Every good dog needs an education, not just the teaching of basic commands, but enough of an understanding about the ways of the human world they share with us to make appropriate decisions when circumstances require them to do so.
As many dogs do not.
Will your dog learn not to cross the street when cars are coming? Probably not, but she definitely can learn to wait at the corner or the curb or whatever you have to separate pedestrians from traffic. Will your dog learn the command “Use your inside voice”? Maybe yes, maybe no. But she can discern the difference between letting her hair down at home, so to speak, and manners befitting an outdoor cafe, a trip to the hardware store, a walk through a street fair. How will she learn these things? With education that is not robotic. With education that encourages, even requires her to think and make decisions and to do so mostly for the pleasure of getting it right. And by allowing her to figure things out when she is ready to do so.
When I take a service dog in training, meaning in my case, a puppy, to a restaurant, I do not ask her to sit or lie down next to the chair I am sitting on or under the table. I usually tell the pup, this is your space for now, and proceed to converse with both the waiter and my companion. Of course I do not ignore the pup. I always watch her out of the corner of my eye. At first, the pup will stand there. What? What! What… And then the pup, observing that I am happy to be where I am, will relax and either sit, fine with me, or lie down, also fine with me. If you are lucky enough to be training a pup when you have an older, trained dog, the pup will merely copy the older dog. Oh, he’s relaxed. I think I’ll lie down, too. Either way, the pup has made a sensible decision, and aside from perhaps an ear scritch, needs nothing from you. Why not give a treat, say? Because the emphasis is on the rightness, the comfort, the calmness, the satisfaction, the safety of making a carefully thought out, appropriate, sensible decision. And the beginning of making good decisions when you are not around to give you opinion or a reward.
Are you teaching your pup to heel? Good for you. When you say the command, eventually your dog will fall in at your side. But the dog who has been allowed to make sensible decisions will also fall in at your side when you are walking in a crowd. And like a service dog who often will help other people when that’s an appropriate thing to do (yes, it is appropriate sometimes), your dog may begin to decide when there’s something she can do without being asked. She may get close to you or someone else who is feeling bad or sad. She may put herself between you and something causing you to be stressed. She may even bring a toy or ball when you are the one who needs to play. She may pull you into the park, but not into the street. She may – but don’t count on it – make the sensible but heart wrenching decision not to steal the defrosting roast. Yeah, well, maybe that’s more sensible than we can count on. But still.
As always, thanks for stopping by. It was the sensible thing to do!
Carol Lea Benjamin on Dogs 