Here.
When I first got Teddy several people said, “OMG, you have to watch that Dog Whisperer show!” I watched a few episodes. It’s kind of boring, actually; every time I watched it there was a misbehaving dog, Cesar told the owner that they were being insufficiently leaderly and giving off the wrong energy, and then he vanished in a big puff of magical Dog Whispering pixie dust.
He was often right about the people (I’m remembering some woman with big hair chasing her shi tzu around the house) but I kind of hated the whole “I have magical dog whispering powers” aspect of it. Something I learned really fast with Teddy: pretty much anybody with half a brain can learn to train a dog. Yes, some people are particularly gifted with it. Yes, it takes work and patience and consistency.
But I have no particular talents in this area, and I figured it out reasonably well. The first time Teddy and I went to a training class, the instructor said, “The dog is leading YOU around.” She was right. I started very much from zero and we’re doing fine. If I can do it, people, anybody can.
This isn’t a knock on professional trainers – in fact, I have complete respect for trainers. You have to learn from someone. Yes, you can read books and watch TV shows – but they won’t say, “Look at how your arm is stiffening up there” or “No, put your body in front of him.” For most of us, working with someone who’s watching what WE do is really helpful. And there are certainly people with natural gifts for this – people who are just amazingly tuned in to dogs, people who’ve learned a lot by spending their lives with the, and so on.
I am not one of them.
Here’s what I never heard at at class with Teddy, though: “I have amazing knowledge to fix your dog.” It was me learning how to teach him to live among humans.
And that’s so much better. I always find it a little weird when people ship their dogs off for weeks to be trained, and then the dog is returned to them. First of all, I wonder how well any of it sticks if the humans are reinforcing the training. Second – training is fun. Yes, there were moments standing there in class while Teddy, tired of the whole thing, bit his leash and flopped around the floor. But overall, going to classes and practicing at home is fun. It’s a thing we do together. It’s activity where we interact with each other the whole time. It takes time, but it’s quality time.
There’s always this sense with the Dog Whisperer that if only you could afford to go to this mystical expert you’d have a perfect dog, but most of us can’t, so we’re stuck with problems. That’s just dumb.
The post I linked to above compares some similar canine problems that show on the the Dog Whisperer and on a new show, Dog Town, whose first episode was about work being done with the pit bulls that Michael Vick was keeping as fighting dogs. It’s interesting.
Meanwhile, a day or so ago, Teddy began barking every time the neighbor comes up the driveway or the lesbians next door do anything in their driveway. There was a time when this would have been very frustrating. It is annoying, but not frustrating, because I have a clue what to do now (reward him when he quietly watches the goings on outside, put him into a sit and calm him down when he’s getting worked up by the activity outside, etc.). No dog whispering there.
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