A good friend recently gave notice that he wanted to retire from a job he’s had since he was just a tiny puppy. My dog Woody’s best friend Samson, who has never weighed as much as five pounds, has been going to work with my friend Leonora since he was a 3-week-old foster puppy—and recently, he started telling Leonora that he doesn’t want to go to work any more.

Leonora is an instructional assistant at the school in our county’s Juvenile Hall; she helps the kids there with their school work, which is no small feat in such a stressful environment. All of the students in this school have been in trouble with the law, and what’s more, most of them have come from extremely troubled families and are far, far behind in their grades’ educational standards (think high-school kids reading at the third-grade level).

When Leonora was fostering Samson and his five brothers for our local animal shelter, she asked her boss if she could bring the tiny puppies to work a few times, to have the kids help socialize the puppies. If this sounds scary to you, let me assure you that it was not; these tough kids, from hard-knock lives, took exquisite care of the pups—and early on, started rooting for Leonora to keep the tiniest one of the already small puppies. Leonora herself was also falling for the smallest pup; she didn’t need a lot of convincing that perhaps the fragile but determined puppy might be a special guy. I think that Samson was only about 8 weeks old when she decided that she was going to adopt him.

Impressed with the calming influence that the puppies had exerted on the students, Leonora’s bosses agreed with her request to bring Samson to work every day once she had adopted him. He had small beds in several locations, including in the staff office and on her desk in the classroom, but he also spent tons of time walking through the classroom and choosing students to spend time with. Before he was five months old, he was already showing great skill at finding the lap of students who were in a particularly emotionally vulnerable state and refusing to leave them.

Guards who worked in the housing section of juvenile hall sometimes came to the school wing to ask Leonora if Samson could come to visit a student who refused to leave their cell in the morning. Leonora would go with the guard and sit on the floor outside the kid’s room and ask how they were doing; would they like Samson to come and sit with them for a bit? She’d sit quietly as Samson would wag his way into the kid’s cell. He instinctively seemed to know whether scampering or approaching quietly was called for. Usually, after a time with Samson in their lap—this tiny infusion of nonjudgmental love and acceptance—the kid would feel up to facing his or her day in captivity and come out of their room for a meal or to join the other kids back in the school wing.

Leonora also used Samson as an instructional tool; she used him as an introduction to dozens of classroom lessons on topics from psychology and learning theory (she would demonstrate how to teach new behaviors with positive reinforcement, and let the students teach Samson new tricks) to what is required to responsibly care for others—rather pertinent for kids who had seldom received responsible care themselves, and even more so for the teens who are themselves already parents.

It wasn’t just the kids that Samson provided comfort and affection to; many of the staff members looked forward to interacting with the cheerful little dog when they crossed his path in the labyrinthine halls between the housing units, the exercise areas, and the school sections of Juvenile Hall. Samson had short daily visits with many of his friends and fans, from the jail guards in their heavy boots and stiff uniforms, to the teachers and counselors in the school, to the administrative staff in the office. Some would just say hi and give him a smile; others were compelled to pick him up and allow him to lick their beards or hands; others would ask him to perform his “tricks.” He is just so tiny and vulnerable, and so relentlessly good-natured and friendly, that few could resist responding to and interacting with him.

Though Samson is a naturally friendly guy, Leonora also invested in his “professional development,” taking him to group classes for puppies, adults, agility, and therapy dog training. She and Samson also became and maintained their status as certified Pet Partners—a registered therapy dog/handler team.

I have gotten to hear about all of this first-hand, because Leonora and I frequently walk our dogs together and my dogs often stay with her when I am out of town. But I’ve also gotten to see it for myself, because Leonora has invited me to come to Juvenile Hall as a guest speaker several times to talk to the kids about dog training. I took Otto, a couple of times. The Hall leadership has had a longstanding rule that disallows visits from any type of dog that is popular with gangs, so until very recently, my block-headed mixed-breed Woody was not allowed to come and be a demonstration dog, but scruffy Boone—who, according to the DNA tests, has more bully-breed representation in his genetic makeup than Woody, has been allowed in several times. Only a chance meeting between Leonora, me, my dogs, and the administrator of the Juvenile Hall school in the Hall parking lot got the administrator to say that Boone and Woody could come in for a visit. Boone and Woody both loved hanging out with and doing tricks for the kids—but Woody was not particularly comfortable with the sound of distant slamming doors; he would growl and his hair would stand up when he heard the booming and clanging sounds, and so I won’t bring him back again.

In contrast, for nine years, Samson has been happily working in this environment.

But very recently, Samson’s behavior has started to change. On some days, he started remaining in his bed as Leonora was getting ready for work, instead of running to and standing by the door, ready to jump in the car, like he’s done all previous nine years of his life; on those days, Leonora would let him stay home. But then, on some of the days when he had asked to go to work, Samson started standing by the door that leads to the employee parking lot long before the day was over, and refusing to come to her when Leonora called him back to the classroom or even the staff office.

