Archives for October 2024

This is for anybody who got to the end of my (surprisingly well-received) piece yesterday questioning the morality of—dog training?—but who rushed on with their day before listening to Jimmy Stewart talk about his love for his dog, Beau.

This’ll have to hold you for a while, as I’ll be in Washington next week running the PSA World Conference. Or rather, having the conference run me.

Back here Monday after next.

Do you have a point of view that you can’t really defend but you can’t abandon it, either?

That’s me, and dog training.

I think dog training is bullshit, in general.

And I know that’s wrong!

And yet:

We had a dog trainer come over here the other night at my wife’s behest. Eddie has got to stop jumping on people! Does he?

The young woman was sharp, not nearly as emotionally sidelong and blame-the-human judgy as most dog trainers. She even had something of a sense of humor. She knew when to pretend to laugh at my little cracks. 

I got along with her great, at first. But by the end of the hour, the whole inside of my body was feeling as murderous as a Richard Burton hangover, and it was all I could do not to show it. A little more than I could do, actually. Animal people can sense animal hatred, even when it comes from humans. She didn’t leave as much as she fled.

But really, the hell with that trainer act: Anybody can show up and bring a zoomie dog to heel by Gatling-Gunning little morsels out of a fucking “treat pouch” on their belt.

Also, don’t insult my dog by saying the only reason he jumps on me is for “attention.” My man jumps on me because he’s excited to see me and because he loves me. Same reason I jump on him!

Also, Eddie’s half poodle, so he is actually great on his hind legs, and can almost walk around on them. Yes, that’s a pain in the ass sometimes. But it’s our pain in the ass. And if my houseguests don’t like it, they don’t love me enough to be my houseguests and they can get an Airbnb. Manipulating a puppy to mince around at knee level the rest of his life despite a great and natural desire to jump up seems to me like teaching an ebullient child to speak exclusively in a low whisper. I told my wife when the trainer left, “I’m sorry, but it’s anathema.”

As soon as I said it, I realized that’s the first time I’ve ever used that term about myself, and meant it. I’m not telling you how to handle your dog, and I guess I don’t despise people who command their dogs like circus trainers, though I don’t count any of them among my friends. It’s just that disciplined, professional, consistent, methodological dog-training is anathema to me. Maybe just like psychotherapy, legendarily, doesn’t work on the Irish.

My dog and I have a relationship. We are beings. We are working things out. As beings. I deal with him like he’s a person, and he deals with me like I’m a dog. Not like he is an iPhone, where I can adjust my preferences. And not like I’m an imperious master whose needs are more important than his. For instance, I won’t have him waking me up at 5:00 a.m. to go outside. But when I piss at 2:00 a.m. and he rings the bell to go out while I’m up, I can hardly tell him no.

In any case, he nuzzles me around 6:30, and I roll over. He puts his paw on the bed at 6:45, and I pet it. He licks me at 7:00 and I give him a little bite on cheek (I do believe in biting dogs). And then at about 7:05, he goes upstairs and returns bounding, leaping like a Nolan Ryan fastball straight into my face, because it is go time.

I’m not training him. We are working things out, the two of us.

I told the trainer that sometimes when I get on the phone, Eddie senses I’m unable to discipline him, and he starts biting at a free hand or jumping on my leg. She started rattling off “tricks” to get him to stop, before I could tell her I usually don’t mind or even really notice his messing with me while I’m on the phone. Or that when I get sick of it, I mute the phone and yell at Eddie to “fuck off,” and he does.

So take your condescending and scientifically questionable nonsense about how my dog “thinks,” and stick it in your treat pouch.

I am sure that all of the above is wrong, and I imagine some animal people will go on to tell me my misguided philosophy amounts to animal cruelty, somehow. 

And yet I could not feel it more strongly or instinctively than I do. Maybe I’m the one who needs training.

My wife told me the next day that she ordered every one of a dozen dog-training gadgets and gizmos that the trainer recommended, including some contraption that forces Eddie to “work for” his dinner, OMG. She’s going to have the trainer back for another session, in a couple weeks. 

“You don’t have to be here for that,” she added.

“Oh, I won’t be,” I replied indignantly, looking at Eddie fondly, and thinking of Jimmy Stewart’s classic poem about his beloved dog Beau, which began, 

He never came when I’d call, 

unless I had a tennis ball. 

Or he felt like it. 

But mostly, he didn’t come at all.

When he was young, never learned

To heel or sit or stay, he did things his way.

Discipline was not his bag, 

But when you were with him, things sure didn’t drag …