by Liz Mahony
The first couple of lines from Rudyard Kipling’s poem, ‘If’, came to mind the other day: “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs!..”
One of my neighbour’s hens had forced her way through the metal confines of her run. She was happily plucking away at the grass and earth in the garden area, totally oblivious to my consternation and Saffron’s interest!
Receiving no reply from my text to said neighbour, I realised the situation was solely in my hands. I approached the problem in totally the wrong way forgetting about my professional dog training skills. Thus I tried to hem her in assuming she would return back into the run through her escape route. But, she had other ideas! She wasn’t going to give up her new-found freedom that easily, proceeding to run hither and thither like the proverbial ‘headless chicken’. Please forgive the deliberate pun!
My actions panicked her further, so she kept trying to force her way back into the run by sticking her head into various narrow spaces in the metal fence, through which the latter part of her body had no hope of following! Then Saffron decided I needed her help and got rather excited. Having twice despatched her offers of assistance with a ‘flea in her ear’, I took a deep breath, slowing down to take stock of what, if anything, I had currently achieved! The first realisation was that my efforts so far had only exaggerated the circumstances. Gathering my wits, I went off to get a cup of hen food and opened the main gate to the run after grabbing a towel from the kitchen.
The towel was a last resort. I didn’t fancy handling her, as I was certain to get pecked or clawed in the ensuing debacle. If the worst came to the worst, I might have to throw the towel over her and then secure her with a rugby tackle! Fortunately, it didn’t come to that! Instead I began to review the situation in a more grounded manner.
Firstly, I chucked some hen food into the run to keep the other hens focused on food rather than also escaping through the open gate to join their wayward companion in her escapade. That worked except the lady on the outside decided she didn’t want to miss that food, so she once more vainly attempted to force her way back through the metal bars instead of through the open hole that I’d intentionally aligned with the food inside. I’d imagined she might be clever enough to remember the hole and go back through it again. What a vain hope!
After another deep breath, I backed away from her even further to encourage her to come nearer to the open gate and out of the paddock to which she kept seeking refuge from me. The danger with the paddock was that it had two equine inhabitants who would either have crushed her under their hooves or chased her around the field and panicked her even further. But, luckily, they were oblivious to the excitement.
Steadying my nerves, I slowly advanced on her from the opposite direction to the open gate and began shaking the container with the remaining food. At first, that
made her run the other side of the open gate between it and the fencing and more vain attempts to squeeze through more narrow, unrelenting gaps! Time for me to back away again.
Taking yet more deep breaths, I slowly approached her again. Each time she ran the wrong side of the gate until finally she strutted inside, as though nothing untoward had happened, rejoining her companions while I slammed the gate shut. Heaving a sigh of relief I rewarded them all with the remains of the feed and blocked up the hole in the fence.
And what has the above got to do with dog training, I hear you ask? In a word: Everything! Just bear with me for a little longer. At the beginning of this episode, I, too, was running around like that proverbial ‘headless chicken’, and getting nowhere. I couldn’t even think of a solution, let alone do anything constructive. At the beginning, I didn’t even contemplate that my training skills might possibly apply across a spectrum of animals.
However once I took myself in hand, employed deep breaths, my brain started working again, and a plan unfolded effortlessly. The panicked hen no longer sensed my own trepidation so she calmed down too which then allowed a greater chance for my plan to work.
The moral of my story is that if we, ourselves, lack self control when dealing with our own pets, how can we expect our dogs to show restraint since they copy everything we do?