The Trials of Training Humans

Trials and tribulations are not confined to the world of humans.  Let me tell you a story...

Once upon a time two little dogs (Ds 1&2) lived in a house in Melbourne, where they spent considerable time training their family so that they could live a comfortable doggie life with all the things that dogs need like treats, walks, and being able to sneak into the bedroom and sleep on the bed.

One sad day the Ds' family walked out the door very early in the morning.  "No!" they said, and shut the door very firmly when the Ds tried to come with them.

Two hours later some total strangers walked in and started acting as if they were allowed to live there.  The Ds were insulted, but not too insulted because the strangers seemed to know where the treats were kept and how to hand them out.

They found the treats!

 

It immediately became obvious that the strangers were not at all house-trained. The Ds immediately started a training regime and the strangers demonstrated themselves to be a fraction slow on the uptake.  They even brought around another stranger, a smaller and younger version of themselves who was very affectionate to the Ds and then declared with gob-smacking audacity that D2 was but a 'chonk' and that both had hidden behind the door when God gave out brains in Dogland.  Then she gave them treats and let them sit on her lap, thus forcing the Ds, against their better judgement, to like her anyway.

Every day the Ds worked hard on training the strangers in walk etiquette.  Sometimes the strangers appeared to get the message and put on their coats and shoes and then went out and shut the door in the D's faces.  The D's upped the ante and began to race to the door at the slightest hint of coat or shoes.  In a shameful act of silliness, the bigger stranger played games that sent the Ds racing in a tizz from front door to doggy door to side gate and back again, all in a lather of expectation.  This proved that humans, particularly strangers acquired late in life, were prone to frivolity and therefore very difficult to train.

The troubles didn't end when the Ds eventually chivvied the strangers out the door for a well-earned walk either. They needed education on the established fact that while walking D2 was honour bound to challenge and vanquish any dog that came his way, even if this should mean slipping his collar and ravaging the ankles of the closest Alaskan Malumut or Doberman.  The strangers just did not get that D2 was more than capable of these acts of warfare, and they tightened his collar to the point of suffocation.  D2, being built like a torpedo with a tail, still slipped his collar with ease and went to war.

The strangers bought and applied a harness.  D2 slipped the harness.  The strangers tightened the harness and to his horror D2 could not escape.  Even worse, when he attempted to defend the world the strangers had but to lift his leash and he found himself attempting to maintain a paroxysm of rightful rage while dangling ignominiously in mid air.

Alaskan Malamutes and Dobermans were observed to snigger, which did not improve D2's disposition. 

Nor were the training travails confined to D2.  D1 had his own struggles enforcing the long established tradition that he spend the first 7 minutes of his walk establishing dominance over his leash and the human on the other end.  He achieved this by grasping the leash firmly in his teeth, growling ferociously, pulling fiercely in the opposite direction of where ever he was meant to go, and generally making sure that everyone knew who was boss.  For the first week or so the strangers went along with this, and D1 considered himself a superior trainer to D2.  'See?" he said,  'You just have to be firm and they'll behave!"

The next day they walked out the gate, D1 took hold of his leash, and the stranger stopped.  D1 growled and snarled and pulled with every fibre of his being.

The stranger stood, whistling and looking into the trees.

"Help me!" snarled D1.  So D2 burst into voice, yapping and yelling and dancing to and fro, with the odd snarl and snap mixed in. The stranger lifted the leash so D2 was no longer in contact with the earth.  Two of the pebbles in D2's head knocked together and created a spark.

"It's no good," he said.  "They're going to stand here until you're quiet."

D1 kept going.  D2 gave up, stopped yelling, and was returned to solid ground with effusive pats.  After 7 minutes D1 dropped the leash and lo and behold the stranger started walking.  D1  grabbed the leash and the stranger stopped.  D1 decided that was enough training for the day, dropped the leash again, and they had a lovely walk.

D's 1&2 settled in to a long haul training program for the strangers.  D1 trained them to stop whenever he grabbed the leash.  They caught on so so well that some mornings he didn't grab the leash at all and let them get straight down to the business of walking.

"See?" He said to D2, who resolutely stuck to his principles as defender of the world and as a result still spent portions of his walk midair, "You just have to be firm, that's all."

"Might I point out," replied D2, "that you are no longer boss of your lead?" Thereby demonstrating that he did not understand D1's training strategy at all.

Every evening D2 retired to the dining room rug for a spot of rolling around followed by a vigorous battle to catch his traitorous tail.  The ill-trained strangers took these private moments as a cue to dissolve into giggles and take videos despite D2's best haughty stares. 

 

Ds 1&2 settled in for the long haul.  After all, no dog ever trained a human (and a stranger at that!) in a day, and for all they knew their owners had disappeared and weren't ever coming back.  "We'll lull them into a false sense of security," said D1 wearily, as he climbed up onto the cushion which the bigger stranger had put beside him on the couch. "Then we'll steal their slippers and chew them up."

D2 did not answer.  He had succeeded in forcing his stranger to give him a gentle tummy rub, and was fast asleep.