ON HIS SECOND DAY with Jonny Rotten, Cris Cohen was up at 6:45. Jonny had slept quietly through the night and Cohen was happy to see that he hadn’t had any accidents in the crate. By 7:00 they had negotiated the stairs and were out on the street. Jonny was excited and scattered, but better than he had been on the first day. He still jumped from side to side, and he alternated between stopping short and pulling forward, but he wasn’t tying up Cohen in knots.
As they walked, Cohen started to get an idea of what Jonny did and didn’t like. He was very interested in people and wanted to say hello to everyone they passed. He didn’t seem to care much about dogs. Garbage trucks were a definite dislike. The first one they passed sent Jonny scrambling in three directions at once, eyes popping, head swiveling, nails scratching against the concrete in an effort to escape. He didn’t seem to know where he wanted to go, but he didn’t want to stick around.
Cohen felt sorry for the little guy and tried to calm him, but he also had to fight back a chuckle. In his moment of uncoordinated panic, Jonny reminded Cris of Scooby Doo. Whenever Scooby saw a ghost (which happened with alarming frequency), he would go into a leg-spinning, head-twisting retreat accompanied by the cartoon sound effects of speedy footsteps, klonks, bonks, crashes, and breaking glass. Out on the sidewalks of San Francisco, Jonny had just gone totally Scooby.
It wouldn’t be the last time that day. Everything was new to him, and while he spent 85 percent of the walk wagging his tail as he explored, the other 15 percent included less happy interactions with the real world. Still, they made it to the Lawton School, a small building two blocks away, before turning for home. As they paused in front of the school Jonny looked up at Cohen with his head tilted. A tall, wide set of stairs led up to the building’s front door, and Jonny seemed to be asking, “Do I have to go up those?”
When Cohen ignored the steps and turned for home the little dog pulled ahead of him, crossing back and forth as he went so that Cris stumbled comically over the leash.
After his big morning adventure Jonny had the day to relax in his crate, chewing on a few toys and basking in the sun. But when Cohen came home at 5:00 P.M., it was back to work. This time they walked through Golden Gate Park, a place full of dogs. Sure enough, they had hardly entered the park when one approached. The dog seemed like it wanted to come over and Cohen wasn’t sure how Jonny would react. He made sure to place himself between Jonny and the other dog. As it passed, Jonny looked over but seemed to have little interest. Jonny knew it was a dog; he saw it, but he didn’t care. The pattern repeated itself several times with other dogs and each time the result was the same.
This was great news, and it made Cohen feel positive about Jonny’s long-term prospects. Sure, the little guy was scattered and scared and full of misdirected energy, but he was people-friendly and had no interest in messing with other dogs.
As Cohen reflected on these things, he felt a sudden jolt in his shoulder. A crow was hopping along the ground just off the path. Yes, Jonny was fine with dogs, but he wanted a piece of that bird like nobody’s business. How many times had a big black menace like this one teased him from the trees while Jonny was chained up in the woods? Cohen had no idea, but he made a mental note. Crows: not a fan.
After a nice dinner, Jonny retreated to his crate. He was wiped out, and by 7:30 he’d crashed. The house filled with the sound of his sweet little snores.
Jonny and Cris were out by 6:00 A.M. the next day. Cohen had started to work with Jonny on heeling and the little guy was getting the hang of the leash, so they made more progress, marching right past the school and on to Sunset Playground. A set of bleachers stood next to a field, and Cohen took Jonny over to check it out. Cohen looked up at the long row of steps. He looked at the dog. It was worth a try, he thought.
Maybe it was the open-air setting. Maybe it was that there were few distractions, but Jonny went up and down those stairs without a problem. For the first time, Jonny seemed a little more focused and Cohen figured that the steady exercise was helping settle him.
But Cris had to work a little late that night and when he got home at 6:00, Jonny was a ball of energy. On their walk, Jonny was hyper. He scrambled around and he jumped up and down so steadily that Cris felt as if he were walking down the street dribbling a basketball. At the playground the sound of screaming children distracted him and made him uneasy, as did the wind, and the cars and the crunching leaves underfoot. As well as Jonny had done that morning, he was equally unfocused that night.
Not all was lost, though. At dinnertime Cohen had begun hand-feeding Jonny. Cris sat on the floor with his legs stretched before him in a vee. Jonny stood in between Cohen’s legs. Cris asked Jonny to sit, showing the dog how when he didn’t seem to understand. Every time Jonny sat on command, he got a piece of food. And so they went each night, piece by piece, through one cup of kibble, reinforcing the sit command.
This was more than a matter of good manners. Dogs that are raised the way Jonny and the rest of the Vick dogs had been grow up very reactive to external stimuli. They see a bird they want to chase, they chase it. They hear a sound they don’t like, they run. Teaching them even the most basic commands, like sit and stay, forces them to tune into their internal voice, especially when those commands are paired with rewards such as food or affection.
