A Wag Of A Mythological Tale

Balancing the 3 D’s of Duration, Distance and Distraction will ensure the laying of a solid training foundation. Duration is simply the time a dog is in a position- a three millisecond Down, a three second Stand, a three minute Sit. Distance is how far one is from one’s dog. Starting close to your dog and gradually adding more Time and Distance will buttress the footings of your foundation.  The key is to not go too far, too fast, to eliminate inconsistency, while reinforcing multiple successes. Once Duration and Distance are installed, it is time to seek out and solidify training with Distraction. Distraction can be any sight, sound, odor, movement or touch- any frivolity which derails focus on the duty at hand. Today marks Day Whenever of being “crated in place” and the 3 D’s have become distorted. I am as easily prone to Distraction as a four month old pup. The Duration of this incarceration has warped my sense of Time and Distance and deposited me in ancient Greece. It is as if that smartest of all dogs, Mr. Peabody, transported me in the “wayback machine” to antiquated Greece to witness how three famous dogs of mythology fared. 

The first famous puppy, the ancient equivalent of Rin Tin Tin or Lassie, is Laelaps. While his breeding is unknown, he was gifted with the ability to always capture his quarry. While it wasn’t mentioned in the literature, could this instinct of intense prey drive have led to his multiple rehomings? We don’t know for sure. His first owner was Zeus, who deposited him with Europa as one of three gifts for his unsolicited attention. Being mortal, Laelaps was passed on to her son Minos at Europa’s demise. Minos was a bit of an unsavory character. Every so often he sent a number of boys and girls to the Labyrinth to be devoured by the Minotaur. Minos was cured of a very personal affliction by Procris, who became the next doggie steward of Laelaps. She was slain, accidentally, by her husband Cephalus with an unerring javelin, the second of Zeus’s original gifts to Europa (the third gift was Talos, a bronze automaton). Cephalus, being the manliest man of all hunters, offered his new charge, Laelaps, who always caught his prey, to hunt the uncatchable Teumessian Fox. Long story, just a little longer, Zeus intervenes and turns both dog and fox into stone. He later places them in the heavens as Canis Major and Canis Minor, respectively. Canis Major includes Sirius, the brightest of stars. That the peerless puppy Laelops is tossed from home to home and then locked eternally frozen in place, never to catch his quarry, is cruel. The moral here is that both gods and men have no morals. Be warned, these ancient accounts are for adults only, perhaps the next and wildest of all Netflix docuseries.

When his twelve galleys set their prows toward Troy, Odysseus left his dog behind. These events befell eons before the first “take your dog to work day.” Argos was a strapping puppy- swift, powerful, and proficient at tracking. He was devastated as his master left him on the docks and sailed off on a journey that would last twenty years. We next encounter Argos two decades later, abandoned, covered with vermin, miserably prostrate on a heap of manure. Odysseus has returned, disguised as a beggar, intent on slaying the multitude of suitors plaguing his ever faithful wife, Penelope. Our “hero” cannot acknowledge the last feeble wag of Argos’s tale as he recognizes Odysseus because it might upset his grisly scheme. Readers are supposed to sympathize with Odysseus when he sheds a single tear at the sight of Argos’s steadfast recognition. As Odysseus quickly passes by, intent on his errand, Argos, the epitome of loyalty and allegiance, expires. An examination of the behavior of Odysseus, supposedly an exemplar of faithfulness himself, is in order. “This is not a minor quibble,” noted one scholar. Odysseus owed much to dissembling and cunning as well as courage. To avoid military service in the Trojan war he feigned madness by attaching an ass and an ox to a plough and sowing his fields with salt. Palamedes exposed this artifice by placing Odysseus’s son in front of the plough and he ceased harrowing, revealing his sanity. Odysseus later framed Palamedes with gold and a fake letter leading to Palamedes being stoned to death. It was Odysseus (with Diomedes) whose “covert military action” found a secret passage into Troy to purloin the city’s protective Palladium. It was Odysseus who devised the idea of the Trojan Horse, the most famous special ops mission of all time. It was Odysseus who tricked Achilles, whose mother had disguised her son in women’s apparel, to reveal himself and be pressed for service in the Trojan War .The exploits of Odysseus are legion. He chains his sailors to their oars to escape the island of the Lotus Eaters.  He blinds the Cyclops (Polyphemus) and he and his men, those who remain uneaten, escape the lair, like it’s nobody’s business, clinging to the undersides of the monster’s sheep. Ears unblocked, Odysseus deftly navigates his ship and mariners, with their beeswax plugged ears, past a serenade of the Sirens. There is one inquiry that Odysseus will have difficulty clarifying- not why he is the sole survivor of the expedition but honorable Penelope will want to know where the hell he has been for the last ten years, since the end of the Trojan War. It will come to light that he has spent a year consorting with Circe and seven years of housekeeping with Calypso. The ancient texts do not relate these conversations. Why did it take a hero of Odysseus’s stature an entire year to escape the enticing and beguiling Circe and seven years to bolt the island of ravishing, good time goddess, Calypso? One can only imagine that no amount of mansplaining “but she is a goddess or she enchanted me,” would keep Odysseus out of the dog house. Both honorable Penelope and Argos, whom Odysseus abandoned as a pup, without provision, deserve better than Odysseus.

