Dog Reform School Answers Prayers Of Desperate Owners

WEST REDDING, Conn. - The Mercedes and Land-Rovers start arriving on campus at midday. The freshmen are easy to spot. Their nervousness is a dead giveaway. So is their matching luggage.

Returning students are cooler. They hop casually out of their cars, yawning and stretching. But the minute they see Sharon Lanoue, their nonchalance gives way to excitement. They bound up to her with goofy grins, demanding attention, delighted to be back.

A few even manage to lick her face.

And if their families tend to get choked up saying goodbye, Sharon understands. "It's far easier to send your kid to prep school than it is to send your dog to Canine College," she says.

Canine College has been boarding and training dogs for nearly half a century. But to call this place a kennel would be like calling Buckingham Palace a house.

Canine College can board up to 55 dogs at a time; nonetheless, there's still a two-month wait to get in. Not all students come by car. Some fly in, mostly from the West Coast or Florida. The college dispatches cars to the airport to meet them.

AIR-CONDITIONED ROOMS

Once here, dogs sleep in heated or air-conditioned rooms that open out onto private 30-foot runs. They bring toys, beds, bones, blankets and pillows, not that they spend all their time in their rooms. When they're not being fed, walked, bathed, groomed, or trained, they may be out playing fetch, swimming or running the obstacle course with one of the college's eight staff members. All that for $22 a day; $27 for puppies, giant breeds or any dog needing a little extra attention.

There's just one rule for boarders: "The dog has to look and feel better leaving than he did when he came in," says Sharon, 45, who lives on the property and runs it with her husband, Mickey. Her mother lives here, too, and helps out in a pinch.

This is more than a posh boarding kennel. It's also a training camp for puppies and a reform school for dogs gone bad. Some of the most hardened canine criminals have passed through these crates. Dogs like . . . Seymour Dryden.

A wire-haired dachshund, Seymour sauntered into Canine College like so many before him, with a long rap sheet and a bad attitude. His crimes were legion: He jumped in the car and scarfed up all the groceries. He leaped on the counter and stole taco cheese. He frequently made his owner cry.

From stealing, he progressed to biting, a capital offense. He bit members of his own family. It gets worse. He bit the kids.

"I called all these specialists; none was hopeful," says his owner, Judy Dryden of Wilton. "They said, `He's just going to get worse. You may as well have him put to sleep.' We were so sad.

"I packed up all his papers and his vaccination records and his little plastic shoe. We were going to take him to Dachshund Rescue in Massachusetts. But we were a mess. He was part of the family. It would have tormented us forever to send him away."

At the eleventh hour, the phone rang. No, it wasn't the governor. It was Canine College returning Judy's call.

"I was very depressed," Judy says. "Sharon listened and she didn't make me feel bad. She just explained that we'd spoiled him rotten. She said he didn't know where he fit in in the hierarchy, and that we needed to start at square one."

It was a relief dropping Seymour off for his five-week training course. "Sharon took him and said, `I don't even want to see you.' It felt good to be separated. He was just such a problem," Judy says.

TAKING `TOUGH LOVE' APPROACH

For Seymour, Sharon took a "Tough Love" approach. He was fed and cared for, but for a while, his contact with people was limited.

"I had spent hours petting him," says Judy. "I'm home all day and I always had my hands on the dog. He'd be in my lap when I was watching TV, or he'd be next to me sitting on the furniture."

That was the problem, Sharon says. "Seymour's owners never expected anything from him. He was easy to pick up and hold on your lap. As a result, he felt he was more important than the kids."

Like most dogs, Seymour didn't become biter overnight, she says. "A dog builds up his bravado. First there's the barking stage. Then he takes a few steps toward the person. That happens at about one year. The next step is biting."

Canine College is seeing more and more biters. Some owners fail to heed the warning signs. Others buy breeds they can't handle. And many never teach their dogs basic obedience or correct them when they misbehave.

Those who do train their dogs often make other mistakes. They confuse them by giving the same word two meanings. They waste precious time reading how-to books before correcting misdeeds. They shriek commands at dogs that are already overexcited. Instead, they should behave with exaggerated calm.

Some can't bring themselves to discipline their dogs at all. They resign themselves to living with problems that should be corrected - excessive barking, destructive chewing, even biting.

`DOGS SEEK AUTHORITY'

"Americans want to be liked, even by their dogs," Sharon says. "But dogs seek authority, approval through praise. The owner has to learn how to supervise. The dog has to learn how to behave."

For Seymour, that meant learning to respond to a half-dozen simple commands: sit, stay, down, heel, come, no. For Judy, it meant keeping Seymour off the furniture and making him earn her approval.

After several weeks of training, Seymour was ready to show off what he'd learned. As Judy watched at one end of the training hall, Sharon put Seymour through his paces at the other. His pride was apparent. "It's like seeing a child go to baseball camp or karate," says Sharon. "It does similar things for their self-esteem. It affirms who they are."

In periodic sessions over the next couple of weeks, the Drydens learned how to work with Seymour. He learned that he had to mind them, too.

Three years have passed. Seymour still responds flawlessly to the commands he learned in school.

Like most college educations, Seymour's didn't come cheap. The five-week program costs $1,800; the three-week class is $1,200. But for the Drydens, it was a small price to pay to save Seymour.