Jenya and Laszlo
Like many people who get obsessed with dog training, my journey started with a problem dog: my big red Doberman Laszlo, who my husband and I found in the city pound. He was about 18 months and his history was unknown, but we discovered shortly after bringing him home that he was dangerous with both dogs and humans. He sent a cat to the hospital, would fight any dog he came into contact with, and bit a friend of mine. None of my earlier dog experience had taught me how to deal with this level of aggression—I had no idea how much I didn’t know. In the next year we consulted five different trainers (after the first one told me to take the dog back to the pound). I learned management and handling skills, received both bad and good advice. But I was always left with a basic disconnect, a deeper level I could not reach. I always had to be vigilant. My relationship with my dog was stressful and conflicted.
One day a Google search led me to Natural Dog Training and I scheduled a phone consultation with Kevin Behan. I decided to make the trek to Vermont to work in person and showed up on his farm in the summer of 2009.
I was tied in knots of confusion about all the conflicting models of dog training, frustrated with the lack of real progress and tired of fighting. Working with Kevin was the first time I felt what it means to truly honor a dog’s nature without conflict or judgment, to really connect with your dog.
It’s hard to sum up in only a few words the sea change in my life and perception that resulted from my collision with Kevin’s point of view. It didn’t happen all at once, but like a river flooding a delta its tendrils unfolded in my life to saturate everything. In the short term, it was an anchor to hold on to in order to not give up on my dog. There were years of hard work after I left, and somehow I always had to learn everything the hard way. There were tears and self-doubt and rage. There were moments when I felt I was going on blind faith, like a spelunker squeezing into a passageway too tight to turn around, unable to see the end of the tunnel.
In the long term, being able to embrace nature and the world from an immediate-moment perspective changed me in fundamental ways that went far beyond the scope of dog training. In aligning with my dog’s true nature, I was able to align with my own. In softening my dog, I was able to open and soften myself. In strengthening my dog, I grew in my own emotional capacity. I’m not sure who I’d be if I hadn’t ended up with a problem dog who cracked my world open. I do know I’d rather be me than her.
Laszlo died in December 2017 a beloved and greatly mourned companion. No one believed in his later years he was the demon-dog in the stories we told of his early days.
