The CAN

            Lucy is a big wuss.  She is afraid of a lot of things.  For anyone who read about our first expedition out on the streets running, you know that she is afraid of high pitched beeping noises.  She is afraid of fans of all kinds.  She is most intensely afraid of large box fans, but her fear also includes everything from small personal fans to most bathroom vents and all overhead oven vents.  She runs away from the spattering and sizzling of cold food hitting a very hot pan.  She doesn’t like large, loud crowds.  In general, she dislikes any sort of loud sound.

Although she is loveable and friendly and will warm up eventually to almost anyone, she can be picky about people she meets on the street.  She is fearful of children and their unpredictable, volatile energies.  She cowers away from small, elderly people who hobble a bit as they walk.  If you’re wearing a hat, she may not like you.  If you have a beard, she will probably be a bit stand-offish at first.  Throughout her short life, there have been 4 unrelated people (of varying ages, heights, genders, and ethnic backgrounds) that she simple will not let come anywhere near her.  The origin of this extreme aversion is unknown—the only commonality I’ve found is something that can only be described as an “odd” quality in their character and energies.

The list of Lucy’s fears and anxieties is endless, but what she is far and above afraid of more than anything else is noise.  As a puppy, I hesitated to use this fear against her.  I was still half-listening to the advice of the Clicker Lady who told me to only use positive reinforcement.  Then there was Cesar Millan, always telling me to assert my dominance and show Lucy who the alpha dog really was.  But up to the point where Lucy ate my pair of glasses and sent me into a panick-stricken spiral, neither of these methods had ever worked to stop her from stealing and eating all my stuff.  So after the destruction of the pair of glasses, I resorted to a method which, up until then, I’d considered to be cruel and unusual punishment for her. 

Growing up, my family mainly had Golden Retrievers.  Golden Retrievers are well behaved and easily trained for the most part.  However, one of our dogs, Abbey, which we got when I was in middle school, was prone to stealing things off of counters.  She wouldn’t do much with the things she stole—she was never nearly as destructive as Lucy could be—but it was still an annoyance my mother would not tolerate.  And so emerged the CAN (yes, all caps, because it is just that demanding of attention).

Abbey, who now rests peacefully in the ground
next to several other deeply loved pets (including my little
 Maya) at my parent's house in New York.

The CAN is an empty aluminum soda can filled with about 10-15 pennies and taped closed.  Simple, but highly effective.  When we first started with the can, we’d watch for Abbey to reach up to a countertop or tabletop and steal something, then toss the CAN near her.  The jarring sound of pennies flying around in an aluminum can is enough to make anyone take a second thought about what they’re about to do.  With time though, Abbey wizened up to the method and simply began stealing items when there were no humans around to throw CANs at her.  So then began the “traps.”  My mother, in her attempt to outsmart the dog, decided to start rigging traps for Abbey.  She’d place a sock just barely hanging off the edge of a table.  Tied to the end of the sock was a string.  This string was then stretched out of sight where it was attached to the tab of the CAN.  Now, when Abbey “stealthily” tried to steal from the counter top, a CAN would come tumbling down on top of her.  Traps were set up throughout the house.  I admit that we all experienced just a little satisfaction when we heard a CAN go crashing in a random corner of the house.  Eventually, the CAN served its purpose and was shelved with no further thought.

Until Lucy ate my glasses.  Suddenly, I couldn’t get my hands on a CAN soon enough.  The next day, once I could see again, I grabbed one of the empty beer cans out of the recycling, emptied some pennies out of my purse, and waited.  As soon as Lucy came running out of a bedroom, proudly showing her latest theft, I threw the CAN aiming to let it land right next to her.  However, the reaction was so immediate that she was gone before the CAN hit the ground.  As soon as she heard the pennies start rattling in the air, she began running.  Tail between legs, she dropped the thieved item, scurried to her safe haven in the bathroom and shook with fear chills for 10 minutes.

Did this make me a mean parent?  Did it put me in a bad light that I used my dog’s most extreme fear to make her behave?  If it did, I was beyond the point of caring.  SHE ATE MY GLASSES.  She was going to STOP eating things.  And this worked.

The next time she stole something, I repeated the action.  After the first two tosses, I didn’t even have to throw the CAN anymore.  The minute she appeared with a stolen item, all I had to do was pick up the CAN and shake it.  She didn’t need any sneaky traps, the sound of those pennies was so fear inducing that she quickly gave up on her favorite game of “chase me around the house, I have something you want!”  I made a few CANs and strategically placed them around the apartment so that they were handy when necessary.  But eventually, we reduced ourselves to one CAN.

The CAN was a miracle for me.  After 3 years of chasing and destruction, suddenly, after just a week or 2 of CAN training, life was peaceful.  Lucy was well behaved.  It was amazing.  I can’t say that she didn’t slip, but she got to the point where merely touching the CAN was enough to let her know that she needed to stop.  The sight of the CAN was enough for her to know that she was being watched.

It’s been almost 3 years since then.  There’s still a CAN hidden in my apartment, for those rare times when it may be needed.  But I don’t really touch it anymore.  I’m beginning to think that I may in fact need to get rid of it.  Sometimes, I’ll accidentally touch it, sending Lucy into a fearful sprint to hide in the bedroom.  We may, finally, have come to the point where we’ve outgrown the CAN completely.  And as happy as that makes me, it also makes me a little sad.  Because it means that Lucy is mature, which in turn means that Lucy is getting older.  She’ll be 6 years old in a few months—and I know that’s not that old, but it’s quite possible that Lucy has reached the halfway point in her life.  And I feel like there’s so much left that we have to do.  There’s so much life left to be lived, and I’m just not ready to begin thinking that Lucy is getting closer to the end of her life than she is to the beginning.  And so we’ve stumbled upon my CAN.  The passage of time…oh what an unrelenting enforcer.