Suddenly the dog has to make a choice. In the past he would have simply thought, I smell food, and I want it, so I should just find it and eat it. Now, he had to consider an alternative: If I wait, and do what is asked, I’ll get the food, plus positive reinforcement, and more food. Good things happen to me when I listen to the inside voice rather than simply following my impulses. Teaching a dog like Jonny to sit is actually reprogramming his thought process.
The dog may have been a bit scattered during his walk, but Jonny focused during dinner and did a great job learning to sit. He even continued to sit on command after the food was gone, even though the only rewards were hugs and pats on the head.
The affection riled him quickly and the undirected energy was back. Cohen had begun to clean the kitchen and when two pots clanged together, Jonny went totally Scooby. Cohen put him back in his crate to help him settle down and before long, Jonny’s now familiar little snores filled the air.
On the fourth day, Jen returned from a business trip. Cris had been taking care of both dogs, Jonny and Lilly, while Jen was gone. Since the two were not allowed to interact yet, the routine included separate walks and feedings and playtime for each. With Jen back, the workload could be split up and the four of them could do things as a group. For the evening walk, the quartet set off together, Jen and Lilly leading the way, Cris and Jonny following a few paces behind.
Jonny seemed to like this. He walked in heel without the usual amount of pulling. Cris worked with him on sitting at the park and Jonny did it a few times, even though he wasn’t being bought off with food. On the way home, Jonny paused in front of the school, checking out the stairs that led up to the front door. It was only a few days earlier that they’d stood as an insurmountable obstacle. Now they didn’t seem so scary. A moment later Jonny was pulling Cohen up the steps. If he was Scooby Doo at times-a flushing toilet had sent him scrambling earlier that day-he was Rocky Balboa now.
Jen walked Jonny for the first time the next day. The pooch was a little unnerved by this, but he did fine. Cris had never noticed it, but Jen observed that Jonny liked to pee on everything. Marking territory is normal behavior for dogs, but as far as Jen could tell, Jonny took it to an extreme. He also couldn’t pass the school anymore without bolting up the stairs. Having mastered the feat, he now seemed determined to show off.
But if Jonny was sometimes Scooby Doo and sometimes Rocky, another alter ego was also emerging, Mr. Spunky. This guy often came out at night. Anytime anyone played with Jonny, or gave him lots of praise, he went from mellow to madman in sixty seconds. Jonny loved to rub his big square head against Cohen, but when he did he went bonkers with joy. He ran, he leaped into the air repeatedly, he did that crazy thing dogs do when they rub their butt across the ground.
Usually, Cohen calmed him down by putting him in the crate. After he’d relaxed for while he would emerge more focused, and this was when his softer side came out, especially as he continued to decompress from shelter life. Cris and Jen learned that a good chest scratch would often be rewarded with a series of kisses. And that more than anything he liked to lie on the floor and play with his little fuzzy chew toy.
They grew to expect his soft snores when he drifted off.
On day ten, Cris and Jonny were back in the car and on the road, and Jonny was once again looking queasy. They were headed over the Bay Bridge when, almost as if he were feeling nostalgic, Jonny puked in his pen. Cohen groaned at the thought of the cleanup.
Their destination today was not Oakland but an empty parking lot in Berkeley. This was where BAD RAP held its weekly group training sessions. They were quite a sight: As many as fifty or sixty pit bulls could be there on any given week split into groups of ten or twelve and spread out across the rectangular lot.
Cohen was excited about the start of class. For one thing, he wasn’t supposed to let Jonny interact with Lilly until he had gone through five classes. The two dogs had continued to go on tandem walks, and from watching them in that situation, Cris knew the pair were interested in playing together, but he still had to keep them apart. They had even gone on one trip to the park with Melvin, the pit bull that Cris had fostered years before and that now lived in the neighborhood. Jonny had really seemed to love being part of a pack that day, and in the evening he and Lilly had lounged near each other in the backyard, feasting on rawhides.
He also felt that Jonny had made a lot of progress in the first week, and he was looking forward to showing the little guy off, especially to Tim Racer and Donna Reynolds, who would be there running the event. Jonny’s first triumph had been the stairs. The whole undertaking had required the generous deployment of treats, but Cohen had managed to get Jonny comfortable with the ups and downs of life on the outside. In addition, Jonny’s heel was coming along nicely, and he’d made measurable progress on sit. Yes, he could still be jumpy and excitable, but he was ten times the dog now that he had been ten days earlier.
Class, however, was a disaster.
Jonny was so wound up that he couldn’t concentrate on anything. There were new people all around, new dogs, new places, new things to pee on. He forgot or simply refused to do all the things he and Cohen had worked on. About the only thing he accomplished was walking in a circle, and by the end of the class he could hardly do that. After an hour of commands and demands on his attention, Jonny was so fried that he half stumbled around the lot like a drunken sailor.
Tim and Donna told Cris that they knew how hard he was working and that it would all pay off down the road, but Cohen couldn’t help but be discouraged. As he got in the truck he felt as though all he had to show for his effort was a long drive home with a dog that would probably puke.