Best Friend

Those of you who read the paper regularly already know who this blog is about — our affable office canine, Norton.
Norton is a service dog, a beautiful yellow lab and golden retriever mix, who helps out Jerry Wolffe, our Voices of Disability columnist and West Oakland reporter.
I’m not sure how long it’s been, but it seems like Norton first came into the picture a few years ago.
It sure is nice to have a dog in the office.
At our morning news meetings, Norton reminds us all of us his presence — by no means intentional, though.
As he lays under the conference room table, he naps and, inevitably, begins dreaming. That’s probably when the noises begin, little grunts and stifled barks.
It’s nice to break from the serious news of the day and laugh at Norton’s rumblings.
One day, I walked into work early in the morning and only Jerry and a couple other people had arrived in the office. No one who sits in the row of desks before mine had arrived, and as I passed the empty aisle, something caught my eye.
“No, Norton, no!” I hollered, a knee-jerk reaction for me. “Bad dog! Drop it!”
The innocent-looking dog froze, staring at me while a staffer’s peanut butter sandwich was sticking half-way out of his mouth. A bit of napkin was hanging from his lip too.
Norton had quietly snuck away from Jerry, and of all the dogs I’ve met who are food motivated, Norton takes the cake.
While Jerry was rather upset at his dog’s antics, I couldn’t stop laughing.
It’s just not something I ever expected to do at work, and it’s a welcome bit of humor in my day.
I couldn’t be happier to have a canine co-worker!

Since I never had a dog of my own as a kid, I was quick to latch on to other kid’s dogs.
The other kids never seemed too interested in their dogs. I’d always try to incorporate their dog into whatever game we were playing; they’d look at me strangely and yell at their dog to go lay down.
Fortunately, I had a cousin who lived nearby and liked having her dog Rose around.
Rose was a sweet tempered Golden Retriever who, like most goldens, was very food motivated. She’d do just about anything for a treat.
Armed with our little hands full of dog treats, my cousin and I would set up obstacle courses for Rose. We’d make her jump over stuff, army crawl on her belly under stuff ... it was bonafide kid-designed agility course. Only we didn’t focus so much on the agility as we did just getting her to do the different things.
Rose always obliged. She tried hard to figure out what we were asking her to do, and she never let us down. There were, after all, treats in our hands.
We were effectively using a positive reward training method, but as kids, we didn’t know that. In our eyes, we were just bribing her to do stuff and kept it us from boredom. I did learn, though, that it was a good way to train a dog — nevermind the terminology.
As much as I enjoyed my relationship with Rose, I always longed for the kind of relationship she had with my Uncle.
It was the way that my Uncle interacted with Rose that really set a precedent for me.
I wanted to have that type of bond with a dog. More than a decade later, I still haven’t forgotten that.
Read more about my Uncle and his dog tomorrow.