115. VIDEO: Hot-cha-cha . . .

I used to love watching Barbara and her mare (whom she clicker-trained for years with a Joblike patience only she could sustain) dance-walking side by side in graceful harmony:  human thinks about taking a step forward, horse rocks forward expectantly; human steps backward, horse steps back in unison; human turns head or shoulder just a hair to the left, horse orchestrates all four legs for a left turn.  I always wanted to do that.

By matching paces in walking alongside each other, Gus and I are coming along nicely in our partnering.  Now, to develop even more precision and anticipation and synchrony, I’m introducing him to the cha-cha. (Full disclosure:  I have never danced one step, ever.  Not in any dance class, not on any dance floor, not even alone and furtive in my own home.  When I took “canine musical freestyle” classes and put on little recitals with my standard poodle, she did all the dancing: weaving through my legs, backing up in a circle, spinning and whirling.  Me, I marched around like a cyborg.)

To get us started, I teach Gus to walk “slow-slow” alongside me.  When he forges ahead, I drop my shoulders and head and exhale slowly, which helps slow him down.  When he takes just one slow footstep, I immediately click and treat.  As we go two and three paces at a time, I stay low and exaggeratedly match steps with him . . .  and after a few weeks he’s got it well figured out.  We can do slow-slow for several steps, then pick up a regular pace with “walk on!” and then sink into slow-slow again.  If he’s impatient, though, he plows ahead of me and then turns his head toward me and sidesteps crabwise, half in front and half at my side.  When that happens, I start over — sometimes briefly applying a go-away-face fingertip on his cheekbone, to keep his head from curling in toward me.

Recently, we’ve been mixing in a few backward steps as well: entering the ballpark of side-by-side cha-cha.  The next lesson, as Barbara reminds me (and this video shames me into seeing), is for me to stand up straight and still keep Gus’s pace slow and matched to mine.

Another next step is to refine the face-to-face version of our cha-cha.  Overeagerness on my part puts me too close to Gus, so that my walking forward becomes not so much a cue as an affront.  I’m invading his personal space, plus I’m asking him to cede ground and submit.  This ground-ceding is an issue in dog-training too.  At first, they need a hand on their chests or a human foot nearly trampling their paw before they’ll start to back up.  But at some point, the handlers need to send their dogs backward without crowding into their faces.  Once the animals get the idea and the humans can ease off a bit, the exercise morphs from a forced retreat to a willing performance.  

With Gus and our face-to-face cha-cha, I’ll go back to the drawing board, getting just one step of backup while my feet remain in place.  Then I’ll see if he can continue backing up another step or two before I take any steps forward.  A tiny bit of waiting on my part will give him time to accept the psychological pressure of being sent backward.  And leaving more space between us will ensure that the trick is a genuine partnering move, voluntary and gracious and fun.  I’m already using my arms placed akimbo as a cue, along with my verbal “ba-a-ack,” and he definitely grasps the basic idea of the trick, so we don’t need any bargeing or rushing.  Like any resolution, of course, this is easier said than done . . .