Who's Training Who?

I have decided that I am not cut out to be a dog trainer.  And the dog knows it.

The problem is, I grew up with cats.  You call a cat and they walk away.  You tell them to sit, and they walk away.  You offer food, and they walk away.  To be fair, there are some exceptions to those rules, such as: 1. the cat doesn't feel like walking away.  In that case,they will curl up with their back to you and yawn. 2.  They have a use for you.  They may need an itch scratched or a warm, comfy place to sit, and 3. you offer something really good to eat like shrimp, fresh Maine lobster or ahi tuna, lightly seared.  They actually may deign to sample it, if the presentation is up to their standards.

I loved my cats, but I accepted early on that I merely existed to serve their every whim and never tried to train them.  Period.

But a dog?  They are supposed to be trained.  They want to be trained.  They beg to be trained.  And it's a piece of cake, right?  Yeah.

Based on these totally erroneous assumptions fostered by doggie propaganda films like Benji, Lassie, and Rin Tin Tin, I decided to give it a shot. 

The first thing I did was buy every book I saw.  I got Dog Training for Idiots, Dog Training for Dummies, Dog Training for People Who Are Too Stupid to be Idiots or Dummies.  I watched all those training shows on the dog TV channel:  AKC Training, How to Train Your Puppy, How to Train Your Dragon, The Dog Whisperer, The Horse Whisperer, and The Ghost Whisperer.  Anything that I thought might help.  And what a colossal waste of time and money that was.

You see, the problem was, all those things are for training perfect dogs who live in fantasy land.

Make the dog walk on your left, at your heel.  Don't let them pull ahead, they tell you.  Uh huh.  That is supposing your dog will walk AT ALL!

Unlike every dog these people worked with, our dog would go approximately five feet, then throw  herself down on the street as though she had just trekked across the Sahara, pulling a covered wagon loaded with bricks.

Firmly tugging on the leash and using a firm, commanding voice elicited a look of utter contempt from the dog and sympathy from passerby who were surreptitiously googling "animal abuse hotline" on their smart phones.

Training her to use her crate as a "safe place" went equally well.  Throw in some treats, they all said.  Get her comfortable with the door open, then close it and she'll be in "home sweet home" and happy as a clam.  Snort (I don't know how to write this sound, but it is the only one I can think of to adequately describe my reaction to this faulty bit of reasoning).

I threw in her favorite treats.  Chloe, who will eat leaves, the carpet pad and rabbit poo as though they were the latest offerings of a five-star master chef, looked at me like: I hope you don't think I'm going in after that because I know it is a trap.  Not only am I cuter than you, I am also waay smarter.

Alternatively, she would approach the crate as though it held a rabid rattler, brace her back feet against the open door and stretch her neck as though she was that slinky dog to grab the treat and then run like crazy with her prize as far as she could go.

As far as using treats to train her to follow simple commands?  Yeah.  That went great...as long as we were in the privacy of our own home where no one could observe her caving in and actually doing something I said.  Oh, and as long as I had a fist full of treats.

First we worked on sit.  Sit.  Treat.  Sit.  Treat.  By day two, she would see the treat bag and automatically sit before I could say anything.  I guess I was too slow with the treats, so she figured she'd just cut to the chase.

By week five, she knew sit, down, stay, heel, off, out and leave it.  If she even suspected I might possibly have a treat, she would run through the list like an olympic athlete sprinting for the finish line.  She would flip, flop, hop, skip, jump and then throw herself down before I could even clear my throat.  She seemed to think that since she had done it all, I should just dump the whole pile of treats all at once and stop wasting both our time.

Take her outside and give her the same commands? Not only did I have to show her the treat, I had to offer it up for approval before she would consider entertaining my request.  Sit?  For a carrot?  Whaddya have rocks in your head mom?  I will sit, but I want a hot dog or at least some chicken.  I also don't feel like staying, unless you want me to walk, in which case, I will be happy to jump up and down in a complete frenzy before throwing myself in the middle of the road and then rolling over on my back and going limp when you try to pick me up.

And so we got a trainer.

Sit, said the trainer, and she sat.

Heel, said the trainer, and she heeled.

Walk, said the trainer, and she walked.

Then we went home.

Sit, I said.  She rolled her eyes.

Heel, I said.  She sat.

Walk, I said. 

Look, she said, you are not the trainer, so get it out of your head that I'm going to listen to you.  Unless you have something really, really tasty for me.  Now, where did you put those hot dogs?