The Puppy Files: Punishment Walks

Welcome to yet another edition of The Puppy Files, a series in which I travel down memory lane to when I was an itty bitty little puppy with large gnashing teeth and a bad attitude.

As I've said before, I was a horrid little puppy growing up.  Ninety percent of any given day was spent inflicting pain (i.e. chewing on people) and causing trouble (i.e. pulling up hostas in the backyard).  And that last ten percent?  Dreaming about inflicting pain and causing trouble of course!  Anyway, because of the extent of my troublesome and rambunctious nature, my family would actively seek out ways in which to drain me of energy and, perhaps, exorcise a few demons in the process.  Their number one technique?  The punishment walk.

Punishment walks weren't like normal walks.  Normal walks consisted of a quick run to the local park and straight home.  Punishment walks consisted of a trip to the park followed by millions and millions of extra blocks which had us zigzagging through towns far and wide (my family would argue that these detours only took us a couple extra blocks out of our way).  Normal walks occurred daily in the morning with Pa.  Punishment walks took place any time of day (and sometimes multiple times a day).

No one in my family was exempt from taking me on a punishment walk, but Ma was always the person you had to watch out for.  You see, regardless of whether it was freezing cold, boiling hot, or raining outside, when Ma initiated a punishment walk, you knew that she wasn't going to lose interest in it before it actually occurred.  Pa and Sister, on the other paw, were more easily deterred by the weather; I had to be really annoying to push them out into a weather pattern they found less than ideal.

Avoiding the Gentle Leader

But, surprisingly, the seemingly endless hikes through the wind, rain, and heat weren't the worst part of my punishment walks.  No, the worst part was the use of a training device known as a Gentle Leader which fit over my snout and was designed to teach me how to walk nice on a leash (apparently, my family was not particularly keen on the idea of me pulling them down the street and jumping on their backs during walks...I can't image why).

I hated that Gentle Leader.  I hated everything about it from the indent it left in the fur of my snout to the fact that I pretty much had no choice but to walk nice when it was on me.  And did I ever protest its use!  Whenever someone put it on me I would throw myself down on the ground and refuse to get up.  Early on, when I was tiny, my family would just pick me up, get me back on all fours, and start walking at which point I had no choice but to follow, but as I got bigger, lifting me up became less and less of a viable fix.  It was at that point that my family resorted to bribery; they took advantage of the fact that I would do pretty much anything for a treat.  Unable to say no to my stomach, a cookie waved just out of reach would usually get me up and moving.  Curse my love of all things edible!

Over the years, the number of punishment walks I've been escorted on have lessened (note that I said lessened, I still occasionally have relapses in which my rambunctiousness tries my family's patience).  Lucky for me, though, the Gentle Leader is no longer used (and no, I didn't bury it in the backyard--though it did cross my mind).