules work with us today? That way, I can help you if you forget what to do.”

“That would be great,” I said with relief. “I’m Callie.”

“I’m Willa. Is this your first day?”

I nodded. “I guess that is obvious. I thought I understood what to do, but I guess I was wrong about that as well.”

“Don’t worry. Hercules is a smart dog. Once he understands that you are the boss, he’ll cooperate.”

Willa showed me how to hold the treat just over the dog’s head to prompt sitting behavior when Hercules refused to do it. The tiny bites of meat seemed to work wonders in terms of getting him to do what I wanted him to do, but I had to wonder if the dog’s new owner was going to have to walk around with treats in his pocket all the time.

“No, the dogs are weaned off the treats once they learn the behavior,” Willa explained after I asked that question. “Initially, the dogs are put through short training sessions and rewarded every time. Once they seem to understand the behavior we are asking them to demonstrate, we ask them to demonstrate the behavior twice before they get a treat. Eventually, we require more and more demonstrations of the behavior before a treat is presented until eventually, they will happily do as you ask without the treats being offered. In fact, many of the dogs enjoy a few minutes of play or a hearty neck scruff as a reward even more than a treat. After you work with the dogs for a while, you’ll begin to have a feel for which dogs prefer to play, which want hugs and kisses, and which are little piggies like Hercules, here, and prefer food over anything else.”

“Aren’t you afraid he’ll get fat?”

“Naomi monitors all the dogs’ weights. The treats are high quality and are taken into account when calculating their daily food allotment.”

I glanced at Hercules, who was sitting next to Jasper, waiting for his recall command like some sort of sweet little angel. I glared at him to let him know I was on to him, but he just smiled at me with his sweet little pug eyes, letting me know that he had my number and the battle between us was far from over.

Hercules’s part of the session came to an end seemingly as soon as it got started. Willa and I traded out dogs, and next, I was paired with a sweet golden retriever who looked at me with love and adoration and tried very hard to anticipate all my needs. Now, this was the dog for me, I decided. Docile and sweet and willing to please.

The two-hour session seemed to fly by, and before I knew it, I was saying goodbye to Willa and hello to Cass, who had shown up for his volunteer time. This shift was focused on play rather than training, so I let Cass select the dogs and outline the plan, while I went along for the ride. With all the rain, we decided on an indoor session and, as we had before, gathered ropes and balls and headed to the large play area.

“So how was your first one-on-one training session?” Cass asked after we’d organized the dogs we’d chosen to spend time with.

“It started off rocky when I was paired with a pug with an attitude but one of the other trainers, Willa, helped me out and things went fine from there.”

“Willa has been volunteering for a long time. She is a good one to go to for help if Naomi isn’t around. Where is Naomi anyway? She usually pops in to say hi.”

“She had a goat emergency. One of them got stuck in a fence.”

Cass frowned. “That doesn’t sound good.”

I frowned as well. “Naomi has been gone for a long time. Do you think we should check on her? I just assumed she had everything under control.”

“I’ll call her cell.” Cass took out his phone and punched in a number.

I couldn’t hear everything that was being said from her end, but it sounded like Naomi was with the vet, who was trying to patch up the animal, who’d suffered some fairly significant injuries during his encounter with the fence.

Cass hung up and looked at me. “Naomi will be held up for a while yet. I told her we’d see to the feeding and end-of-day tucking in when we are done here. Or at least I will if you have to go.”