I love training dogs, it is a spiritual experience for me, a kind of living chess match. I always learn something, quite often what I learn is how to be a better human.
The definition of a good dog in our world is a dog that acts like a human, and the definition of a bad dog in our world is a dog that acts like a dog.
In all of dogdom, there is nothing more natural than eating a piece of fresh meat that suddenly presents itself. Anywhere in the wild, this would not be an issue. For a human living in a house, this is a problem and a challenge.
From the minute we get a dog, we are in conflict with them, telling them not run free, eat garbage, have sex, squabble with one another, dig up bulbs in the garden. We ask them to stop being dogs. It is not simple.
And sometimes this ends in a stalemate, or in the case of me and Fate, perhaps a truce of sorts.
If there is no one way to get a dog, there is also no one way to train them. You can buy all of the $30 training books and videos you want, training ultimately gets personal – every dog, person, home, surroundings, is different. There is no one way to do it, there is no mystical guru out there to give you all of the answers. That is a shell game.
I’ve learned a lot in this effort to keep Fate from raiding our counters for food. People ask me why I care, why it’s important. It is important, it has to do with harmony and dignity and respect – elements in the human animal bond that are often overlooked. It is not about dominance for me, or obedience. Dogs get into trouble when humans become lazy or impatient, and give up on training them. I am committed to staying with it, it goes on for the life of the dog, it can’t be done in three or four lessons.
If a dog gets away with one thing, it will get away with another. Especially a dog like Fate, whose energy and intellect have not shown any boundaries so far.
The hamburger is part of it, it is about the contract we have with the animals we live with. I treat my dogs with dignity and compassion and understanding, I ask the same of them. Fate has her food, and plenty of it. We have ours, and I will not steal hers and she must not steal mine. I believe in visualizations with animals – the art of imagining what it is you want. Dogs can sense that, they use their instincts to paint an image of it.
If I mean it, she will do it, within limits.
And I think this has been working for me.
I see now that Fate will not approach the counters or steal food if Maria or I are in the house. I’ve tested that a dozen times this week after the first hamburger raid.
I also know that Fate is an intensely active dog. When she gets bored – a border collie trait – she will find something to do, and if I don’t provide work for her, I will not like the work that she finds sometimes. We can’t be herding sheep all the time. This is precisely why border collies are not for everyone. But they are for me. I do pay attention, and I work at home. And I have sheep right out the door.
I provide toys and things to chew, and take her outside to run, and let her outside to play and explore the yard. And we take her on two or three walks a day, often in the woods, sometimes the meadow. She gets to work with sheep two or three times a day. She gets to run and explore. If I can’t occupy her or be with her, I put her in the crate. If you give dogs no chance to fail, they won’t. If you give them the chance the fail, they often will. If the failure becomes a habit, you have a problem.
Clearly, Fate grasped the meaning of the mousetrap. She saw it snap and didn’t like the sound of it. She keeps her distance. I see now that she grasped this was a deterrence, something she felt uncomfortable approaching. Fate is a very bright dog, if we are not in the house, and there is no mousetrap, and there is a piece of meat hanging off the edge of the counter, she will go for it. I doubt that this will change.
The mousetrap was my only victory, and it was a half-victory.
If I leave it there, she will keep away from the counters. In that sense, she has outsmarted herself.
That’s something. Otherwise, she seems to have gotten the point. Leave the dinner food alone. I left a bunch of bait, she seems disinterested. It is the challenge, not the food, the work, not the meat. That’s the way border collies are, they are work-driven, not food-driven. I see that too.
So time for me to let go and move on. I think we have a truce. I think she understands what she can do and what she can’ do. I can’t say I guarantee she won’t raid the counter again, I feel pretty confident it will be rare, and perhaps, over time, she’ll grow out of it and find some other way to torment me.
She is a great dog, and a worthy object of training. She makes me more patient, more attentive, wiser about my own limits and boundaries. Dogs are gifts, in my mind, they just keep on giving.
Fate has been a fascinating training challenge for me, she keeps teaching me things. She reminds me that dog training is organic, not simple and finite. It never stops, it is fluid and evolving. It is the language by which we often communicate, and when it works, it is a profoundly spiritual experience. Even when it’s all about hamburger meat.