Three walks between 3:45 and 5am and still she pees on the rug behind my desk.

The newest member of our household is a six-week-old border collie-blue healer cross.  Her name is Kit, and daily she reminds me that I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.  

And yet she’s the third dog in my current household, and the fourth puppy I’ve raised.  

Darby, our farm border collie from when I was 16 years old, went through intense police-dog style obedience school, and was my first introduction to training.  If you shouted “Down there!” he dropped to the ground and hugged the earth, his eyes alert for commands, but his body as still as a stone. If, when running the sheep, he got over-excited, I learned to issue forth a loud and powerful alpha-style “NO!” before giving him a corrective command.  

The first time I used the word “No” on Spriggan, our Australian shepherd/lab mix puppy in 2000, she peed all over herself and took to trembling.  

Spriggan was the first dog Bob and I got together.  And I read all the puppy books and training books I was supposed to.  If I put a leash on her, she looked at me in disdain.  If I gave her a stern command, she trembled.  

Finally, my friend Carol from Heather Ridge Farm came to visit me and the puppy one afternoon.  I’d known Carol since I was eight years old, and I never knew her to have a dog who wasn’t truly amazing.  So I asked her for a reference for the right book to train my wayward Spriggan.

Carol looked at me blankly.  “I don’t know of any books,” she said.    

I furrowed my brow.  I was finishing a Ph.D. at Cornell at that time, and I was certain there was a book and an expert behind every positive outcome.  “I need to learn how to discipline my dog.  I can’t figure out how to have a good training session.”  

At that point, Spriggan was lying quietly at my feet.  Carol sat in my living room and watched the puppy, nestled against my legs.  

“That dog is your companion, right?”  She said.  

“Yes.”

“There are no training sessions.  If the dog is with you all the time, she’s in training all day.  She learns how you live, how to be safe, and how to be with you.”

Spriggan grew into a first-rate dog, accompanied me through two pregnancies and sat quietly beside me as I labored for both of my children.  She paced the floor with Bob and me as we shushed and soothed crying babies all hours of the night.  She laid patiently on the floor beside my chair as I read theories on classical homeschooling, Waldorf homeschooling and Unschooling.  She slept beside the fire as Bob and I drank our morning coffee and debated the merits of each theory, adopting each of them in turn, then tossing them out as we adopted the newest theories.  She waited and waited for me to remember Carol’s advice.  

Because children, too, are our companions.  And if we agree to that companionship, the rest of the theories fall by the side.  Sooner or later, I figured out that Saoirse and Ula weren’t going to read the books written by the experts.  I wasn’t going to expose them to the perfect curriculum that turned them into child prodigies.  But I could show up every day with an open mind and an open heart and try my best.  I learned it really didn’t matter how much content I covered, whether I was keeping up with their grade levels, or whether they were mastering skills that made them stand out among their peers.  What mattered was that we arrived at the same place every morning, that we opened our books, that we tried our best, that we kept our lessons short and our play long, and that Bob and I let them accompany us in our life and work.  

It didn’t matter that Bob and I didn’t know what we were doing.  What mattered is that we made the time every day, and we kept trying. It took us forever to figure it out, but eventually we understood the most important lesson about education:  Facts and figures can be mastered with muscle and force.  But the art of thinking, the power of curiosity and the joy of learning can only happen with love and time.  When these are the aims, there is no keeping score with tests and grades.

For several years now, this is how we’ve stayed our course.  Then, one day, we find ourselves standing in a cafe.  He’s washing dishes while I’m flipping eggs, and our daughters, at 11 and 15, are running the front of the house, handling the money, taking the orders, solving the problems.  On another day, Ula comes home from the farm and gives a detailed report about the health and welfare of the livestock.  On another day, I watch Saoirse twirl about the kitchen in a skirt she designed for herself.   And we glow with pride as people remark about our “exceptional children.”  We don’t know their IQ scores.  We don’t know their grade levels.  We don’t even know if they’ll go to college.  But we know they’re smart enough and creative enough to have a joyful life, whatever they choose.  And we know they’re among our best friends, our family, our companions.  

I scoop Kit up and carry her outside the house and up to the road to remind her that peeing takes place out-of-doors.  Instead of obediently squatting, she roots around until she finds another dog’s excrement, and dives in for a feast.  I sweep her up in my arms, and she takes to licking my face and nibbling my ears with her fecal breath.  “No biting,” I correct her, then put her down again.  And I remind myself over and over — It’s showing up that matters.  

And so, I keep showing up.  I clip on the leash.  She fights it like a shark on a line.  I let her drag it around the house, getting used to the weight.  On the next day I clip it on again.  And again.  And again.  And I ignore the bills, and I ignore the emails, and remind myself of Carol’s words.  This dog is a new companion.  If she is allowed to have the role, she will grow into it.  It worked for Spriggan.  It worked for Dusky, our yorkie-poodle cross.  It worked for two daughters.  

And then, one day, Kit wimpers at the door to go out.  And the day before she turns eight weeks old, she sits on command.  Then she learns to lies down, and to come when called.  She even learns to play fetch.  I’ve never seen a dog learn so fast.  Suddenly, I’m challenged with coming up with new things to teach her, and she’s begging for games and obedience practice. 

And on the morning of Kit’s eight-week birthday, I sit down across from Bob beside the fire.  My smile is broad, my body on fire with the excitement that comes from training success.  Maybe I really do know what I’m doing after all.  She tumbles over to him and stands between his slippered feet, gazing up at him adoringly.  He smiles down at her,  just as she squats to pee on the rug.  

This is the final blog for a few weeks.  I need some time off to train a puppy and take a vacation.  The cafe will be open through this Saturday, October 13, and will be closed for the remainder of the month, re-opening Saturday, November 3.