Posts Tagged ‘Hero’

Just do nothing

The other day I was sitting with Kevin and Agi at their beautiful farm house underneath a huge maple tree.  We were sipping coffee and chatting away.  Kevin was holding Hero on a leash and no one was paying her much mind.  Without a thought in the world, I got up to get something out of the house.

Hero lit up like a match hitting a pile of kerosene soaked rags.  As I walked away, she jumped up and barked like crazy.  She barked while I was in the house and never took her eyes off that front door.  When I came back, she settled right down and began chewing a stick again.

What’s amazing about this is that it was the first time I really understood the connection I have with this dog.  All I have ever done, ever, is open the crate door, put a food bowl down, and walk her in the woods.  No praise.  No intense petting, no whistling , no talking, no nothing.  I have just stood there and done nothing.  I have just been there.  That has been enough,more than enough, to create an unbreakable bond.

We all know dogs love us unconditionally.  Still, we all try to do things to make them love us.  We don’t need to.  All the things we do;  doggie day care, treat training, behavior modification, praise, punishment, lavish collars, they just get in the way of allowing a dog to freely express their unconditional love for us.

It’s the same with people, all we need to do is just be there, it’s always enough.

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.

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.