Blaze Gets Trained by Angels (by Foley Monster)

 

 

2013 marks ten years since I have gone to the Bridge. To celebrate, I founded The Foley Monster School for Troubled Dogs and enlisted several friends to be teachers. Today we met with our first student: Blaze. 

I had quite a group of professors: Tommy Tunes, Blaze’s angel brother Max, Geordie, and a professor training Freddy Girl. Our mission was to teach Blaze not to pull on her leash, knock her mom over, runoff, and let the poor women sleep through the night. I knew it might take several sessions. Human training was not working, and that is why we were needed. 

Max, who had recruited Blaze after the former had gone to the Bridge and thought his replacement understood to be gentle with their mom, awoke our student. Blaze jumped up, saw the angels with their tails and fur raised, then relaxed when she saw it was Max. Blaze’s bottom dropped when he recognized the stern look on Max’s face. Knowing why he was getting visited by one more ghost than Scrooge received immediately told Max that he was sorry for injuring their mom when she charged after a cat on a walk and knocked their mom over.

Max said he knows Blaze had a good heart and would never purposefully hurt a soul, but she was still ruled by her instincts, leading her astray.

Professor Tunes began the training. Max stood behind Blaze, holding a leash attached to the trainee’s collar. Geordie, Freddy, and I pretended to be critters running back and forth in front of her, and Blaze did not move an inch. We congratulated ourselves on our fantastic teaching ability when Blaze suddenly began running, pulling Tommy onto his face, and dragging him several feet.

Blaze slipped the leash and ran off into his dreams. When we asked him what had happened, Blaze said she had smelled a cat. She was more likely to run from scent than from sight. I noted that one of us would have to smell like a cat next time.

“How do we do that?” Freddy asked.

“Sleep in the litter box for a week,” Geordie answered.  

I didn’t think we would get dog volunteers, so we would need a cat next time. We decided to move on to practicing sleeping. We told Blaze all she needed to do was go to sleep. She said it would be easy. She shut her eyes.

We all fell into a nice snooze for 20 minutes before Blaze excitedly woke us up to tell us about her sleep, then repeated it every 10 minutes until she was napping and we were all awake.

We would have to go back and develop a new plan for Blaze. She was wild and untamable but very sweet, and her mom loved her. We needed to make Blaze a little easier to love. 

And if that doesn’t work, do what humans do with their kids and find a good pharmacist.