The Joy (or lack thereof) of Training

Pearl and Spike learn CALM

When they slept, the house was quiet. But like newborns, Pearl and Spike slept for a couple of hours, woke up, and wanted to play and play until exhaustion forced them to stop. Briefly.

Their wildness attracted and depleted me. They were real dogs, raw dogs—admittedly unruly, but what did they know? They had never been around humans much or been taught to read us. Spike was not afraid of people, although he probably should have been; he was only a pup when he left dogfighting in the dust. Pearl, smarter and less trusting, was willing to befriend people, carefully, as there were obvious rewards.

Pearl and Spike lived for each other—not for me or for any other human being. As far as I could tell, they loved their crates, food, and each other. They tolerated me and never thought much about Peter. Peter is a soft person. The dogs just assumed that he would not bother them and therefore he could be safely ignored. Peter didn’t bother them; he left the room, or the house, when they went wild.

Initially, I wanted at the very least to teach the dogs to acknowledge our presence and be calm in the house. This did not seem like a lot to ask. Love would come much later.

“Are you crazy,” my friend Ruth asked when she met the dogs for the first time. “Why do you even want them?” It was a serious question and I wasn’t sure about the answer. My close friends were alarmed that I had gone over to the dark side of animal rescue/rights/welfare/protection. I had been living with pit bulls for 20 years but these were the first two who were totally unmanageable. “You are taking dogs no one else would have,” my neighbor Alex commented, suggesting that someone had pulled the wool over my eyes. Mostly, my friends were no longer comfortable in my house. Liz and Emily, frequent visitors, called first and shyly asked, “Are they crated?” I got the message.

When free, the dogs rushed people, which scared them, and when they entered the house, Spike liked to nip and mouth arms and ankles in the most awkward, annoying way. It was his way of holding onto people, keeping their attention focused on him. How could I make him understand that this was a terrible strategy? When our beloved plumber (finally) arrived one day, Spike leapt up to his chest, grabbed a mouthful of his shirt and tore it off his torso. Luckily, he was a dog-lover.

My niece arrived from New York a little early one afternoon and the dogs were lounging outside on the deck. The moment Eliza opened her car door, Spike leapt onto her lap and scratched her arm badly. She was bleeding when she made it to the front door. Pearl had a different technique. She jumped up high enough to look people in the eye, but would occasionally knock them over. At 40 pounds, this stocky, black pit bull was strong. People took one look at her and were frightened.

The house was a battle zone and the dogs held the front line. I needed help.

Cydney Cross, trainer, teacher and friend, assumed that I was exaggerating the misdeeds of Pearl and Spike. I begged her to come do an emergency training session. I wanted her to show me how to let the dogs out of their crates without unleashing total insanity. I also wanted Cross to see them at their worst, so I allowed the dogs to greet her at the front door. Spike leapt up, grabbed Cross’s down vest in his teeth and let it rip; we all watched the feathers fly. But Cross never gets mad at a dog. “I’ll replace it,” I told her apologetically. “No you won’t,” she said. “It’s fine.”

Cross used her quiet authority and fist full of treats. Both dogs sat in front of her to receive them. They were calm in her presence as if she had some magical powers. Then she crated them. For a change, they didn’t protest. The house was quiet. We could think, or even speak. “Deprive them of the the privilege of answering the front door and crate them before people walk in,” Cross said, adding, “And you need to attend class.”

Finding the right trainer can be as critical as finding the right doctor. I confess that I often counted on Cross to help train my dogs and called on my friend Elisabeth Weiss in New York City, who calls herself a “teacher” rather than a “trainer.” She has even taught a few canine pupils to play the piano. (More on Elisabeth later.) So much depends on the person on the other end of the leash.

I had hoped Peter would do a class with one of the dogs. He likes dogs, but would never go so far as to describe himself as a “dog person.” That is to say, he likes dogs who are calm, respond to his commands, and don’t constantly bark. I once asked Peter to attend a training class with a young dog we had adopted named Boyd (after Boyd Crowder in Justified) and he agreed. The class was held outdoors in a park during summer, when the temperature hovered in the low 90’s. About 20 dogs participated, which meant a great deal of standing around. Boyd, a pit bull-boxer cross, brindled and handsome, did not like standing around. During his first class, he chewed through his leash, defecated, and barked off and on for the hour. Peter and Boyd were equally unhappy. I held out hope that this might bond them together.

     During the second class, Boyd lay down and went to sleep (very Boyd) and would not get up when Peter tried to roust him. He habitually slept through violent thunder storms and was not particularly motivated by food. At the class, Peter tried to entice him to cooperate with high-end treats, but Boyd flatly refused to go anywhere with him except to the car. He just wanted to go home. In the end, Peter thought Boyd had the right idea and he washed his hands of dog training.

