Give the Dog a Bone Read Online Free PDF

basis. I never could resist a good challenge; at five-feet tall, I’d been the starting point guard on my college team.
    My first appointment of the day was with a rambunctious one-year-old Jack Russell terrier. The adorable Eddie on
Frazier
was no doubt partly responsible for the growing popularity of this breed during the last decade. Jack Russells’ intelligence and energy, when combined with lack of diligent training, made for exasperated owners.
    My session with Eddie’s untrained alter ego proved to be a piece of cake compared to my next appointment with a beautiful buff-colored Akita mix, easily twice my size. The owner was a young woman who’d gotten the dog when he was a cute twenty-pound puppy. Now she was considering putting him up for adoption, unless a few hours under my tutelage could undo a year-and-a-half’s worth of her neglect. As I left, she said with a sigh, “If only you had a magic wand.” I managed to resist replying, “If I did, I’d bop you on the head with it.” I tend to be more patient with dogs than with their owners.
    I grabbed lunch on the run, then drove to another appointment. Rapidly overtaking the sky, huge gray clouds now loomed over the mountains. The impending storm couldn’t be better timed. My next client was a seven-year-old yellow Labrador named Sunshine who, ironically enough, was afraid of thunder. Devil’s Thumb, the pricey neighborhood in the foothills where this Labrador lived, tended to get the brunt of the storm fronts. On two different occasions, Sunshine had injured herself badly when she jumped outside through closed windows in her crazed attempts to “escape” from the storm.
    To date, the desensitization program we were using had met with only partial success. I’d given Sunshine’s owners an audio tape of thunderstorms, which they were playing at increasing volumes,
counter conditioning Sunshine by offering her treats when the taped noises began. We actually needed a good month or two without full exposure to a storm for the treatment to work, but we didn’t have that luxury. Today I’d come armed with phosphorus pellets, a homeopathic cure, which worked wonders on some dogs.
    A thunderstorm began within minutes of my arrival. Sunshine went berserk—to use a less-than-technical term—and her owners opted for the pellets. I showed them how to drop the pellets into the back of Sunshine’s throat and told them to “wear gloves when handling the phosphorus” and to “exhibit confidence throughout,” albeit that was easier said than done. Sunshine was still drooling and an emotional wreck after the first dose, but calmed down after the second.
    Afterward, as I pushed out the door, her owners thanked me profusely. I tempered their enthusiasm with warnings about relapses and a rehash of instructions for how they could handle this on their own next time.
    My day raced along, and at six P.M., I pulled into Ken’s trailer park. Maggie ran up to my car before I was in sight of unit thirteen. Aware that some hot rod could zoom around the corner at any moment, I hit the brakes and opened my door, intending to get out and coax her into the back seat. Before I could even get my seatbelt unfastened, she leapt onto my lap, squeezing her large, furry body between me and the steering wheel.
    “Maggie, back seat!” I said, wasting valuable air to do so. I tried in vain to push her off me, but there was no room for me to maneuver.
    The dog gave me a wet lick on the face, which, with my arms pinned, I was helpless to prevent. Then she turned to face forward and look through the windshield, honking my horn in the process.
    My cheeks grew warm. This was not one of my finer moments of canine management. The very last thing I wanted now was to attract attention;
I
sure as heck wouldn’t hire me, were I amere witness to my current predicament.
    I sucked in enough air to say sternly, “Maggie, down!”
    No reaction.
    I bounced in my seat as much as I could and ran