Chapter Ninety-Two: Looking Impressive Is No Easy Feat

The woman who felt sorry for the dog looked indignant, but she soon realized she had no way to refute his words. Yet she still did not want to change her position, so she merely lifted her chin and turned away, pretending not to want to deal with him.

Seeing both sides rooted in their own stances and arguing fiercely, Zhang Congwen felt that if this went on, the whole scene would surely descend into chaos.

He hurriedly said, “I won’t hit it. And you can all see how I train it.”

With that, Zhang Congwen led the Jindo dog toward a room.

The people around him, still not understanding what he meant, could only follow behind him.

It was not until Zhang Congwen entered the room that everyone finally understood.

The room was very spacious. Three sides were walls, and along them were various dog-training tools. The remaining side, however, was a huge floor-to-ceiling pane of glass. From outside, one could clearly see everything inside through it.

Whether Zhang Congwen would strike the dog could be seen plainly through that glass.

Even though they now understood, some doubts still lingered in their minds.

Although the room could be considered a closed space, if one side was glass, then of course the dog could also see what was happening outside, and whatever happened out there could still affect it.

At that moment, Song Jiawei stepped forward to explain. “Do you all see this floor-to-ceiling glass wall? In fact, it is not ordinary glass at all, but one-way glass. People outside can clearly see inside, but those inside cannot see out.”

Only then did everyone fully understand.

This glass wall had been something Zhang Congwen had insisted on installing at the time, specifically to reassure dog owners who feared their dogs might be beaten during training. It was an observation window left for that very purpose.

“Look, it’s starting!”

Someone in the crowd called out.

At that moment, Zhang Congwen once again began wrestling with the Jindo dog.

What Zhang Congwen wanted to do was actually very simple: he wanted the dog to lie down on the floor so he could massage its back, leaving it with a favorable impression and helping it get used to his touch.

Yet for such a small request, the Jindo dog was utterly uncooperative. Whenever Zhang Congwen’s hand tried to approach, the dog would suddenly lunge, attempting to bite him.

Man and dog thus found themselves locked in a tug-of-war inside the room, each struggling to achieve its own goal. It went on until more than twenty minutes had passed, by which time the Jindo dog had already exhausted itself from the intensity of its movements, panting hard and nearly out of breath, yet still unwilling to let Zhang Congwen touch it.

Stubbornness.

That word seemed to fill everyone’s minds.

The dog was clearly so tired it could barely stand, yet it still refused to give up trying to turn and bite Zhang Congwen.

“Do you think Congwen can handle it?” Zhu Chang asked his daughter anxiously, watching how ferocious the dog was.

Although Zhu Qingyan did not feel certain either, she still nodded. “Yes.”

“Ha! What yes? I think Zhang Congwen’s skill is only so-so. He won’t be able to train this dog properly.”

Their conversation was still overheard by Yang Baoqian. Though he had long known the dog was fierce, he had never truly witnessed it for himself.

Its ferocity had far exceeded his expectations, bringing him quite a “surprise.”

The greater the surprise, the happier he naturally became.

Business relied on a good start. If Zhang Congwen’s very first job failed, then his dog-training center would never amount to much in the future.

But his words were simply ignored by father and daughter.

Seeing the Jindo dog so exhausted that it could hardly keep its feet, Zhang Congwen stopped opposing it and instead let out more leash slack, coaxing the dog to lie down.

While the Jindo dog was resting and recovering its strength, distracted and off guard, Zhang Congwen stepped over it in one stride. He夹ed the dog between his legs and used his own weight to pin it down.

At the same time, one hand shot out to seize the dog by the neck and press it to the floor, keeping it from lifting its head.

The Jindo dog gave a sound like a strangled gasp, but it no longer had the strength to resist. It could only let Zhang Congwen do as he pleased.

Controlling the dog, Zhang Congwen turned it onto its side and gently rubbed it a few times.

Everyone saw that this time, when Zhang Congwen touched it, the dog gave no reaction at all. It only lay on its side on the floor, tongue out, panting heavily.

Zhang Congwen himself let out a deep breath as well. After such a long struggle, he too had consumed a great deal of strength.

Fortunately, the dog had finally understood what Zhang Congwen wanted it to do.

As long as it lay down according to his instructions, he would immediately stop pressing it.

With his previous experience in dog training, along with the intensive study he had crammed in lately, Zhang Congwen had become thoroughly familiar with dogs.

He could now rely entirely on experience to judge when a dog needed pressure, when he should yield, when he ought to stop a dog’s behavior, and when he should transmit a specific emotion at the right moment.

These techniques were already second nature to him.

For a dog as fierce as this Jindo, the first thing a trainer should do, no matter what happens, is remain calm.

From the dog’s perspective, it was simply acting according to its nature. But when a human tried to force it to act according to human will and inserted himself into the middle, fierce conflict was inevitable.

To a dog that only knew how to act on instinct, such conflict felt no different from being attacked.

In this situation, the Jindo dog must have been filled with pressure and unease.

To train it, the first step was to let it fully release the pressure inside itself. Only then could one attempt to guide it into adapting to the rules humans imposed upon it.

Having reached this point, Zhang Congwen made no further training moves. Instead, he took a bottle of water from the side and poured it onto the ground a short distance from the dog.

“Is he rewarding it? Training with food rewards?” someone in the crowd, who knew a little about dog training, asked.

“Of course not,” said Xie Caizhe. “A food reward has to be food first of all. What kind of food is water?”

The speaker blinked. “Kid, you know quite a lot.”

Xie Caizhe grew proud. “Of course. Big Brother Zhang is my big brother, and I’ve learned a lot from him.”

As soon as he said that, the man actually believed him and immediately asked, “Then what is your Big Brother Zhang doing this for?”

“Um…” Xie Caizhe was momentarily at a loss. He had indeed learned some things from Zhang Congwen lately, but only the most superficial bits. He could tell that Zhang Congwen was not rewarding the Jindo dog, yet he also did not know what Zhang Congwen was really trying to do.

It was hard to bluff one’s way through this.

Xie Caizhe felt rather frustrated. He had originally wanted to show off a little in front of his classmates, and in front of Lin Xiaoru. Who would have thought this man would be so insistent, asking questions until the roots of the matter were exposed?

Zhang Congwen’s purpose was actually very simple, with no deeper meaning. He was just giving the Jindo dog water.

The Jindo dog had already used up most of its strength and lost a good deal of water from its body. What it needed now was to replenish some fluids and recover its energy, so that the next stage of training could proceed smoothly and the dog would not suffer any mishaps from excessive dehydration.

Seeing the water on the ground, the Jindo dog did not stand on ceremony. It immediately began lapping it up, and in just a few quick swipes had licked the water clean. Zhang Congwen poured some more into its mouth, and once he felt its strength had recovered sufficiently, he began the next stage of training.