Dog owners must decide what is acceptable behavior from their animals. Generally, different people draw the line in different places. For instance, my good friends up the road allow their sweet hound to ask for food at the table. She knows that at the end of the meal, she will be allowed to lick all the plates. So, she goes from person to person waiting for each one to finish and put his or her plate on the floor. When the dishes are all done—she leaves the room and goes off to sleep. I find this dinner ritual quite charming. The dog is engaged and has received some healthy scraps. Even better, no dishes to scrub. But I also know that Pearl and Spike would get too excited to handle this indulgence with any grace. They’d be on top of the table trying to eat all the food.

     During the pandemic, trainers became essential workers, so busy that they turned potential clients away. Luckily, most dogs, unlike Boyd, love school and many owners understand the necessity of educating themselves as well, whether they subscribe to a newsletter, watch videos, or attend a class.

     Ideological disputes over different training strategies and techniques are not unusual, reflecting the same polarizing debates that ripple through the no-kill movement. A new progressive group of trainers, for example, who grew up believing that animals have an integrity, separate and autonomous from their owners, begin with the dog—not the dog’s “issues”—as determined by his or her owner. The goal is to integrate the dog’s needs into the training and eradicate the notion that people should rule their dogs.

    The old school, conservative, trainers, like Cesar Milan, believe owners should use whatever is necessary, including aggressive techniques, to dominate their dogs. Milan became a global TV success thanks to his Nat Geo show, The Dog Whisperer. A working-class kid from Mexico, he had slipped over the border at the age of 21 and snagged a job as a dog groomer. The owner of the shop noticed that he was good at dealing with powerful, unruly dogs and suggested that he think about doing some training. The rest is history. Millan eventually generated a hit show, best-selling training books, and opened his “dog-psychology center” in Santa Clarita, California, where owners could drop off their dogs for training and go home. This began a new trend: send an unruly dog to boarding school and get a perfect one returned home.

      Millan hit a nerve. His fans couldn’t wait to try out his testosterone-driven techniques on their unmanageable mutts. Self-trained as he was, his “magic” appeared to be his ability to dominate dogs, the more truculent the better. He became their “pack leader,” a phrase he used so often that his fans swiftly picked it up. Millan’s “pack leaders,” also known as “alphas,” were taught how to produce slavishly obedient dogs, using threatening, sometimes cruel techniques. He repeatedly punched dogs in the head or throat, jerked them around on tight choke chains, kicked them in their ribs, and he used shock collars on the most difficult ones to punish them for “bad” behaviors. One dog was nearly asphyxiated by being hanged from a tree; another fell off a treadmill at his training center and choked to death. No one was watching. Law suits were mounting.

     The dogs feared him, which is what he seemed to want. The ones who went after Millan on camera were thrown onto the ground, rolled over and held down until they went limp. Watching the television show, some of us began rooting for the dogs, and on the occasions when one of them bit Millan, we cheered.

     Inevitably, Millan went too far. In one episode, he used a real pig to desensitize a dog to farm animals. The dog lunged for the pig, biting him badly as the pig squealed and bled profusely. Millan treated the incident casually, no big deal. Many of his fans, however, understood that pigs, like dogs, feel pain. Millan’s callousness had become too extreme to be ignored. His critics sent a petition, signed by 10,000 people, many of them professional trainers,  demanding that Nat Geo kill the show. Dr. Nicholas Dodman, a highly regarded veterinarian/behaviorist charged that Millan “set back dog training by at least 20 years.” Nat Geo cancelled the show in 2012, after a seven year run.

      Millan is no longer universally respected, yet his legacy of punishment still reverberates in the training world. In San Jose, California, a new trainer popped up on Netflix. Jas Leverette’s series, Canine Intervention, uses  Millan’s language, words and phrases like “pack leader” and “alpha,” to argue that dogs should be dominated by their owners. Like Millan, Leverette trains through fear—not trust. The dogs on his show appear scared of their trainer as they magically go from naughty to nice in a single episode. The show has been attacked by trainers who use positive techniques, which they argue should be standard in the  field. Of course they should be standard! Why haven’t these (mostly male) trainers learned to respect dogs!

   

There is a better way. Trainers who use positive reinforcement, including Karen Pryor, Ian Dunbar, Jean Donaldson, Patricia McConnell and Pat Millar, to name a few of the best known, have been highly successful with average dogs as well as those labeled difficult or dangerous. These trainers have been publishing books and releasing videos for more than thirty years, but still, too many trainers and hence dog owners use choke chains and prong collars to wrestle dogs into obedience despite the fact there is an equally effective, more humane way for us to communicate our desires to our dogs.

Hannah, trainer and friend, arrived to help with my front door issues. I still wanted to teach Pearl and Spike to greet people with grace. I thought they were ready. “Not yet,” Hannah said. She was a realist. When I expected company, I learned to relegate the dogs to their crates or to my office where there were ample beds and comfy chairs. They protested, noisily, for about five minutes, and then they finally learned to accept their fate. I was thrilled. At the very least I could get people in the house for dinner. There was also a silver lining. When people lingered too long at the table, all I had to do was release the dogs. Everyone fled.

(next week: A Surprise Attack!)