I Can Help

There is an old commercial in which an eager, bright eyed technician of sorts pulls his car at a stop light alongside a tricked out vehicle with a pair of gangstas. Their music is blaring from speakers rattling the metal of the vehicle which is revving and bouncing on its shocks.The naive kid hollers out, ”I’m a professional, I can help!” (presumably with the sound system). The pair of ne’er do wells turn to glare at him and you get the feeling that this is not going to end well.

When I first began training, I was brimming with the zeal of an acolyte and was eager to pass on my newly acquired information and training tips. It took discipline not to impose myself on people who hadn’t sought my advice. After all, many concepts of dog training apply to everyday real life. For example, management is critical both to raising children and puppies. You don’t want children and puppies teething on power cords or consuming non food items. Questionable items are placed ever higher up as the canine or human pup grows. There is no free range of the home until it is earned. Another training concept is to break the task down into doable pieces. Teach a puppy to go down stairs by starting him on the bottom step first. When he is comfortable and confident, go to the second step and so on. In the park, I constantly  see parents teaching a child to ride a bicycle as the kid stared down from the top of what he or she  perceives as a formidable incline. It was difficult not to intervene. Why not start the kid a quarter of the way up the slope? When sure of him or herself, go a third or halfway up and so on? I somehow managed not to impose on these parents. 

I have been training people and dogs more than 38 years and generally the experience has been very rewarding. To show up for regular appointments and be greeted enthusiastically every time by a wagging tail is wonderful. To see a dog with a history of abuse or abandonment flourish as he or she adapts into a caring environment is very rewarding. To walk in the park and randomly meet a former student whose dog had once had reactivity issues but was now at his owner’s side ignoring all distraction is a big reinforcement. These are but a few of the upsides. Of course, there is a downside to dog training. Dogs have limited life spans and are prone to illness. To see the high number of abused and abandoned dogs after all these years is still discouraging. It is tragic to know of nice dogs euthanized because of the lack of a suitable home or dogs with known serious issues being placed by a shelter or rescue group with unsuspecting families. The lives of many people have been thrown into upheaval as they “won’t  give up” on an inappropriately placed dog. They feel responsible for a situation they didn’t realize they were signing up for and more often than not lack the tools to “fix” the dog, if indeed it is “fixable.” 

There are situations that cause a mixed reaction.  For example,people that call up to get the date of the next obedience class because they just got a new puppy. That wonderful dog that had attended class twelve years ago had passed away. One evening, before a class, a woman brought her old dog to say hello. It was an old pit bull named Lacey who was one of the most appreciative and sweetest of any dogs I have worked with during a lengthy career. Lacey was deaf and had attended a number of classes in previous years. That evening she was very fragile, old and arthritic. She had trouble walking but she was gently wagging her tail, happy to be back. I knew that Lisa had actually brought her to say goodbye and that would be the last time I would see her. That visit was truly the most cherished of moments of shared gratitude in all my years of training.

There have also been a few unusual and even weird happenings after more three and a half decades of time spent with dogs. There was an incident where a small dog was plucked up and carried off by a bird of prey. Once a woman stated , “The dog wouldn’t let us have sex for years.” Another woman called up and said, ”Our dog just murdered the Easter Bunny.”           

Over these years I rarely offered to involve myself in other people’s business The times I have intervened without invitation would number less than half a dozen and in the majority of these  cases the people having problems with their dogs were not at all interested in advice from a stranger, thank you very much. The reinforcement schedule of such interventions has been low enough to keep my nose out of people’s affairs, unsolicited. 

However, recently I was walking a dog in the park and in the distance, part way up a sloping parking lot, was an elderly couple with a young golden retriever puppy. The husband was attempting to have the puppy sit but the pup was not having any of it. I kept a distance from the couple as I walked up the parking lot. I didn’t want to trigger the puppy by the proximity of another dog. The man stepped in front of the pup to block its view but the puppy was not at all interested in my dog. The pup had a puzzled and helpless look on his face. It did not react in the least to my dog. The man repeatedly ordered the puppy to sit but to no avail. He then began to use leash corrections on the unfortunate puppy and strung it up with the leash to hang briefly for his non compliance.

At this point, I felt an intervention was appropriate and approached the couple. After all, what could go wrong? I doubted this elderly couple should be avoided like the thugs from the commercial. Attempting to remain calm and sound neutral, I proffered a business card and offered to answer any training questions at that time or over the phone. The woman said the puppy was just five months old as if that was some kind of excuse. I have known quite a few puppies who knew how to sit at five months of age. It was tempting to ask the couple what their excuse was at their age (probably mid seventies) for being so mindless. I bit my tongue instead and wondered how many star-crossed dogs had had to endure this couple over the years. 

The woman then said they were working with a trainer. It was unclear what the trainer had suggested as motivation for this puppy. They were not using treats or toys and there was no verbal encouragement. The man had not tried placing the dog in a sit with pressure on its back end. The hapless puppy did not know he could avoid all this mess by simply placing his butt on the ground. He was clueless as to what was expected of him. 

I flashed back to my early days of training and briefly cringed at some of the consequences I had dealt. It was how we were taught way back in the last century. But we were always “fair” to make sure the dog was taught what was expected before “correcting” him. At one point we used electronic collars and were very clear that  a dog knew how to avoid “stimulation” before using it. If I recall correctly, even the Tritronics training manual recommended treats to train puppies prior to using the collar.

I continued up to the top of the incline. At the top, I looked back down the parking lot. I momentarily thought of all the wide eyed kids on bicycles over the years, nervously facing down what was in reality a very gentle grade. I bet myself that every single one of them had eventually succeeded in conquering their mini Everest. And without my intervention!  At any rate, the man had yet to get his dog into a sit but at least he was no longer ”correcting” the puppy. The life of that ill fated puppy had not begun well. I could have helped.