June, 2009

This man knows more about dogs than anybody should!

People who enter my house for the first time are amazed at my sense of color;  the boldness of the yellow, the way the purple really works with the blue, the audacity of mixing peach with green. How did I do it?

I’m a copy cat.  I copied Monet. I have no sense of color so I stole from the master.  I painted my entire house as an exact replica of the one Monet had in Giverny.  And  I think he’d approve.

Why do I have the most amazing dog? A heavy duty working German Shepherd that’s simultaneously strong as iron and flexible as willow? A powerhouse that’s in love with life and follows commands given by my four year old goddaughter?

I copied.  Not a single original inspiration in the whole works.  In five lifetimes I couldn’t possibly have begun to understand and see dogs the way Kevin Behan does.  But I’m a great executor of other peoples ideas so it works. I’m like a really good cover band; entertaining, but I’ll never be the Rolling Stones.

I know all this stuff because I had to.  I drove myself to know it.  I grabbed the shirt tails of the master and wouldn’t let go.  The universe is a giving thing;  I was never arrested for stalking.  I followed Kevin around for 12 years; he has never not answered a question and interestingly, he has never said I don’t know.  He has been a most generous teacher.

So here I bring you Natural Dog Training in plain English where I will take you on a Hero’s journey; raising a dog in a totally new and revolutionary way.

“That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet”, William Shakespeare.

The whole idea of a puppy learning it’s name and hence learning to come to it’s name, Max, Clyde, Fido,  is one of the most interesting examples of how dogs learn and what dogs learn.  Most puppy owners have been schooled to use the puppy’s name frequently, with great repetition, to teach the puppy its name. The premise is that by repeating the sounds that make up the name, the dog will come to know that the name means itself.

“Romeo, Romeo? Hey that’s me!”

This presupposes that dogs have a sense of self, separate from other things, which I don’t think they do.  To me, dogs and especially puppies, are totally connected to the entire web of life;  there is no way they can feel separate from anything.  They can’t step outside themselves like we can and understand themselves relative to other beings.  Therefore, they can’t know their names like we do.

Don’t we all remember as kids learning the alphabet and times tables through repetition? What tedious work, especially for those who didn’t have Sesame Street.

What was it like when you were out playing with your friends and your mother called you? Was anyone ever excited by that?  When I was in real trouble, my mother would attach my middle name to the “recall”, Yikes, I knew something very unpleasant was about to happen.  I wonder if this is how most dogs feel when they hear their name.

What I have heard over and over is that puppies that for months “knew” or “had” the recall down, suddenly reach a point where they no longer come when called.   Where as before they would eagerly run to the owner, now they “balk”.  This is often called “adolescence”, which is a way of explaining the phenomenon without explaining it. After all, when we turn 13,  do we  forget the times tables or rebel against them? If dogs learn through repetition how do they suddenly unlearn something so crucial and important as their name? Hmmm, very interesting.

Since I’m raising Hero the Natural Dog Training way, I never use her name. Never.   Instead, I go goofball.  She’s been called;  Little stink pot, Little tank, My little bear, Pumpkin, Ms. Mighty Bite, Ms. Shark,  Piranha Puppy, Poopsy, Tootsie roll, Puppsy Wuppsy, so and and so forth. I don’t use her name. I didn’t with her brother either (he still has a million names but I won’t affront his dignity by printing any), and his name, Athos, is the most riveting word to him in the universe.  It’s because his name means; “Come to the most exciting thing in the universe and all your deepest desires will  be satisfied”. ( Usually it’s a bite toy).

So instead of teaching Hero her name, I concentrate on being the most exciting thing in the universe. Right now, it’s a real ego boost because I don’t have to do anything. Sooner or later though, her attraction will begin to drift from me, and then I will have to work to keep it. That’s what happens when dogs who have known their names all along suddenly forget it. They don’t forget it, they just think it means,” Go to the most exciting thing in the world!” and guess what? It’s no longer the owner.

I will reserve Hero’s name for the time when she has totally committed all her energy to me and it will be a trigger to come and get it! She’ll feel her name as a release to fulfillment, not as a interruption to her fun. It will feel good; it will energize her; it will make her feel like a rocket ship taking off and zooming home.

Of course not teaching a puppy her name right away can be scary. We’ve all been told that we must be consistent and that we must imprint all these millions of things onto our puppies asap or they’ll grow up to be raving maniacs.  I know that not to be true.  That’s part of what this blog is all about. To raise a dog naturally, in accordance with a dog’s nature, and to document it.  The most important thing for me in raising Hero is to imprint her with the feeling I can be trusted.  In order to do that, I must trust the goodness in her; I have to trust her nature. And I do.

So think up all the ridiculous names you can think of and use them liberely. It’s fun. The puppy smells just as sweet.

Here in Southern Vermont there are a lot of alternative minded people; we have food co-ops, a socialist Senator, town meetings, bread and puppet,  Ben and Jerry’s, organic farms, cow parades, and a lot of homeschooling families. Many of the families “unschool” their children, a movement started by John Holt in the 1970’s. Unschooling means that the child leads the learning experience; the parent facilitates the learning of what they want to learn, when they want to learn it, in the way they want to learn it. To school your children in this way takes a huge amount of trust, and I’ve seen children raised in this manner turn out to be truly remarkable adults.
What Southern Vermont doesn’t have, what no place has, is “Untraining”.
It’s interesting that the mentor of the untraining movement, Kevin Behan, is a police dog and boarder control dog trainer who has spent his life with all the heavy hitters. Not even the hippies understand dogs.
To untrain your dog, as I am doing with Hero, takes a huge amount of trust. You must trust that a dog knows how to be a dog.  I hardly know how to be a human being let alone a dog. So I let the dog lead. I trust she will be a dog because she is a dog. For 100,000 years domesticated dogs have lived with humans and I don’t think it took puppy kindergarten to get them here.

