A Hell of a Dog by Carol Lea Benjamin Page A

we’d offer treats to the dog. Eventually we were able to get some men to offer the liver directly to the dog, so that he would begin to perceive male strangers as bearers of pleasant things—”
    â€œShe’s in therapy,” Martyn was saying. “Perhaps in time—” He didn’t bother to finish the sentence, leaving it to Cathy’s imagination.
    I leaned back and tried to concentrate on the stage.
    Rick was talking about aggression now, first a problem with a shih tzu who hid under the bed and bit the bare feet of the boyfriend when he tried to get out of bed. Rick’s suggestion was that the couple eschew sex for several weeks, during which the boyfriend was supposed to feed bits of dried liver to the dog whenever he came over. Sounded to me like a program most people would stick with.
    â€œI don’t know what’s right anymore,” Martyn was saying.
    Next was the case of the Doberman who tore the house to shreds whenever the owner went to work. Rick began to drone on about separation anxiety, saying he suggested the owner take a few weeks off from work and go through the motions of leaving without leaving, going to the coat closet and then returning to the couch with a treat for the dog, getting his coat out and then hanging it back up, offering a treat afterward, putting his coat on and then taking it off, giving the dog some more liver as he did. I felt my eyes starting to close, the way Freud’s had the minute he got up on the stage. I thought if I fell asleep, chances were I’d drool, too. But I didn’t fall asleep. I kept thinking of how sick this dog must have gotten eating all that desiccated liver.
    â€œSometimes I wonder if I’ll ever have any happiness in my life,” Martyn was saying, his eyes appropriately downcast now.
    Rick’s guy was still going to the closet and sitting down, still giving treats but getting nowhere, certainly not out the door. I wondered why Rick didn’t suggest a little obedience training and a shitload of exercise. How could anyone expect a young, strong, large animal to sit and do nothing all day long when he had only been out to relieve himself of the end product of digestion and not the purpose of it, to produce the energy with which to work and play? But he never did.
    Rick had apparently finished with the Doberman. Now he was talking about a four-year-old pug who slept on the bed and growled at his owner whenever she rolled over during the night. I was waiting to hear him suggest the owner sleep with liver in her hands when I heard Cathy instead.
    â€œHow tragic,” Cathy said. For a moment I was confused. I thought she must be talking about Rick’s consultation advice. But she wasn’t looking at the stage. It was apparently Martyn’s plight she found so tragic.
    Tragic? Maybe we were listening to different conversations. All I heard was a guy trying to get laid.
    It was working, too. You could have fried eggs on the look that passed between them.
    Cathy leaned close and whispered something I couldn’t hear.
    â€œDo you think so?” Martyn said, apparently astonished by whatever he’d heard.
    Where were the Oscars when they were so richly deserved?
    â€œI do,” she said.
    I leaned back. Sitting that close to them, I was in danger of getting diabetes.
    â€œWe all so hate to punish our doggies,” Rick was saying.
    Talk about diabetes.
    â€œSo what might you do about the dog who loves the sound of his own voice too much when he’s put out in the yard? Well, to be honest, you can help these behaviors disappear without giving a single correction. We behaviorists call this process extinction. When we simply ignore the behavior, its frequency diminishes, and eventually the unwanted behavior disappears altogether.” He smiled out at us. “And this way the dog will not think of you as a punisher.”
    I heard applause. Dashiell lifted his head, but Freud did