As well known as she is by people around Helena, Rita Munson probably maintains an even higher profile among the Queen City’s canine community.

Munson, 63, estimates she’s taught obedience to more than 3,000 dogs and their owners over the past two decades. So the next time you see a dog heeling compliantly at its owner’s side, even as the tandem passes another dog on the sidewalk, there’s a decent chance that owner and that dog learned to walk tall and straight in a concrete room at the Lewis and Clark County Fairgrounds, under the ever watchful eye and occasionally stern voice of Munson.

“I think what I really like is the dogs that come in that are really green,” Munson said in an interview at her Helena Valley home last week. “Even the dogs that are the worst, that are the hardest, I like to watch those dogs improve, and I like to watch the owners be happy that they’re making that improvement.”

A typical obedience class includes 20 dogs, which might sound like a lot, but that’s how Munson likes it.

“I enjoy a large class because I enjoy the interaction that it causes the other dogs to have to learn around,” she said. “A small class to me gets kind of boring. There’s just not enough going on. I like to see them be busy, I like them to be distracted, and I like them to have an issue.”

And if the problem is with another dog in class, those two dogs will be spending a lot of time next to each other, until each can do so without acting up.

“If they have an issue with a particular dog, then I would rather have that happen in class where I can help the owner than have it happen someplace else where everyone falls apart because they don’t know what to do,” Munson said. “These two dogs don’t have to be friends, they have to learn to just get along. I don’t care if they ever like each other, but they can not be aggressive to each other.”

She’s taught dozens of Bears, at least as many Mollys, and once taught a dog owned by a hunter — at the insistence of the fellow’s hunting buddies. Munson laughs at the memory of the man’s tuition being paid in a fistful of small bills after his pals took up a collection to train him and his dog.

Munson was drawn to obedience training when she lived in Billings and worked at a credit union. She first attended a class with a dog of her own with an eye toward showing the dog, and while she became a regular on the Northwest dog show circuit, she quickly became hooked on the training aspect of dog ownership as well.

Today, she works with owners of pure-bred pets angling to win trophies — but she also works with families who just welcomed their first shelter dog and want nothing more than a cooperative and happy member of the household.

For all the obedience training she’s taught, Munson’s favorite breed is one that tends toward independence. She currently owns five Norwegian elkhounds, and says knowing what a dog is bred for is important when determining whether it will be a good fit for a family.

“I like their independent nature, which makes me work a little harder,” she said of her elkhounds. “You have to remember what that dog was bred to do, because that can be the problems that you’ll deal with. This dog is bred to be turned out in the forest and hunt moose. And when it finds the moose, it’s to keep barking and agitate the moose so that the hunter can hear where they’re at. Which means they can have a barking nature. It also means that they don’t particularly want to work with you, because they’ve been taught to go off on their own and work. I like the challenge of taking that dog and finding a way that will make him work for me without having him shut down.”

Many of the dogs who come to her obedience classes have delusions of stature in the household — an issue Munson said must be nipped in the bud.

“I think sometimes (the dogs) prefer to be at the top of the pecking order, and that’s an issue,” she said. “The biggest thing is getting whatever breed of dog you have to learn their place in the home. Some dogs are happy wherever you put them, and some dogs will challenge you until they’re 4 or 5 years old to get to the top of the pecking order. He’s pushy. He bumps into you all the time. He pushes his way out past you through the door. Sometimes he balks with teeth, sometimes he just balks with his strength. And it’s really important to understand that you have to deal with it right then and there and see where it’s going to go. You have to know, is my own dog truly going to bite me? Because if you don’t find that out, you’re always afraid, you’ll get to a certain point and you’ll quit.”

While strong-willed dogs present certain challenges, meek dogs can be no less troublesome when it comes to obeying, Munson said.

“When people get a timid dog, they feel bad for them. Especially the dogs from the shelter, they feel they’re timid because they think they’ve been beat,” Munson said. “Most of the time those dogs at the shelter that are acting like that probably were born that way. And maybe if anything else they were neglected. Very few of them were really thumped on.

“But that timid dog requires you to be strong and give it direction,” she continued. “We tend to want to coddle them, talk soft to them, over-help them and never allow them to come out of being timid. And sometimes you just have to say when they’re acting timid, knock it off, grow up, be a big dog. And that’s the information he’s looking for. If you coddle him, you’re actually telling him continue to be timid. And instead you need to get a little tougher with him, tell him to knock it off, grow up, this is the world, you have to buck up a little bit here.”

There’s no such thing as a dog too old to learn new tricks, Munson said. She’s taught 14- and 15-year-old dogs, which means any dog can be trained.

She’s taught second and third dogs for families, and gets lots of referrals. One thing that’s made the job a little harder in recent years, she said, is the Internet. People will find a tip online and take it as gospel, without knowing much, if anything, about the circumstances surrounding that particular dog.

Munson teaches both beginning and advanced classes, but the first class, “puppy kindergarten,” is the most popular.

“We call it puppy kindergarten because no matter the age of the dog, they need to start at the kindergarten level, so there’s no skipping,” she said. “Sometimes you start training your dog at home, and you teach him to sit, and you teach him to down, and you teach him to stay, but you didn’t really teach it solid enough, so as your dog gets to become an adult, and you give him a command to do those things, he doesn’t do them. And it’s not always because he doesn’t want to. It’s a lot of times because he doesn’t really understand. He just sort of accidentally did things when you were teaching him. Or you taught him in a situation where you were close enough to him that he couldn’t make a mistake. And then as he gets older, he doesn’t have a solid foundation. So no matter the age, I want to bring them in and get the foundation first.”

She has a few pet peeves (as it were), none bigger than people who don’t leash their dogs. That’s the biggest thing she wants people to take away from her classes, she said.

“I think people should keep their dogs safe, and that means I think they should be on a lead,” she said. “I have dogs who are trained to work in off-lead situations, but when I take my dogs someplace or go for a walk, they go on a lead. That way they are not going to cause somebody else a problem, and somebody else’s dog, if they do cause my dog a problem, I have control. I think that’s one of the things that’s irksome for me is this feeling that you need to have your dog off-lead for them. I think that’s more of a human thing. Of course they like to run. We would like to do a lot of things too, if we were given the opportunity. But I think to keep them safe, they should be on a lead.”

Munson isn’t sure how much longer she’ll teach — she reassesses every year, but the class is still rewarding to her.

“By the time class is over, they can see that their dog can heel, their dog can sit automatically when they stop heeling, their dog can sit and stay beside 20 other dogs and do it for a minute,” she said. “And for some in particular that’s a really difficult task, but I think it lets the owner see how far they did come.”

 

Reporter John Harrington: 447-4080 or john.harrington@helenair.com