The pedigree of Cerberus is well documented. He is a finely bred specimen- true to the classic conformation of Hellhound. His three heads were passed down from his hundred headed sire,Typhon. His dam was Echidna, half woman, half snake- hence Cerberus’s serpent tail. We do know he had early socializing with his siblings- Orthros (a dog with but two heads), the three Gorgons (including Medusa), the Lernaean Hydra and the Chimera. As a puppy, Cerberus was given to Hades as a guardian of the Underworld. It is possible that Hades called his puppy “Spot,” Cerberus (meaning spotted) being the Latinized version of the Greek Kerberos. This appealing notion is questioned by another scholar. Hades began training immediately- imagine having a nipping pup with three sets of razor sharp puppy teeth! Cerberus’s duties included greeting arrivals at the gate of the Underworld and discouraging residents from wandering out of the portal. By many accounts Cerberus “was capable of being loving and affectionate….’fawning’ over new souls who arrived at the Underworld.” He was not so fond of the quick. There are only a handful of accounts where Cerberus failed in his duty and allowed living beings to enter the Underworld. Hades failed to proof Cerberus’s training involving the Distractions of music and honey cakes. Clever Orpheus passed unchallenged through the Underworld’s gateway by strumming his lyre. A thorough examination of archaic records did not reveal what tune he plucked to set Cerberus sawing logs. It is possible that this ancient melody is the original hit from the oldest version of “Through A Dog’s Ear(s): Music To Calm Your Canine Companion” (recall Cerberus sported six ears). While Cerberus slept he no doubt dreamt of honey cakes. We know this from accounts that relate the shades transported by Charon are equipped with a coin, a fare for the ferryman and a honey cake for Cerberus, a sop for Cerberus. This reveals Hades had a difficult time training his unruly puppy to greet visitors with decorum. Similar to a door knock or a doorbell ringing triggering a modern doggie jitterbug, the sound of Charon’s oars announced the ancient equivalent of a UPS truck and sent the young pupster into a frightful but delighted, frenzy. One pictures a young Cerberus attempting to stow away in Charon’s barge, similar to our country dogs having to be removed from the UPS truck once the driver began arriving with biscuits. The positive pairing up of honey cakes with the arrival of so many visitors conditioned a strong positive emotional response in Hades’s young pup, at least with the deceased. We know there were innumerable repetitions of these pairings as to date there is no ancient scroll that states Charon ever filed for unemployment. Psyche also made use of honey cakes to circumvent Cerberus and enter the Underworld. Psyche was organized, practical and foresighted. She arranged payment for a round trip- providing a coin to Charon and a cake to Cerberus upon ingress to and egress from the Underworld. No doubt she selected sensible sandals for the journey. For some inexplicable reason, Hades thought well enough of Hercules to offer the muscled knucklehead his beloved hound for the completion of his Twelfth Labor. Hades stipulated Hercules could use no weapon to control Cerberus. Hercules promptly throttled Cerberus and set off on his walk to Eurystheus in the Upper Realm, to complete his Twelfth Task, considered to be impossible. Confusion abounds at this point as to what accessories Hercules employed or if Cerberus walked politely without leash. Artworks throughout the centuries depict no equipment or the use of various collars, leashes, chains and even the poor pup slung across Hercules’s shoulders. At any rate, in due time, Hercules and Cerberbus arrived from the abyss into sunlight which immediately made Cerberus deathly ill and vomit. Hercules then continues his mistreatment- “the poor dog howled with shame and despair…. Hercules paraded him around Greek cities for weeks, until the gods were tired of seeing the poor beast suffer.” Eventually Hercules completes his Labor and returns Cerberus to the Underworld. There is another uncorroborated version in which Cerberus slips collar and lead. Hellward Bound, he races back to the Underworld and his beloved Hades. Along the way he encounters adorable wolf cubs, rescues children from the Lamia, is carried off by Harpies, gets run over by a drunken chariot driver and is hidden and nursed back to health by the cute young daughter of a gruff shepherd. Eventually he arrives home. Cerberus was lucky to get home. This story has a happy ending but many beasts and men did not survive an encounter with Hercules. This guy started his career by slaying his music teacher who criticized his playing! At any rate, Cerberus is now home and it makes one misty eyed to imagine the pup’s six ears all springing to eager attention at the sound of approaching oars or to picture Hades and Cerberus, a god and his dog, ambling along the banks of the River Styx, Cerberus’s serpentine tail wagging contentedly. 

The takeaways from this journey into myth are threefold. 1) The conduct of Zeus and his fellow immortals reveals that the gods really are crazy- no amount of behavior modification, desensitization or counter conditioning could install political correctness or a modicum of morality in the lot of them. 2) What Mr Peabody states at the end of episode 1 of the Mr Peabody And Sherman Show that “every dog should have a boy,” is not true. Mr Peabody’s peregrinations did not transport him to mythological Greece in any of the original 91 episodes. He would never have made this statement if he had been introduced to Odysseus. 3) I obtained the recipe for the honey cakes from Psyche and look forward to introducing them as an aid to training door bell decorum in modern dogs. 

 Having traveled an unimaginable Distance to far off constellations, back through time for the Duration of the Trojan War, I found myself unceremoniously deposited in the Underworld on the shores of the Styx. The “wayback machine” is nowhere to be found. The trail of Distraction is boundless. I call out through time and space to another old cartoon friend from childhood. “Help, Mr Wizard!”

“Drizzle, drazzle, drozzle, frome, time for this one to come home.” And I happily reappear in my crate.