Free Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua Page B

flabbergasted, Jed pointed out that Coco could also sit and fetch and that she excelled at Frisbee.
    Unfortunately, that was all Coco could do. She didn’t respond to the command “Come.” Worse, unless it came from Jed—who had early on demonstrated his dominance as the alpha male in the household—Coco didn’t respond to the command “No,” which meant that she ate pencils, DVDs, and all my nicest shoes. Whenever we had a dinner party, she’d pretend to be asleep in the kitchen until the appetizers were brought out. Then she’d dart to the living room, grab a whole pâté, and gallop around in circles, the pâté flapping and getting progressively smaller as she chomped away. Because she was so fast, we couldn’t catch her.
    Coco also wouldn’t walk; she only sprinted at top speed. This was a problem for me, because I did all the dog walking, which in our case meant being dragged at fifty miles per hour, often straight into a tree trunk (when she was chasing a squirrel) or someone else’s garage (when she was chasing a squirrel). I pointed all this out to my family, but none of them seemed concerned. “I don’t have time.... I need to practice piano,” Sophia mumbled. “Why does she need to walk?” Lulu asked.
    Once, when I came back from a “walk” with my elbows scraped and my knees grass-stained, Jed said, “It’s her Samoyed nature. She thinks you’re a sled, and she wants to pull you. Let’s forget about teaching her to walk. Why don’t we just get a cart that you can sit in and have Coco pull you around?”
    But I didn’t want to be the neighborhood charioteer. And I didn’t want to give up. If everyone else’s dog could walk, why couldn’t ours? So I alone took on the challenge. Following my books, I led Coco around in circles in my driveway, rewarding her with pieces of chopped steak if she didn’t pull. I made ominous low sounds when she didn’t obey, and high reaffirming sounds when she did. I took her for walks down half a block that lasted forever because I had to stop short and count to thirty every time the leash went taut. And finally, after all else failed, I took a tip from a fellow Samoyed owner and bought an elaborate harness that pressed against Coco’s chest when she pulled.
    Around that time, my glamorous friends Alexis and Jordan came to visit from Boston with their elegant sable-colored dogs, Millie and Bascha. Sisters and Australian shepherds, Millie and Bascha were the same age as Coco but smaller and sleek. Millie and Bascha were amazingly on the ball. Obviously herding dogs, they worked as a team and kept trying to herd Coco, who looks a bit like a sheep—and around Millie and Bascha, acted like a sheep. Millie and Bascha are always looking for an angle. They can do things like unlock doors and open spaghetti boxes—things that would never even occur to Coco.
    “Wow,” I said to Alexis that evening over drinks. “I can’t believe Millie and Bascha got themselves water by turning on our garden hose. That’s impressive.”
    “Australian shepherds are like Border collies,” Alexis said. “Maybe because of their herding background, they’re supposed to be really smart, at least according to the rankings on those Web sites, which I’m not sure I buy.”
    “Rankings? What rankings?” I poured myself another glass of wine. “How do Samoyeds rank?”
    “Oh . . . I can’t remember,” Alexis said uncomfortably. “I think the whole idea of rating dogs by intelligence is silly anyway. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
    The moment Alexis and Jordan left, I rushed to my computer and did an Internet search for “dog intelligence rankings.” The most hits were for a list of the “10 Brightest Dogs,” produced by Dr. Stanley Coren, a neuropsychologist at the University of British Columbia. I scrolled down the list, frantically looking for “Samoyed” to appear. It didn’t. I found an expanded list. Samoyeds were ranked #33 out of 79—not the dumbest dog