Not long after moving to West Windsor in 1957 it seems that most of the new people we met were dog owners. As I have mentioned before, traffic on local roads was very light then, so it was quite safe to let a dog run free almost anywhere in either West Windsor or Plainsboro. If you lived near Route 1, it was probably not a good idea, but almost anywhere else it was usually safe for your pet to run around freely. There were no official licensing requirements then and no restrictions on the pet owner that meant cleaning up after it.
Our two dogs then were Otto — a part boxer — and Floyd, a small short-hair terrier type with a tan coat. Otto wasn’t very smart but was very friendly and was great for the kids to play with. Speaking of smart, one day he was out back in the adjacent cornfield when we called him to come in.
He came running at full speed toward the screen porch at the back of the house. Instead of slowing down and waiting to be let in through the door, he kept running and came right through the screen. It hardly slowed him down, and I then had to replace a whole section of the screen on that part of the porch. But we forgave him. He was so happy-go-lucky, nothing seemed to bother him.
Floyd was quite different. Aside from being less than half Otto’s size, he seemed really smart. He also didn’t mind being walked around on a leash. In fact, he became a star pupil at the classes of the Princeton Dog Training Club. One of our friends had already started to train her Husky there and suggested that I take Floyd in for a few lessons. Since I had never trained a dog before, I thought it would be a useful way to spend some time. And our kids were too young then to get involved. The Princeton Dog Training Club was quite an experience.
Dog obedience training lessons were conducted in the gymnasium of Miss Fine’s School in Princeton. The school was housed in a building at the corner of Stockton Street and Bayard Lane that was once The Princeton Inn. It’s no longer there. It was torn down after the school joined with the Princeton Day School and moved to its new location on Great Road. The new Princeton borough municipal building that was put up in 1967 covers much of the same location. But the old gymnasium was a good place to conduct dog obedience training lessons.
It was not only a good place for dog obedience training, but the same for the owners. The instructor saw to it that there was no misunderstanding about that. His name was Joe Galazzi, and he was a state police officer — and always in full uniform. I think he had a sergeant’s stripes on his sleeve. From the beginning, there was no question that he was in charge, and both the owners and the dogs did what he said.
For some owners it was a difficult transition to take, say, a toy poodle the size of a cat, fit it with a slip collar and lead it around the floor at a steady pace until it was time to “sit.” But you didn’t use a command for sit. Commands were only given when the dog was expected to move, as in “heel,” the command for owner and dog to start walking forward with the dog at the owner’s left heel.
Joe Galazzi was very insistent that everyone follow the basic instructions, including those who thought the dogs were being abused by his tactics. But he had a way of showing that the dogs were really enjoying what they were being called on to do.
At the beginning of each class — I think they started at 7:45 p.m.— he would pick out one dog to use in a demonstration of the lessons for that night. He almost always picked a boxer for the demo, since, as he said, that was his favorite breed. Sometimes the demo dog was owned by someone who got emotionally involved with what was going on. If that happened, Joe would either use a different dog, or show the owner that there was nothing to be concerned about. As tough as he appeared to be, he was really a “softy” at heart — at least when it came to dogs.
Little by little, all the dogs — and handlers — in the class learned how to heel. The lessons then went on to more difficult things like “sit” and “stay.” “Stay” could be particularly difficult, especially if your dog was expected to stay in one place and position for more than just a few minutes.
I think the lessons went on for about 10 weeks, and toward the end we started to hear about the “obedience trial” that was coming up at the end of the lessons. This was a real competition in which all the dogs and owners were given tests on what they had learned. And this is where my dog Floyd became recognized as more than just a small tan mixed breed.
He had been very successful at learning all the exercises in our frequent practice sessions in the middle of our dead-end street in Grovers Mill — with traffic of about three cars per day. The problem was that to qualify for a prize in the competition a dog had to be of a breed that was recognized by the American Kennel Club. Floyd was certainly not that. But the Princeton Dog Training Club was very understanding and awarded Floyd with a prize for winning the competition, even though it was not recognized by the “big shots” of the AKC.
After our experience with Floyd, we tried once more with our Labrador retriever named Newton. When I went back to the Princeton Dog Training Club a few years later Joe Galazzi was still the teacher and there were a few of the same people still “in training” who were there when I had Floyd. But Newton was just not very smart, and that last go-round with dog obedience was not productive. In fact he was not happy in Grovers Mill, and we gave him away to a farm family in Somerset County where he could run free and do what retrievers do best.
Our last dog was our favorite — next to Floyd — a Golden Retriever named Lucy. She was a wonderful house dog, and obedience training was never a need. She just hung around and did just about anything you wanted her to do, indoors or out, and riding in the car. But by the time we got her, the Princeton Dog Training Club was no longer around, and the Miss Fine’s School Gym was history.
