It’s a sticky afternoon in June and I’m standing in a manicured field in Long Island. There’s a leash attached to my belt loop. On the other end of the leash is a blonde woman named Mandi barking out commands.
“Go left, doggie! Now sit… SIT!! I SAID SIT!”
My threadbare Target sneakers sink into the grass and I survey the half dozen other dog-human pairs on the lawn. To my left is a team of exuberant Finns, shouting increasingly ludicrous commands at their own leashed human. To my right, a Manhattan socialite’s leash dangles idly in her hand as she pauses to check her texts. Weaving her way through the cloud is our workshop leader, a world-renowned dog trainer known for her application of Buddhist theory to dog aggression. She nervously fiddled with her Janet Jackson headset mic as she glides towards us, her yoga bellbottoms skirting the grass.
I shift my weight to one side and toss my head over my shoulder to address my sadistic walker. I flash a disarming smile. “Is it ok if I don’t crawl right now?”
*
After half a decade of working in high kill shelters, wrangling aggressive dogs and investigating animal abuse, I was selected out of the blue by my professional mentor to attend an elite dog training seminar at no cost. This was a bright spot in an otherwise bleak career, a daily routine of watching formerly beloved pets suffer and turn to dust, then trekking back to my bare-walled rented room in Crown Heights. I spent the next few weeks anticipating this once-in-a-lifetime chance to learn from one of the best trainers in the world.
I wake up the first morning of the seminar before dawn, tumbling out of my apartment and onto Nostrand Avenue in the dark to make my way to the Long Island Railroad. This is the first time that I’ve been out earlier than the Trini matrons serving steaming hot doubles on the corner, and the emptiness of the normally bustling street is unnerving. I wince at the cost of the weekly unlimited card from Brooklyn to the far end of Long Island, but convinced that this is probably a great opportunity and I’m being a whiny baby, I board the next Long Island-bound train and slouch into an empty seat.
Two hours later, I arrive at the Walt Whitman birthplace, our classroom for the week. I’m fifteen minutes late, and when I walk in I’m confronted by a sea of frowning white faces. I break out into an apologetic smile as I shuffle to an empty seat in the back. On my way there, I’m unceremoniously handed a hefty packet detailing the week’s activities, which are scheduled in 20-minute intervals. I lean over to the woman next to me. “I’m as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I’m as good as the best, rite? Whitman quotes, ehh??” I say with a nudge. I’m met with a blank stare.
*
The workshop leader is at the front of the classroom assigning teams. She stutters names into her Janet Jackson mic from a crumpled printout that she grips in her sweaty hands. “The final group will be… Mandi.. ummmm ::crumples::, Shuyen… ahhhhh ::nervous cough:: and… Kelly! Oh, also Shuyen, she came all the way from Taiwan to join us! So uh… welcome, Shuyen?” She hastily jams the sweaty papers under her arms to clap. Murmurs arise from the group, along with some piecemeal applause. Shuyen bolts up in her seat in the front row, misinterpreting this as an opportunity to introduce herself.
“Hello, everyone, I am Shuyen, I have a Golden Retriever, I love Golden Retrievers, I am a Golden Retriever trainer in Taiwan. I am so happy to be here, and I want to see Times Square after today is over!” She grins and waves vigorously at the crowd, and is met with a few condescending chuckles.
The workshop leader launches into a breakdown of her methods: a grab bag of New Age healing, pop psychology, and general observations made about her own dog, an elderly lab named Goober. By lunch, we learn that the core competencies of Dog Buddhism are as following:
- Dog walks are guided meditation sessions.
- Always let the dog decide how long they want to meditate, and which path they want to take to enlightenment.
- When in doubt, try some leash reiki.
In short, we are expected to turn bad dogs into bodhisattvas in 5 days.
We watch what feels like hours of boring home videos of Goober aimlessly wandering practicing mindfulness in the Alaskan wilderness. Questions are raised about the practicality of Dog Buddhism in New York City. They go unanswered.
As we move to the sprawling backyard for the hands-on segment of the day, I realize that my free attendance at this seminar comes with a catch. In the interest of sparing actual dogs from the discomfort of being used as a teaching tool, the auditors like myself are to replace them – by literally being led around on a leash and mimicking the actions of an actual dog. I’m to be completely silent for the duration of the week in order to accommodate the registrants like Mandi and Shuyen, who paid $3,700 to attend.