After just a few iterations of this, Leonora told me, as well as her fellow staff members, that she was going to retire Samson. Several of them objected! But on one of Samson’s final days at Juvenile Hall, the school administrator also witnessed Samson’s refusal to come back to the classroom after a break outdoors, and he sadly backed Leonora’s decision to stop bringing Samson to work.

In a beautiful event, the staff threw Samson a retirement party. Leonora was stunned, teary and speechless, when they presented her with a plaque and certificate of appreciation for Samson’s contributions to the school.

Samson is still a happy, healthy guy. He still snuggles with his lifelong best friend Woody when Woody stays at Leonora’s house. He and Leonora still join me and my dogs on walks in our local wildlife area, and he still loves to meet and greet people when Leonora takes him with her on errands around town. He’s just dialed his social calendar down in favor of more time in his heated bed at home—and I have the utmost of respect and love for my friend Leonora for paying such close attention to and meeting that and every one of Samson’s other needs. I’m sure that the kids and staff—and Leonora herself—miss him during the weekdays. But as she told me, he’s earned his retirement a million times his tiny bodyweight.

Happy retirement, Samson!

I have been aware of the American Kennel Club’s Canine Good Citizen program for ages, and I always imagined that my dogs would rather easily pass the test. After all, I’ve put hundreds of hours into training them and consider them to be very friendly, well trained, and well-mannered.

An opportunity arose to take the test at my friend’s training center and I thought, “What the heck? Let’s get a title on these mutts!” Never mind that I opted for this opportunity two days before the test.

However, once I started looking over the specific behaviors to be tested, I identified two items that were likely to be our Achilles heel:

In the first, “Accepting a friendly stranger,” your dog is supposed to stay more or less still—at least, not move toward a person who approaches you and your dog and then greets you. If the dog steps in front of you to greet the person, he flunks, even if he is calm and doesn’t jump and isn’t unfriendly; he’s supposed to remain at your side. Shoot; both of my dogs are super friendly and very likely to move toward a person who greets me, if only to sniff their shoes and solicit petting.

In the second, the setup is essentially the same. You walk forward with your dog in a heel position, and a person walks toward you with their dog in a heel position; then both handlers stop and have a brief interaction. Both dogs are on the outside (as if passengers in the passenger seat of a car, with “drivers” stopped and talking to each other out the driver’s window). Your dog is not permitted to cross in front of you—either to greet, sniff, or menace the other person or their dog. I did think my dogs would be able to ignore the other dog, but again, I thought that it was likely that they would want to sniff or greet the other human. I was right about the test items that would be hardest for my dogs, but not the specific part of each challenge.

We practiced this behavior for, oh, at least two minutes apiece, in front of the training center right before the test. And guess what? That’s not enough practice time!

The results for both dogs (and me!) were identical; they flunked on the same item, “Reaction to Another Dog,” though I thought they would easily ignore the dog and be focused more on greeting the human. However, though they both displayed a brief interest in the human (whom, with prompting, they were able to keep themselves from greeting in the first test item (“Accepting a Friendly Stranger”), and happily got to know in item 2 (“Sitting Politely for Petting”) and #3 (Appearance and Grooming,” where the evaluator brushes the dog and examines his ears and each front foot), they both took too much interest in the other dog. Despite more prompting (my repeated use of the “Off!” cue), both stepped in front of me in an attempt to sniff or greet the other dog. Womp, womp, that’s a fail, even if they didn’t pull hard, leap about, or growl. They were supposed to stay at my side, and despite being cued to “Stay,” and “Off” (same as “Leave it”), they didn’t.

These results were not of great importance to me, but I do feel challenged now to sign up for the next local offering of this test, and actually train and practice for it. Though I feel that the expectations of the test should be within every dog’s easy ability to accomplish, clearly they take a bit more training and practice to pass, even with very well behaved dogs!

Note that at no time did I issue any sort of rebuke, tight leash, or yank of a “correction” to my dogs, even though it’s likely that both of them would have readily heeded my “Off!” cue had I been more intense about it. Passing at any cost wasn’t the point; if I couldn’t get them to pay attention to and perform the desired behaviors for my normal cues and tone, then I need to practice this with them. And the truth is, I so seldom walk them on leash in the presence of strangers and strange dogs that we effectively have only rarely practiced these specific behaviors. Having the expectation of certain behaviors without practicing them is just dumb!

Even though this was a formal test in a controlled and artificial setting, the experience was a great reminder to me that it’s not smart to have expectations of our dogs for behaviors that we don’t specifically practice! We expect them to generalize their knowledge about things (such as “Stay” and “Off”), but if we don’t practice these behaviors in a wide array of conditions, we certainly can’t blame them for failing to demonstrate them under different conditions than the few environments and situations we do practice in.

Boone, Woody, and I will be practicing to ace that CGC as soon as we possibly can.

Do you think you and your dogs could pass this test?