2017 Nov Dec

her feet. I followed her into the kitchen.
She sat politely in front of the plate and
I saw what she wanted. I put the plate
on the floor for her to clean. I went back
to the bedroom and she came back and
repeated the whole thing again. So I
followed her back to the kitchen and
she sat in front of the entire pot of food.
Brilliant. No, I didn’t give it to her.
The Raika stories started because
she was on a diet. The stories centered
on her being fat and that it was entirely
my fault. But actually, she cares more
about walks and swims than food. She
loves routines. We spend a lot of time
just together. She is my free time.
Raika’s voice is the raw emotion
of people before they know how to hide their emotions. For
her voice, I take away filters and give her emotions that maybe
dogs do not even have. She says what many of us think and feel,
but know better than to say. She has no inhibitions. She has no
guilt. She is never a little sad, she is extremely sad. There is no
layering on top of her emotions. I use Raika as a way to talk about
anything, real emotions including dying. I allow her to talk about
people and dogs we have known and added some humor, though
she’s actually a very serious dog.
Raika is the long-suffering dog. I’m her long-suffering mom.
With the Raika stories, I show people how to get inside a dog’s
head through exaggeration. Then I try to get them back to the
middle into a more realistic place. It makes me happy.
Several children’s book authors inspired me. I love Barbara
Park’s style in the children’s book series called Junie B. Jones,
which I read to my son. I also love Beverly Cleary and Judy Blume.
These authors all explore the raw emotions of a young person
trying to get along. When an adult is entertained by a children’s
book, you know you have a winner. A few middle school and
high school teachers have asked to use the Raika stories in their
classes. She’s like a Garfield, only she’s real and she’s a dog.
These stories became bedtime stories because I initially
posted them in the evening and people commented that they liked
them. I recently told a Facebook live story for adults about a dog
who was saving the world from evil chipmunks. So many people
commented that I realized that adults do not have enough stories.
Adults, like kids, lock in and get excited and look forward to
more. So now I call them bedtime stories because I tell stories –
for adults.
Now that Raika’s talking to her housemate Lyra, they can talk
more honestly than Raika can talk to me. I wrote the Raika and
Lyra story about my past training because it is important to me to
be able to communicate dog training information as well in these
stories.
I am a crossover trainer, I used to be a basic compulsion
trainer. I’m not upset about it because it created who I am today
and the trainer I am today. I realized all the harm it did to me.
I know what the grass on the other side looks like. I made an
educated choice to leave that side. I know exactly what happens
when you train with a lot of compulsion. I know where I made
mistakes in the process of getting rid of it.
86 AUSSIE TIMES November-December 2017
What I learned is that you cannot
distract from emotions. If a dog or a
person is sad and you feed them, they
may enjoy the food but it doesn’t make
the sadness go away. It’s still there. That
is something I didn’t understand.
When a puppy gets uncomfortable,
the puppy looks at you, so you can move
away. With Raika, it was hard because
when she got uncomfortable she looked
at me so it was hard for me to figure out
what she was uncomfortable about. You
see this in the utility ring signal exercise.
The dog is looking directly at you and
you give a signal which the dog ignores.
Why? You don’t let your dog show you
why because you trained your dog to
always look at you. And now you have to figure out what bothered
your dog. The crowd? The noise? Dogs milling close by? The way
we are training our dogs is not allowing our dogs to tell us what is
bothering them.
Leslie McDevitt’s “Control Unleashed” changed how I train.
Acclimation and socialization are the ticket. Just take your dog to
a lot of places and let your dog really look and see. A current trend
in dog training is to go to new places and immediately practice the
work. But really, you need to go to new places so that your dog is
confident and comfortable. You can’t just go to a new place and
start working and tossing around cookies and toys. In the ring,
you don’t have cookies and toys. You can still socialize an older
dog. It just takes more time.
Writing about Raika makes me love her all the more. She
talks about things we don’t generally talk about. When I had
my hysterectomy, Raika and I talked about it. People do not
talk about hysterectomies and what is and is not normal. I got
many private messages from women who had been exhibiting the
same symptoms, went to their doctors and got needed medical
attention. They thanked me for being so honest and helping them
which made me feel very good. I’m very fortunate to have a larger
audience that I can help.
I put Raika’s stories on Facebook because it makes people
happy and I like to make people happy. I’m truly happy to give
them away. I look forward to my Raika writing. I enjoy these
stories because I can talk about anything I want. The only thing
you never have enough of is genuine appreciation. And time. If
people stopped commenting on my Raika stories, I would stop
writing them. I love hearing that the Raika stories are the bright
spot in people’s day. It makes me happy.
Elizabeth M. Jarrell of Bon Ami Australian
Shepherds has won six Maxwells from
the Dog Writers Association of America
(DWAA), including two for her “Just So”
column, one for books, one for editorial, and
one for on-line feature, plus a Certificate of
Excellence from the Cat Writers Association.
Most recently, Liz won the AKC S.T.A.R.
Puppy and Canine Good Citizen Special
Award from the DWAA 2016 Annual Writing
Competition.