On the way home each day, sunburnt and sweaty, I pore over the lecturer’s widely published books and lecture materials, wondering whether this is a scam, a cult, a pyramid scheme, or a brilliant exercise that will lead to personal enlightenment. I practice the leash reiki on my evening walks with my own dog, to no avail – a cat darts out from an adjacent bush and as I try to relay gentle finger suggestions that he rethink his mental orientation, the leash slips out of my hands. He rumbles after the cat and out of sight. He eventually does succumb to mindfulness; in what was surely an attempt to respect the cat’s opposing path, he tramps back around the corner five minutes later covered in burrs and the stench of hot garbage. Maybe I’m missing something, I think, as we amble back home through the dimly lit side streets, the day’s heat radiating from the cracked pavement and amplifying the trash smell.
*
It’s finally the last day of my personal hell, and Mandi is taking an uneasy pleasure in the act of forcing me, a young black woman, to my knees. Her commands have been escalating in scope. “Flip onto your back and roll around!” she cries out as I attempt to scale a small hill. “Stop and scratch your ear!!!” She doubles over with laughter as I look plaintively towards the workshop leader, who shrugs her shoulders and directs her attention towards a paying customer.
As the excruciating afternoon draws to a close, Shuyen pulls me aside. “I want to say something, just you, alone,” she implores in halting English.
I don’t remember the exact details of her impassioned speech, but here are the phrases that I was able to decipher through my white hot rage:
- Black skin is disgusting; as if it is dirty and cannot be washed clean.
- She makes a scrubbing gesture to ensure that this doesn’t get lost in translation.
- Most black people are homeless, or they are rappers, or they are both.
- She met some once, on a day spent volunteering in a soup kitchen.
- My black skin is lighter, which indicates that I must try my hardest to bathe.
- Which is commendable.
- She was so happy to know me because I was the first black person she had ever seen smile.
The blood rushes to my head, and for the first time in five days I’m able to mutter a single phrase – “Thank you” – before I turn and calmly rush out of the building with hot tears streaming down my face. A few minutes later, my phone lights up with a text from Mandi.
“Yo, where u at, its time to LEASH UP LMFAO xx”
I stormed back to the unshaded field, but this time without my signature smile. I drag through the remainder of the exercises. Triumphant trainers, demonstrating their newly-minted mindful dog walking techniques, are barely able to contain their excitement to take on the streets of Manhattan with an aura of enlightenment. When it comes time for her final presentation, Shuyen stands up before the entire class and reiterates my ability to re-author her black disgust. I sit silently, my mouth twisted into a shape that someone from another planet might maybe refer to as a smile, looking around to see my outrage (or even mild discomfort?) reflected in the faces of the other attendees. Instead, they offer wan applause, then turn away to chat or glance at their phones.
I stand up, collect my stuff, and walk out.
The next day, as I hunch over my bedroom desk scrolling through my Facebook feed with glazed eyes, I’m startled when a photo of myself pops up. There I am, stooped over on a verdant lawn with a leash tied to my belt loop. Mandi, the subject of the photo, is towering behind me, hand on her hip, head thrown back, sporting a triumphant smile. I click on the photo to zoom in and see my face, glistening in a sweaty sheen, turned towards the camera. My mouth is buckled into an uneasy grimace.
I untag myself.
Oh, my GOD. (I have no other words, but this is brilliantly written.)
This is horrible and I am so sorry.
I just want to say how impressive your writing is before I slip into a comatose rage on your behalf. Oh my god. Oh my GOD.
update: I like to imagine the cute spaniels in the header image are gazing with bewilderment & disgust at the other workshop participants
I’m not a dog person, but those definitely look like “GET US OUT OF HERE” expressions to me.
Thank God for those adorable spaniels, because being able to scroll back up and look at cute dogs was great when I took a break from reading to let the rage-cloud dissipate.
WUT.
I commend you for putting up with this spectacle for the entire time – and thank you for sharing the story you were able to get out of it. But dear lord, what a fucked up group of people you endured there.
WHAT. This is so unbelievable and believable at once. Wow.
*speechless*
jesus actual christ
Oh my god that whole seminar was wrong on so many levels!!! I’m sorry all you got out of it was this writing opportunity.
(Contemplates peeing on the various idiots involved)
I’m a firm advocate of peeing on these sorts of people.
Wow, what the FUCK.
what the fucking fuck
NO THIS CANNOT BE AN ACTUAL THING THAT HAPPENED
I FULLY ENDORSE BURNING THE WORLD DOWN
WHAT
THE
ACTUAL
FUCK
WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE
I read the Curious George piece, and I was like, “well, at least that’s the most horrifying thing I’ll read all day!” but I was wrong.
