For You Lucky Dog Owners
Jon Katz has a nice article in Slate about the empty promises of the dog training industry.His thesis is that no single training method could possibly succeed in every instance. He lists a lot of sensible reasons and anecdotes supporting this, and I agree.
Dog training depends on the owner, the dog, the atmosphere, and what the owner wants the dog trained for.
As for me and my dog, WND (World's Naughtiest Dog), I initially wanted her to be able to communicate with people in a way they would understand. For example, if she wanted to go outside, I wanted her to walk over and sit in front of the door patiently. Never happened.
I wanted her to be unobtrusive, quiet, and calm. I wanted her to adapt to my life, to fit in like a helpful, trusting pal. A K-9 R2D2, if you will.
None of that ever happened.
Yes, she will listen to me, she will do what I tell her, and does understand and mostly submit to my routine. She also does not challange my reigning title as Master. She rings the back doorbell when she wants to come in from the cold. She places her head on my lap when she's really serious about going outside. She can untangle her own leash when it gets wrapped around a tree or bush. Every trick she's every learned has been mastered in a matter of minutes rather than hours. She comes when I call her. Sits when I tell her to. And basically obeys my every command without overtly arguing. Overtly being the key word there.
Over the years I've noticed that she systematically seek out her limits and attempts to stretch them a little bit every day. She's a very smart dog and has a very independent mind. She knows what she wants and she knows what I want, and she cleverly feels that she can change my mind when those two desires come into conflict.
For example, when she starts making a nuisance of herself, I usually will call her over and make her lay down near me. She knows that I don't give her table scraps, drop much food, and am not easily swayed by her begging. Therefore, she prefers to sit in a more opporuntistic location.
In the past when I would give her the "Lay Down!" command, she would lay down in a place relatively near where the command was given. Inch-by-inch she began to lay further and further away, to the point where I would give her the command to lay down and instead of laying down near me, she would find her own pawed-picked location to lay down.
I mistakenly tolerated this behavior and sure enough, it eventually led to her "pretending" to find a place to lay, but then carrying on with the action that got her in trouble in the first place. Now, each time I tell her to lay down, she attempts to enforce the "precedent" of me letting her choose the place to lay down. This requires me to repeat the command and direct her to sit next to me, which she will do until she has sensed I've lost interest. Then, she will get up and go back to whatever it was she was doing.
I've succeeded in training her to listen to me, but not to behave well around others. The "method" I used was more of no-nonsense approach. Loud, deep-voiced commands followed up with swift correction or praise. I guess it figures, ...all I really trained her to do was listen to
- me
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