“You’re not the boss, the dog trainer said to me.  “You think you’re the boss but you’re not.  Chelsea is.”  I looked at Sue, our new dog trainer, in disbelief.  “But she did everything I asked – perfectly!”  I protested.  Chelsea, my yellow lab mix, just grinned.

Twenty minutes earlier, I had arrived at Sue’s house with my two dogs, Teddy and Chelsea.  She had me bring them into her side yard along with her German Shepherd, Oscar, to see how they all interacted. Sue instructed me to call them over, have them sit and lie down.  I thought it was going great.  Teddy had watched me, listened and done what I asked.  Chelsea had also followed my commands.  So, what could be wrong?

“Chelsea didn’t look at you once,” Sue said.  A dog who knows that you are in charge will look right at you to see what you want next.  “Not Chelsea,” she went on. “She knows she’s the boss.”  I looked at Chelsea.  Now that I didn’t need her to, she met my gaze and held it.  Again, she grinned and grinned.

We went home with only one training exercise.  Every time that Chelsea and Teddy wanted to go in the back yard, they had to look at me before I opened the door.  Every time I fed them or gave them a treat, they had to meet my gaze first.  Chelsea fought this every step of the way. She made me wait until she was ready to look at me or she would sit docilely for her food, looking at a spot somewhere over my head.  It took three long days until she decided — and she made it clear that she was the one deciding—to do the training exercise.  She looked at me, she stared and I swear one time she winked.  She owned it and made it hers.

We had met Sue by accident.  I was walking Teddy and Chelsea (or they were walking me) on the day we passed Sue, with her dog Oscar and two smaller dogs.  She told all three of her own dogs to sit and wait and they were like polite statues, frozen in place while we walked by.  Chelsea yanked us over to say hi, while Teddy tried to sniff a tree in the opposite direction.  I asked, “How did you get your dogs to do that?” Sue looked at me with sympathy and said, “I’m a dog trainer.  Would you like my card?”  I grabbed it and that’s how we ended up at her house, where I was told I was not the boss.

I had seen Chelsea’s online picture and read that she had been pulled from a high-kill shelter in the nick of time.  She was scheduled to be sold the next day to a research facility that used dogs for cosmetic and medical product trials.  The rescue said she was just too nice a dog to have a fate like that. I agreed and clicked the “apply for adoption” button.  There was no mention of bossiness in her online profile.

It became clear that while Chelsea became happy to follow my lead and listen politely to what I asked of her, she never quite believed that anyone was the boss of her.  She was smart, exuberant and a heart-winner.  She lived in harmony with life, expanding her love for everyone and everything in her world each day.  She would look into my eyes, giving me her joyous grin, saying “Life’s better when we’re a team and nobody is the big boss.”