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How
My Dog Trained Me!
©
2006 John H. Dow
I’ve
recently participated in a new refresher course in dog
training. This wasn’t really on my agenda but a few
circumstances developed that lead me down this path of
re-education. It all started when my wife came home one
Saturday afternoon and mentioned she had found a dog
wandering loose. She dropped it off at one of our
children’s home. The plan being that they would put up
signs to try and find the owner since the dog was found in
the vicinity.
I should have know that there was something more going on
when she elaborated on how cute and smart this dog was and
that she hoped the owner could be found soon. We already had
a dog, Spoofy, and two cats, Blackie and Baby, in residence.
And on any given day they more than provided enough
adventure.
Spoofy was a stray that one of our daughters brought home
one stormy night. My daughter has since moved on but Spoofy
stayed. The two cats had been strays that wandered up to the
house one day when they were little more than kittens. They
immediately adopted our dog as a surrogate mother, and
Spoofy having been a mother in the past was delighted.
The two cats think they’re dogs. They sleep, eat, and go
in and out of the house with the Spoofy. They come when you
whistle, they share table scraps with the dog, about the
only thing they don’t do is bark. The dog and two cats are
inseparable and you will rarely find them apart. I never
really had to train Spoofy, she just did what ever you asked
her to do with few exceptions.
Flash forward about three days and I get a call from my
wife, who just happened to stop by to check on our stray dog
in search of an owner. She asked if she could bring the dog
to our house for a while since our daughter was going out of
town. She thought the it would be easier to have the dog at
our house rather than going over several times a day to let
the dog out while our daughter was out of town.
I should have known right then that this was a conspiracy.
The daughter, the wife, and the dog were all in this
together. I was the soon to be victim of this clever little
plan. My wife probably paid my daughter to go out of town
but that’s never been proven.
So I agreed to the “temporary” arrangement and my wife
and new friend, who was now named Tuxcitto, soon arrived
with much fanfare. Tuxcitto was gladly welcomed by Spoofy
since Spoofy likes anybody new, especially a dog. Blackie
and Baby (the cats) were a little less happy with this new
arrival. For one thing, he was jumping around like a crazy
dog, the other was that he and Spoofy seemed to be getting
along just a little too well.
Tuxcito was obviously overjoyed with his new “temporary”
home. He had another dog to play with and two strange
creatures to investigate. Tuxcitto looked to be a Border
Collie. At the time I had no idea what a border collie did
or the nature of their personality. Little did I know that
the breed, and in particular, Tuxccito, could run about 60
miles per hour, leap over 5 foot fences, could escape any
containment, and wanted to play 24/7.
The first day, once Tuxcito had explored every nook and
cranny of our house, I sat him down to see exactly what he
might know or not know. I told him to sit, stay, lay down,
play dead, and he snapped to on every command. Hmm, someone
has trained this dog. I asked him where Spoofy was and he
turned around and looked right at Spoofy, then I asked him
where Blackie was, and he then looked at Blackie. Uh Oh,
this dog is smarter than a lot of people I know =8~).
Up until now I’d always had him on a lease when we went
outside. So I let him, Spoofy, and the cats out in the
backyard. He fooled around with Spoofy for a while, then
checked out the entire backyard, bush by bush, tree by tree.
All the time running over to get petted every so often by me
and my wife. Everything was fine until he heard a neighbor
rummaging around in his back yard.
Tuxcito stopped dead in his tracks, listening. Then with the
speed and agility of a deer, ran right up to the adjoining
fence and leaped right over it. Tuxcito cleared that 5 foot
fence with room to spare. My wife jumped up, I jumped up and
Spoofy and the cats turned to look. About then my neighbor
yells over the fence, I see you have a new dog.
My brain cells finally clicked and I immediately realized
two things. Yes, more than likey I did have a new dog, and
that this dog was probably going to drive me nuts. And I was
right on both counts as it turned out. But back to Tuxccito
and his amazing escapes.
Over the next week or so, Tuxcito managed to find a way to
escape every containment method we found to try. If we tied
him to a stake, he pulled out the stake. If we tied him to a
tree, he slipped his collar. The only way to keep him from
escaping was to use a leash, he seemed to be fine with that.
Every time the front door opened and you didn’t have
Tuxcito in hand, he was gone. Through the legs of many a
visitor, and he was so quick you could not grab him.
When he would get out, he would just run up and down the
streets checking out anything of interest. People, dogs,
cats, houses, he’d swim down the bayou (he loves water) or
whatever. He never caused any trouble, but he would not come
back in until I went out and cornered him somewhere. My
grandchildren were especially easy targets to provide an
exit.
And of course he loved to escape just when we were leaving
to go somewhere. So everyone always knew why we were late,
Tuxcito and his amazing escapes. At first I would scold and
admonish him every time I caught up with him to bring him
back home. After a while I figured out that this wasn’t
going to work. I was reinforcing that when ever he did come
to me (or most times caught him) he would get a tongue
lashing.
And then I remembered hearing somewhere that this was one of
the major mistakes people make when trying to correct bad
behavior in a dog. So my next ruse was to take Spoofy for a
walk, and then Tuxcito would find us and want to walk with
us. As soon as he came up I slapped a leash on him. But this
got old too. Sometimes there were too many distractions,
like neighbors riding bikes or kids playing ball. They were
much more fun.
Then I started keeping treats with me and would frequently
call him to my side. So every time he came to me I slipped
him a treat. After doing this for about a week, he escaped
again. So I went out and took Spoofy with me as bait. Sure
enough, when I called him he scampered right up, and I gave
him a treat.
So, in the end analysis, Tuxcito has trained me to give him
a treat when I call him =8~). But we have overcome his great
escapes, now he’ll run around the yard until I come out to
give him his treat. Which is OK, I can live with that. But
it does demonstrate that using positive reinforcement is a
much more affective dog training method than negative
reinforcement or punishment.
John Dow writes for www.freedogtrainingarticles.com,
a website that provides free information on dog training.
John gets to test this training information daily with his
new dog Tuxccito. You can learn more here: http://www.freedogtrainingarticles.com.
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