The Importance of No

By Vidhya Karthikeyan, The Unlikely Tricksters

My dinky 25 kilogram lurcher, Beanie, isn’t the kind of dog you can physically maneuvre. If you’re lucky, the least you’d get is that distinctive Lurcher Scream of Death. The worst you’d get is bitten.

Now imagine standing on a field, amidst at least twenty dogs and their owners happily enjoying their evening walk, with Beanie’s blood-curling screams piercing the air every time he tried to put his hind paw down on the ground after an otherwise routine romp in the woods. Imagine my panic and embarrassment as a new dog owner for not having any way of getting close to my dog’s paw to even figure out what’s wrong. The car was at least 200 metres away. We weren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Lucky for us, a dog walker came to our rescue and swiftly pulled out the pine needle in his paw after strategically muzzling him using his lead.

That is the moment I realised the importance of husbandry training.