Bringing up the tail end

MAYBE the sinew-machinery of animal movement has always struck you as being more elegant than human-created metal, spokes, dials, cranks, levers and wheels. Maybe, because of that, you never were much the mountain biking type.

So it must come as a surprise to find yourself commandeering a GT Avalanche 0.5, whooshing beneath hawks, brushing past tumbleweed, cruising alongside wild mustard in Baldwin Hills. You’re with famed dog behaviorist Brandon Fouche of Canine Communications, and, strangely, the least alarming aspect of the jaunt is being trailed by 17 pit bulls, Rottweilers, Akitas and a wolf.

The most alarming aspect is that you’re panting like a 13-year-old terrier, and you haven’t even yet begun the uphill climb. When confronted with tumble brush, oncoming gnats and possible wipeout, sitting atop a tiny triangle balanced over two rubber wheels doing at least 2 million rpm isn’t hugely relaxing. There’s sideways-leaning balance to be maintained, slippery gears to shift, foxtails to be pulled out of eyebrows, dignity to uphold.

Yet, there’s just no decorum in being herded like a senior-citizen sheep by these dogs.

“They’re doing their job, what their DNA tells them to do,” Fouche tells you as you pick up your speed to calm the Australian shepherd nosing at your spokes.

Fouche, a more rugged, earthier version of television’s Cesar Milan, would know canine DNA. His technique for training “third-strike” dogs -- either “aggressive” breeds pulled from death row at L.A.’s crowded animal shelters or behaviorally challenged pets relinquished by his many clients -- is to “get inside each dog’s mind, see the world through the dog’s eyes.”

In his vast, groovy, pleather-couched Crenshaw district loft home -- a former veterinarian’s compound -- Fouche sits with each new conscript, intuiting and reading every wag of a tail, baring of the teeth.

“I let the dog tell what he wants, and I tell what I want, and we come to an agreement.”

All this communicating is done with secret body language as Fouche makes nearly inaudible yip, rmmmmm or bark sounds.

“I use what a dog understands -- dog language,” he explains. “Let dogs be dogs -- don’t try to make them into facsimile humans.”

The Australian shepherd is now herding your wheel quite gloriously. A stout, huffing bulldog pulls up, a tugboat ready to push from the other end. It occurs to you all these dogs would be dead if Fouche hadn’t taken them in. A more well-adjusted bunch of death row escapees will never be found, anywhere.

“A well-exercised dog is a happy, nonaggressive dog. You ride them out here in a pack, and they’re content as can be. And today you’re part of the pack, so they want you with us.”

When a dog behaviorist’s “boot camp” happens to dovetail with his athleticism and love of mountain biking, what you get is one happy man. Each weekend you’ll find Fouche, a younger, black version of Sean Connery, leading his pack in perfect formation through empty vistas and muddy dells. Up and down the oil derrick-spotted hills, like a pied piper on caffeine, Fouche is the tip of the spear of a happy dog army.

And you are the slightly less overjoyed butt of said spear.

As if pulled by an unseen leash, all swerve suddenly to the left. The wolf kicks up dust, a spider web leaves a vine, clings stubbornly onto your chin.

“Ready to make these dogs really happy?” Fouche asks you. You smile. The morning sun glitters dangerously against the gearshift.

It gives new meaning to the word “breathtaking” to see a lone, human figure leading these giant dogs, like a serpentine chain that just refuses to break. On the other hand, you can’t help but wonder how in the world you’ll prove that you too are an alpha dog.

The sound of the wind is nothing compared to the sound of 68 thundering paws, reminiscent of the stampede scene in “How the West Was Won,” chasing Fouche’s dipping, bobbing bike. Your own ride is a bit less mellifluous. Between the ribby, graded surface road, the hard baked shoulder and various stumps, roots and stones, you could be riding a gravel avalanche. Finally there’s a straightaway -- and for a moment you’re almost surfing on pudding.

Just as you manage to downshift enough to achieve the ratio needed to manage the suddenly powder-soft sand, a hillock appears, the pudding ends -- there is a jarring bbbbbbmmmmmppp in your rib cage as the bike bounces hard. By the time you upshift again, the pack is far ahead of you. Worse, your back molars keep crashing together. You keep smiling, pedal harder. You grip the rubber waffle-hand grips for dear life.

You notice the dogs are looking back at you one by one.

“Do you have to crawl along like such a tortoise?” they seem to say. You hear ragged breathing, see tongues hanging out, tails wagging, hair standing on end, sweat dripping down -- and that’s just you.

“You OK?” Fouche says. “We can slow down for a while. These guys like to vary their pace.”

In fact, you’re gaining now, neck and neck with a Rottweiler, cheek to jowl with a shepherd. You lock your ankles in a death grip on the pedals, tensing your thighs, ducking your head so that you can get a little airborne. The plastic material of your windbreaker flaps in midair. There is a faint smell of anise, oil, burnt rubber.

You are getting weirdly competitive now.

OK. Now you’re getting this nature/machine/tear-up-the-mountains-on-a-bike thing. Handsome men on fast bicycles might delight and relax pit bulls, but they bring out your latent aggression. After all, the human world is not like the dog world, where there is no shame in assuming your role in the back of the pack and settling in. You live in a society where everyone who’s anyone has got to be No. 1.

Still, how reasonable is it to want to cut off a joyful Doberman at the next pass?

Groaning, you switch gears on your bike, crunching over tiny arthropods, flattening tender shoots of grass, foaming at the mouth.

There is a white sun hanging askew in the sky. Between gulps of air, you’re no longer enjoying the sun, the salt tang of the dust, the whooshing, reeling feeling of the world going past your face. It’s true dogs have more muscles in their legs -- and more legs to boot. It’s true Fouche is probably a world-class athlete, and you’re a middle-aged dog lady who does a little yoga once in a while.

It’s true everyone else is having fun, getting exercised, calm and rested.

But you are you. Trapped in the competitive machinery of your human mind.

Faster, dog lady, faster.

Fun is for wimps, happy people, dogs.

*

Joy Nicholson is the author of “The Tribes of Palos Verdes” and most recently, “The Road to Esmeralda.”