Ernie is healthy, wealthy, and abused.
Ernie, a fluffy, 10-week-old Golden Getriever with
heart-melting eyes, was originally a birthday present. The lucky recipient was
Danielle, a pony-tailed 11-year-old living in an affluent Westchester, N.Y.,
suburb.
Danielle's passions for some time had been soccer,
Justin Timberlake, and instant messaging, but her parents wanted to give her a
different kind of birthday gift, "something that you didn't plug in or
watch, something that would give her a sense of responsibility." She'd
often said she'd love a puppy and vowed to take care of it.
Girl and dog, growing up together - what parent hasn't
pictured it? Her folks envisioned long family walks around the neighborhood,
Ernie frolicking on the lawn while they gardened. They could see him riding
along to soccer games.
Acquiring a dog completed the portrait that had been
taking shape for several years, beginning with the family's move to the suburbs
from Brooklyn. The package included a four-bedroom colonial, a lawn edged with
flowering shrubs, a busy sports schedule, a Volvo wagon and a Subaru Outback to
ferry the kids around. A dog - a big, beautiful hunting breed - came with the
rest of it, increasingly as much a part of the American dream as the picket
fence or the car with high safety ratings.
So Danielle's parents found a breeder online with lots
of awards, cooed over the adorable pictures, and mailed off a deposit on a pup.
They drove to Connecticut
It was love at first sight. Danielle and her friends
spent hours passing the adorable puppy from one lap to another. Ernie slept
with her that night. Over the next two or three weeks, she spent hours cuddling
with him, playing tug of war, and tossing balls while her parents took photos.
But the dog did not spark greater love of the outdoors
or diminish her interest in television, iPod, computer, and cell phone. Nor did
his arrival slow down Danielle's demanding athletic schedule; with practices,
games, and victory celebrations, soccer season took up three or four afternoons
a week. Anyway, she didn't find the shedding, slobbering, chewing, and maturing
Ernie quite as cute as the new-puppy version.
Both of Danielle's parents worked in the city and
rarely got home before 7 p.m.
on weekdays. The household relied on a nanny/housekeeper from Nicaragua who
wasn't especially drawn to dogs and viewed Ernie as stupid, messy, and, as he
grew larger and more restive, mildly frightening.
Because nobody was home during the day, he wasn't
housebroken for nearly two months and even then, not completely. No single
person was responsible for him; nobody had the time, will, or skill to train
him.
As he went through the normal stages of retriever
development - teething, mouthing, racing frantically around the house, peeing
when excited, offering items the family didn't want retrieved, eating strange
objects and then vomiting them up - the casualties mounted. Rugs got stained,
shoes chewed, mail devoured, table legs gnawed. The family rejected the use of
a crate or kennel - a valuable calming tool for young and energetic dogs - as
cruel. Instead, they let the puppy get into all sorts of trouble, then scolded
and resented him for it. He was "hyper," they complained,
"wild," "rambunctious." The notion of him as annoying and
difficult became fixed in their minds; perhaps in his as well.
A practiced trainer would have seen, instead, a golden
retriever that was confused, under-exercised, and untrained - an ironic fate
for a dog bred for centuries to be calm and responsive to humans.
Ernie did not attach to anybody in particular - an
essential element in training a dog. Because he never quite understood the
rules, he became increasingly anxious. He was reprimanded constantly for
jumping on residents and visitors, for pulling and jerking on the leash when walked.
Increasingly, he was isolated when company came or the family was gathered. He
was big enough to drag Danielle into the street by now, so her parents and the
housekeeper reluctantly took over. His walks grew brief: outside, down the
block until he did his business, then home. He never got to run much.
Complaining that he was out of control, the family
tried fencing the back yard and putting Ernie outside during meals to keep him
from bothering them. The nanny stuck him there most of the day as well, because
he messed up the house. Allowed inside at night, he was largely confined to the
kitchen, sealed off by child gates.
The abandonment and abuse of dogs is an enormous issue
in the animal rights movement, and quite properly. There are, by U.S. Humane
Society estimates, as many as 10 million dogs languishing in shelters; the
majority will be euthanized. But Ernie is an abused dog, too.
Nobody is likely to talk much about Ernie, the kind of
dog I saw frequently while researching several books. His abusers aren't
lowlifes who mercilessly beat, starve, or tether animals. Quite the opposite:
His owners are affluent, educated people who consider themselves humanistic and
moral. But they've been cruel nonetheless, through their lack of
responsibility, their neglect, their poor training, and their inattention.
I've seen Ernie numerous times over the past two
years. I've watched him become more detached, neurotic, and unresponsive. I've
seen the soul drain from the dog's eyes.
He's affectionate and unthreatening, but he doesn't
really know how to behave - not around his family or other people, not around
other animals, not around me or my dogs. He lunges and barks almost
continuously when anyone comes near, so few of us do. Increasingly, he gets
confined to his back yard, out of sight and mind.
This family was shocked and outraged when I suggested
that the dog was suffering from a kind of abuse and might be better off in a
different home. "Nobody hits that dog," sputtered Danielle's father.
"He gets the best dog food, he gets all his shots." All true.
But he lacks what is perhaps the most essential
ingredient in a dog's life: a human who will take emotional responsibility for
him.
Sadly, I see dogs like Ernie all the time, victims of
a new, uniquely American kind of abuse, animals without advocates. Dogs like
Flash, a Westchester border collie who spent her days chasing invisible sheep
beyond a chain link fence, and Reg, an enormous black Lab in Atlanta who, like
Ernie, was untrained, grew neurotic and rambunctious, and eventually was
confined to the family playroom day and night. He leaves that room for several
brief walks each day.
Who knows how many Ernies and Regs there are in urban
apartments and suburban backyards? Few media outlets or animals rights groups
would classify a $1,200 purebred as a candidate for rescue. In fact, I've
contacted rescue groups to see if they could help; they were sympathetic, but
they felt more comfortable with traditional kinds of abuse. A situation like
this - emotional mistreatment is not illegal - was beyond their purview.
I understand, but Ernie haunts me. He may be the most
abused dog I know.
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