Learning About Dogs - Teaching Dogs Article: Phoebe Chronicles

Teaching Dogs Vol 3 Issue 1

My oldest and "middlest" sons couldn't be more different from each other. Max, the seventeen-year-old headed to college next year, works hard. He stays up late to study for exams, holds a summer job in a hospital lab to learn more about cell biology - and to increase his star appeal in his college applications. For Max, working hard enables him to learn, so that he may work harder to learn even more. As his parent, I applaud his approach.

Still, I can't help but admire his younger brother's attitude. For thirteen-year-old Wylie, life is about having fun. If learning is fun, he's all for it. If learning enables him to do something else that's fun, bring it on. But if learning is dull, leads only to more hard work, or is done for the sake of an A on a piece of paper, this boy asks, then why bother?

Sometimes I ask myself the same questions when it comes to training my dogs. Despite having a dog with champion lines and limitless potential, I'm not currently competing in agility or freestyle or sheepdog trials. I have no plans to teach Phoebe to be a search-and-rescue hero. We won't be entering obedience trials anytime soon. So if we're not set on collecting trophies and titles, what's the point of spending hours training my bright and beautiful dog, of learning the finer points of communicating with her and teaching her? Because when we're training, just me and my dog, we're having fun, of course.

And yet, the opposing question also vexes me: Does my lack of ambition for objective recognition of her ability and my training skills prevent my dog from reaching her full potential?

Last month, my family and I took our annual week on Martha's Vineyard, an island off the coast of Massachusetts. We rent a barebones cottage and spend all day, every day at the beach. Our favorite stretch of shore has a big sign at the gate that says No Dogs, just above the sign that says No Nude Bathing. Both rules are enthusiastically ignored. Phoebe immediately made friends, human and canine, up and down the beach for a half mile. Soon our daily arrival was greeted with calls of "Phoebe! Here, Phoebe!" from other families already settled under their umbrellas.

While she was having a wonderful time socializing and digging and chasing seagulls, Phoebe fretted when we left her on the sand and headed out into the surf. Thanks to the time we have spent clicker training, however, we could fix that. Her "jump" cue is rock solid; she'll jump any obstacle immediately and repeatedly. That meant we could guide her out past the breakers by giving her "jump" cues timed to get over each wave. The familiarity of the cue alone was reinforcing, and helped her feel calm and directed in the strange element of rolling white water. When she reached a depth where she had to swim, and could not jump the next wave, she did a U-turn, was lifted by the wave and rode it all the way back to shore. Phoebe was bodysurfing. Was it fun for her? You bet; she turned around and, tail madly wagging, came right back out again, as my husband gave her well-timed "jump" cues until another good riding wave came along.

This is the point of training, I thought, as I ran to get the camera. It gives us and our dogs more choices, more opportunities, more ways to have fun. Training for competition is just one opportunity to have fun in that it offers, as Kay Laurence say, "the challenge of teaching toward a goal, linking the learning together to make a whole, seeing the pleasure the dog gets from the partnership, and sharing ideas with other like-minded folks." Winning is beside the point.

Working with Phoebe, I've been able to perfect a few cues, including "Jump." Our training on the agility field hasn't led to agility titles, but it did create an opportunity for my dog to go surfing. How cool is that? Who knew Phoebe's potential encompassed bodysurfing?

So while you'll catch me bragging about my oldest son's grades and certificates of honor, and you'll see me cringe if asked when I plan to compete with Phoebe in agility or sheep trials, I try to remember that there's a middle ground, a place where ambition meets contentment, where the doing is more important than the success. You'll know you're there when you're having fun.

On the way home from karate class, we dropped off our seven-year-old car pool passenger at his front door. As we drove home, my own seven-year-old sighed.

"Christopher is hard to train," he said.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"I say something nice to him whenever he says something nice to me. But he doesn't say a lot of nice things. He's getting better, though."

I don't think Christopher's mother would appreciate that my son considers her son a training prospect, but then I suspect her definition of "training" has something to do with dominance and discipline. The only sort of training my son has seen has been positive: marking and rewarding incremental steps toward an eventual goal.

He would certainly be less aware of the mechanics of positive training - and less able to implement them on his own - if he didn't live with a couple of clicker-trained border collies.

Clickers are like pencils or pennies in our house. They're on the mantle, in the coat pockets, under the couch pillows. Clicker sessions happen at odd times, anywhere I happen to be. Waiting for the teapot to boil, Phoebe looks attentive, I click her four or five times for backing up in a straight line. Sitting on the couch watching TV, my teenager polishes off a package of beef jerky. Rather than throw out the bits at the bottom of the bag, I ask Phoebe to earn each tasty morsel by practicing spinning to the right, so much harder for some reason than spinning to the left. Dragging the garbage cans up the driveway early in the morning, Phoebe wants to help by yanking on my pants leg. I check my coat pocket for a clicker, ask her to lie down and stay, click once I've got the can where it needs to go, and reward her with a game of tug with a stick.

My three boys live with all this clicking, and accept that this is how one communicates with dogs. They do it themselves, and have clicker trained old Esme to paw their foot when they ask any question beginning with "Who's the best... -looking in the family/basketball player on the street/skateboarder in town?" They've also trained Phoebe to bark on cue, run toward them and bounce off their chests with both paws, and nibble on their fingers when she wants the treat they're hiding in their fist. While I'm not keen on the behaviors they've chosen to train, they got those behaviors with solid, positive, marker-based training.

I'm most pleased, however, with how they've implemented the principles of clicker training into their interactions with other humans. In the carpool to and from karate, Nathaniel's friend teased and generally made himself unpleasant. Once in a while, however, he talked about his passionate interest in endangered animals. Rather than teasing back, Nat waited for these moments, and responded with enthusiasm. Gradually, our car rides together became discussions about wild life, which evolved into shared plans for saving the rainforest, and the rest of the world while they were at it. Positive begat positive, negative self-extinguished. Simple clicker training.

My boys have learned the mechanics of clicker training by picking up a clicker and treats and trying to get the dog to do something. Those skill are evolving, however, into an ability to focus on the solution to a problem, rather than the problem itself, and to enact that solution step-by-patient-step.