You’re a better person than I am for being able to relate this without dissolving into profanity and finally incoherent rage. No one should have to go through that.
I was chuckling over
By lunch, we learn that the core competencies of Dog Buddhism are as following:
Dog walks are guided meditation sessions.
Always let the dog decide how long they want to meditate, and which path they want to take to enlightenment.
When in doubt, try some leash reiki.
In short, we are expected to turn bad dogs into bodhisattvas in 5 days.
And then I got to It’s finally the last day of my personal hell and everything that follows and I was just like … WHAT. THE. FUCK. EVEN. IS. THAT.
I am so, so sorry that any of it happened to you.
IKR? I would buy “dog walks are guided meditation sessions for HUMANS; let the dog teach you how to live in the moment”, but I don’t know that dogs really meditate.
Dogs don’t need to meditate–although they aren’t quite the Zen Masters that felines tend to be, they very much live in the Present.
I was laughing along, too, until things took a turn into the Twilight Zone.
I — I would not believe that this is real because it’s just SO BAD, except for the fact that some of the most appallingly not-self-aware racists I know are also… the most into New Age garbage. Because if you have Lululemon mala beads you can’t be racist, right? You even have like two black friends!*
*One of whom you see once annually, the other a guy who once (briefly) played in a band you were in in the 90’s.
Horrified but somehow not entirely surprised. This is the world we live in. One were shit like this happens. Yeah, some cleansing fire sounds real nice right now.
I am choking on my rage right now. What the fuuuuuuuuck.
what, how, what, I just, how are there so many different ways for people to be terrible
Dear sweet Jesus.
My brain has stopped. Just stopped. If anyone needs me they can put any urgent messages through to the nearest convenient medium please thanks.
sweet fuckety christ, ban humans.
Honestly, I think this is a good opportunity to name and shame the clinician because this is some UNMITIGATED AND HORRIBLE BULLSHIT.
The only good thing about it is that people like Mandi wasted $3700 and a week of their lives on woo woo.
I’m pretty sure I found it with a little googling and man, they try very hard to cover up the HUMAN DOG elements of this terrible seminar from hell.
OH my god, I have been reading about dog training in order to convince myself that I could handle a new dog after 10 years with a bad one… this pseudo-Buddhist pop-dog-psychology BS is not just ludicrous but DANGEROUS to humans.
The overt racism and the “non-paying participants on leashes” component pushes it into the stratosphere of terribleness.
But even without the racism and semi-consensual puppy play – even if they were teaching with real dogs – it would be dangerous to send people out into the world believing that they can manage dogs with good vibes, calm thoughts and gentle finger sensations. UGH.
Someone please explain to me how someone can charge thousands of dollars for a dog training class when the efficacy of their methods won’t even be shown effective on, you know, ACTUAL DOGS.
What possible justification is there for having a dog training workshop that doesn’t involve working with dogs? All I can come up with are:
a) if participants saw how poorly these techniques worked on dogs, the jig would be up
b) letting rich people humiliate and feel superior to those who can’t shell out thousands for this nonsense is actually the point of the whole thing
c) all of the above
Holy fuck.
As if the crazy racism and HUMANS ON LEASHES weren’t enough, I can’t wait until these fuckers try to practice canine mindfulness in NYC.
I hope you are getting a different professional mentor. My God.
I’m praying she didn’t know about this part. Otherwise she should be the one crawling (at least metaphorically) asking for forgiveness.
And I am a bad person for wanting Mandi named & shamed. Still want it.
We can be bad people together.
So much about this entire situation appalls me. Why did none of the paying participants complain?
How can I teach my kids that even when they benefit from an injustice, they shouldn’t tolerate it?
I had to do some google sleuthing too because you have to keep an eye on people like that. Their dodgy language is chilling. "Auditors" learn a lot and get to observe everything.
that was amazing and awful and thank you for writing it and thank you even more for looking after dogs, your own and other peoples’ and OMFG that was appalling
This is horrible. It felt like one of those really dodgy horrible experiments which reveals how terrible people can be. I want to barf.
But the writing was fantastic! (Lest your skills be overshadowed by garbage humans you encounter.)
Please, someone tell me this is not real. I have to believe this is not real in order to sustain even a shred of faith in humanity.
Please, someone tell me this is not real. I have to believe this is not real in order to sustain even a shred of faith in humanity.