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Letting GoMarch 28, 2009 For several successive weekends I'm looking after Carole's ponies and dogs. This involves showing up around midday, giving each pony (Helga the Fjord and Beeber the -- I think -- Shetland, who's stylish enough that I wonder if he's part Arab, or Welsh Mountain, or something) a flake of hay, cleaning their stalls and picking their paddocks, and cleaning and refilling their water tubs as necessary. While I'm doing this, Travvy plays in the fenced backyard with Jake and Jim, the two Springers, and Pip, the feisty 10-pound terrier mix. Then the dogs and I go for a walk in the woods. Last Monday I was unlatching the cattle gate so I could pull the wheelbarrow into the paddock. Helga can undo an unsecured kiwi latch in about 20 seconds, so there's a snap holding the latch tight so that a clever pony nose can't open it. This requires some deft maneuvering by human fingers. Sometimes I think that opposable thumbs are vastly overrated by those who have them. Anyway, I was wiggling the snap loose and unthreading the backup rope (which loops around the fencepost and is attached at both ends to the snap) when who should bound up but Mr. Travvy. Oops. On Friday I confirmed it, and today left no question whatsoever: Travvy can jump out of Carole's backyard. The fence is maybe a meter high, not terribly tall, but still higher than the tips of Travvy's ears. So far Travvy has come to find me every time he's got loose, but both Carole and I are worried that Jake, the younger Springer, might get the idea he can jump out if he watches Travvy do it, so now Travvy has to stay in a stall while I'm looking after the ponies. After he's checked out the manure, he does his "Kilroy was here" imitation, forepaws on the stall door and furry face peering over the top. Our walks start off on Carole's dead-end (paved) road, then pick up Checama Path, follow one of the Greenlands trails, and come out on Great Plains Road, which is a long, straight subdivision road where people drive too fast. In summer and fall I'd let Travvy loose as soon as we got to the woods and get him back on leash before we got to Great Plains, but I confess, over the winter I got jumpy. After we left our old barn, Trav couldn't come on trail rides: too many roads to ride along or cross, and besides who was trail riding during the ice age with which the old year ended and the new began? Trav wanted to run, I wanted to let him, but the dog wars have continued on Martha's Vineyard. The best-publicized cases have nearly all involved Siberian huskies who chased sheep and/or killed chickens, and whenever there's a hearing at least one town official is calling for the dog in question to be "humanely euthanized." The moderates just want the owners to kennel their dogs in concrete-floored enclosures with five-foot-high walls. In other words, the margin for error is not great. Trav, I'm pretty sure, has been profiled, and I'll be the first to admit that he's not 100% reliable and probably never will be. Rhodry wasn't either. He didn't reach 90% till he was five or six years old. When Trav went AWOL the other day and then came home without leaving mayhem and devastation in his wake, I was hugely encouraged. We play training games on our walks, and when distractions are minimal I'll drop the leash and encourage him to trot along beside me, sit, stay, come . . . I knew it was time to let him loose in the woods again, I just didn't have the nerve. I gave myself several pep talks about the impossibility of reducing any risk to zero, and about how at a certain point the attempt to reduce risk starts seriously impinging on quality of life, both mine and my dog's. So today we set off down Stoney Hill Path, the paved road that leads to the woods. Jake and Pip were darting in and out of the scrub. Jim, the old guy, decided to turn back and go home. On the distraction scale this is all very high, but playing the "penalty yards game" over and over -- as soon as Trav starts pulling on the leash, I say, "Oops!" and we head in the opposite direction; I click when his attention is back on me and treat when he's walking at my side, leash loose -- has paid off, as has not making a big deal when I drop the leash and let it drag. Once we got into the woods, I unsnapped the leash as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world. Once Trav realized he could run, he and Jake raced through the scrub and across the back lawn, up to the deck of a house they liked to visit in the fall. No one was there; they lost interest and raced back to the path. A minute or so later I called Travvy by name. He stopped, turned, pricked up his ears, and came racing toward me. Exactly the way he's supposed to. I almost started crying. Instead I squatted down, clicked, and fed him kibbles as fast as I could roll them out of my left palm and down my fingers into his mouth. Same thing happened three more times. Better not push my luck, thought I, and put his leash back on. But the sight of him bounding through the brush with Jake, and especially the sight of him making a beeline back to me, was irresistible. I let him go again. Three more times he came back when I called. I put the leash on before we got to the big road. Trav trotted along at my side like it was no big deal. Maybe we will be able to go trail riding again, Allie, Travvy, and me, the way we did last fall? Maybe I'll be able to take Trav to the barn again, without him going ballistic because he can't get at the chickens? I'm actually daring to believe it. Meanwhile, I still have to go flunk inspection because the back-ordered seatbelt to replace the one he chewed through hasn't come in yet. And clean up the bits of foam rubber from his demolition of the passenger seat. And duct-tape the upholstery back together and maybe cover it all with an unused pillowcase.
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