Expression Primitive

My mother-in-law has been taking dance classes called “expression primitive” for years now, which is a sort of natural freedom animal-y movement, accompanied by a tambourine and the occasional grunt. Her passion for this class has always been met with fond indulgence and hidden smirks by her five sons.

However, when she offered to take six of the grandchildren for an entire week so that they could attend a “stage” – a sort of in-house camp, there were no hidden smirks, but rather unadulterated glee at this glimpse of freedom, sans kids.

Oh primitive expression, how wonderful you are.

How expressive.

How primitive.

Young Lady was chosen to lead the tribe in improv utterances

before they turned to more traditional dance moves

circle dances and line dances

And when they weren’t dancing, they were making masks

and murals.

And the grand finale was a crèpe party

where a Petit spectateur got to sit next to his Papa, whom he had just greeted for the first time in a whole week.

So our vacation is over (sniff) and we’re back to the perpetual primitive expression that’s constantly in session right here at home.

We have a very, very difficult dog. The trainer told us that when he first met him at two months, and the vet says it at each visit.

“Oh il est tout fou!” she says! “Fou” (pronounced – foo) means crazy, and “tout fou” or “fou fou “ or “fofolle” means crazy in the sense of wacky-nutty-doesn’t-slow-down-for-one-darn-minute.

It’s been a hard burden to bear for us poor novices, who don’t know a thing about dogs, but we’ve been applying all the right principles and gestures along with the verbal commands to get him in line, and we don’t let up for one minute.

Still, when we called the trainer to ask about Hunter’s formal education, and mentioned that he was biting our daughter and running around us in circles in the garden, leaping at us, barking, growling, and biting, no matter how much we put him in submission, we were like, “Urm … uh, is that normal?” (duh)

This fearsome trainer decided to come see for himself whether the dog was certifiably crazy or not. After all, he trains police dogs – the guy knows what he’s doing.

I had mixed feelings. On one hand, I thought of the freedom we would have in giving up the dog – not always having to worry about the dog biting, jumping, getting into things, peeing, hurting the kids and just making himself an overall nuisance. On the other hand, I had inexplicably grown to love this dog, non-animal lover that I am. I was afraid we would have to put him down or something, and that just made my heart ache.

The first thing the trainer did was to put a training collar on him with spikes.

Eeks. Then he proceeded to give harsh commands with jerks when he wouldn’t obey. I cried when the dog yelped, even though I’m perfectly willing to do the same thing to achieve obedience.

Wow. Rare submission. Look at the posture – can you believe it?

And … we got what we longed for.

Young Knight was actually able to approach the dog.

And they spent some good time cuddling afterwards.

It will be a long road ahead of us. He is very stubborn and submits with the absolute worst grace imaginable.

However, it looks like our puppy’s natural primitive expression leans towards the male dominant excitable foufou,

but decidedly not – the fou.

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