So, I joined a dog training club last month, to, you know, train my dogs. “But aren’t your dogs already trained?”, you ask. Why no, no they are not. A fact that was made blatantly obvious to me when I joined the club and asked my dogs to perform a simple stand for exam. Hahahahahaha!
Here’s the thing. I’m going to tell you a secret. A dirty one. My dogs? Ya, well, they aren’t really what I would call “trained”. They are simply very good at following cookies around. And I am very good at leading them.
I have actually trained dogs. Lots of dogs. To do useful things. Just not mine. Because they have always been good enough. They could pull off a demo, help me teach a class, and were moderately reasonable house pets. Now that I have time on my hands though, not working, the baby is getting to be more willing to do stuff with me rather than nurse 27 hours a day; I decided that perhaps I would enter my pugs in some obedience competitions. Pffbt. Well. There is this small problem. They haven’t actually ever been trained for obedience competitions. Hunh. Who knew?
Teak is a disaster. She is great at her flyball game, and loves to play agility (by her own rules, not anyone else’s), and she a great little demo dog. As long as I have a handful of cookies. Ask her to hold a sit, quietly, without busting a brain gasket because THERE ARE COOKIES IN HER HAND? Um, no. Shewouldliketodoitallveryfastrightnowpleasecouldyouhurryupabit? She gets so overspun that she just can’t think. She just wants to jump! and go! somewhere! anywhere! fast!!
Karma is another disaster. Karma knows very well the things she learned the first two years of her life. Those things she learned early on are cemented in her little collie brain. After that, her processor shut down and refused any new input. No kidding, when I try to teach her something new, she cries and slinks like she’s getting beaten. With the cookies. Yes, I beat her with the cookies, because that makes sense. Her brain smokes. And then the circuits fry and it’s over. I kind of gave up, because she’s Josh’s dog, he should train her, and really, of all the dogs she listens the best. She’s easy, doesn’t run off, doesn’t eat other dogs, and will lay down the instant the command comes out of your mouth. So really? I don’t care if she never learns anything new. I just wanted her to have some fun. But judging from the whining, training isn’t very fun for her, so whatever. Have a free cookie dog, and go get your ball.
Dyson. *sigh* Dyson is exceptionally gifted at games where he gets to do the thinking. Detection work? The dog is a genius. Tracking? Spectacular. Service dog for mildly cracked owner? Brilliant. Doing things which require him to respond quickly and accurately to an actual command? Dismal failure. I like to tell people it’s because we work better together as a team, that he’s better at thinking on his feet. Really? Reeeally??? It’s because he’s a bull headed, stubborn bastard and I don’t feel like fighting with him. I really would rather work WITH him, I hate trying to get him to work for me. Even for something as simply as “Lie Down you large, unruly, begging animal” he makes four circles around the living room to find the appropriate spot. He won’t just LIE DOWN. Luckily, he’s generally a good dog, at least around the house.
Jester, strangely, is about the best of the bunch when it comes to actual obedience training. (He’s definitely the most rotten house dog though, trash can raiding, cat box filching little scrounger) He’s much more methodical than Teak, and apparently somewhere along the way over the years, I have put quite a bit of actual, real live training into him. He is less frantic about everything, knows most of the obedience drills already, and other than being a rickety old man lacking a bit of enthusiasm (cause he’s tired and where are the blankets already?), he does pretty darn good. I guess, somehow I either actually trained him, or he learned some things by osmosis.
And all of this? All of these pretty words about why my dogs do and don’t do things? Excuses. All of it. Lame excuses for why I haven’t ever actually trained my dogs. Maybe I was busy training other people’s dogs. Maybe I haven’t done a thing with them for the past year and a half because I’ve been busy gestating, being hormonal and all that. Maybe….
Or maybe I’m not that good at really training dogs. Maybe I’ve just learned how to get them so far, and I don’t really know what the next step is. Maybe while all my friends were training, competing, trialing, and pushing their own dogs to the next level – maybe I was too busy trying to make money and running a business and I never learned how to push my own dogs further. Maybe I have always had some excuse – “Well, this dog can’t do that.” “I don’t have the money.” “I don’t have the time.” “Some day when I get this super deluxe puppy, then I can play that game.”
Or maybe, just maybe, all along I’ve been so afraid of failing, of my skills and my dogs not being good enough, that I never really tried. Guess we’ll see, won’t we?
Posted on March 15th, 2009 by michelle
Filed under: My dogs, Random run ins, The Naked Part, Training | 1 Comment »