All dogs know how to sit, down, stay, heal and come when called no matter what. Just watch them. Maybe they don’t do it for us, but they do it. Our goal in “untraining” is simply to work with the dog’s natural impulse to do these things; by the time my older dog was one year old I was able to elicit all these things without commands or corrections. I learned how to work with the dog’s natural drive; I trusted he knew how to do all things things without a human teaching him.

Raising  Hero can look simultaneously  permissive and militaristic.  She lives in a crate but can bite and chew us in the puppy yard at her will. We sit in  silent watchfulness ; there are no words, no commands, no teaching.  To a trainer we are missing our chance to teach her to obey, to the groovy person we are way too controlling.

Untraining just takes trust.  If we can trust our children to school themselves, then we can trust our dogs as well.

The first few days of raising Hero, we thought we had a different kind of puppy. A lap sitting, mellow, cuddly puppy. Well, it turns out that was just adjustment time so it wasn’t too long before we had our first rule; don’t wear your crocs in the puppy yard if you like your ankles. Now, four pair of Wellingtons sit like sentinels right outside the door.
Why do I wear a down jacket in 70 degree weather when I take Hero out? It’s because I think eye brows would be raised if I had a bruise every where she bit me.
Some may ask, why are we allowing our puppy to use us as chew toys? Here is the answer in the best way I can say it. Puppy mouthing and biting is a stage of development that all puppies will grow out of if not confronted over it. That last part is so crucial. If an adult dog is mouthy, or even aggressive, I’d bet my bottom dollar he was confronted over some normal puppy behavior. Anyone who has had children knows that they go through certain developmental stages; we accept them because we ourselves grew out of them. Puppies are no different. Everything in their universe is tested through their mouth with little needle teeth. They grow out of it. They don’t need to be taught how. When I quietly sit in the puppy yard, and allow Hero to chomp on me, from her point of view this is what she is “learning”; I am safe to express my drive and energy around human beings. It’s that simple.
I don’t fear that this little land shark will grow up to be a biter; I know she won’t. Instead of teaching her not to bite, slowly over time I will teach her what to bite, and that will be a crucial element in her training.
To raise a dog without confrontation is the most radical and pure way to raise a dog. Hands down, I believe confrontation over normal puppy behavior like biting is the number one reason 9 million dogs go to their deaths every year.
So we pad ourselves well, wear clothes we don’t care about, and always wear Wellington boots. We love our piranha and trust implicitly that she will grow up to be a dog.

What?? You don’t have your puppy in the house? The questioner is truly incredulous; I am equally so. Lets imagine; what would it be like having Hero, aged 8 weeks, pure breed German Shepherd dog living in my house?  Favorite shoes chewed? Check. Hand hooked rug ripped apart? Check. Cat chased. Check. Oriental rugs peed on? Check. Puppy getting tripped over? Check.  Children’s ankles bitten and favorite toys destroyed? Check. Toilet water everywhere?  Check. Food stolen off the table? Check. People mad at puppy? Check. People yell at puppy? Check. Puppy feels….confused, scared and does not trust her owners. I must ask, why would anyone have a puppy in their house?

I think people really love their puppies, but are confused about what they need.  Puppies need quality time where they can be puppies uninhibited, safely and without incurring our wrath.  Since dogs have no sense of time, for a puppy, it only matters that each experience is like this; it makes no difference how long it lasts.  One bad experience; one scolding, one finger wagging, one grab from behind, damages a dog forever.   Protecting our puppies from these bad experiences is our number one job as dog owners.

Hero lives contentedly in her crate while she’s sleeping and when she’s not sleeping, she is playing safely and contentedly in her little yard, accompanied by one the family members. Here she is free to jump on us, chew our hands, chase butterflies, and bite whatever is available. She is safe from getting into trouble and from being yelled at for simply expressing her energy. She is learning that she is safe expressing her energy when she is with us, and that is the key to the training that will come down the road.
Who does it really serve having a puppy live freely in a house? It really serves the human. It harms the dog. I would say, from watching Hero, that trying to live in a house with a puppy is the number one cause of problem behavior. It is just plain not fair to put a puppy into a situation they are not mature enough to handle. It’s not right to expect them to act in any other way but like a complete chomping, ripping, jumping machine. I never let my babies play with knives but as adolescents they chop like chefs. I apply the same principle to the puppy. It really does amaze me that people think a puppy somehow suffers from not living in an environment they clearly can not handle. If I had to live with Hero, I would guess that I would mostly feel frustrated, angry, and guilty. As it is , she is the absolute apple of my eye. I adore her beyond comprehension. She also loves and trusts me implicitly, because I don’t have to man handle her, confront her, correct her, or get mad at her for anything. A dog that has never been confronted or corrected is a dog without problem behaviors.

I believe we all have a lot to learn by exploring the feelings we have about having a puppy be our plush toy, by needing to cuddle it, by thinking it needs to be with us all the time.  Dogs are in our lives to help us see ourselves better, what better place to start?

Really think about it.  Puppies don’t belong in a house.