Dissing Your Dog

Just found this sketch while messing around on Hulu. I'd seen it before but never really considered it as a serious training option. Food and congratulatory excitement, the former being far preferred, are what I use with Scout. Though I can't say I've ever really trained Scout in the sense that she listens to me. Sure, she can sit, lay down, roll over, give paw, even come sometimes. But if there was say, an enticing butt to smell or squirrel to chase or poop to roll in, she'd ignore me and do whatever the hell she wanted.

The fact that she understands free will on some rudimentary dog-level makes me think she is smart; it also makes me think she is a total a-hole. Perhaps if I applied Mr.Sturtevant's techniques, she would realize her a-holeness and actually listen. It's no crueler than Caesar Milan's "Shhh"/neck jerk technique.

Alas, I won't insult the derelect doggie - mainly because I think it is unfun and anxiety-inducing to employ verbal irony upon a being that can't return it. If Scout refused to come to me and I said "Ok, I guess I'll leave and you can go back to the original family that abandoned you," I would want her to come back with "Go ahead, leave me here and go hang out with the other friends you don't have." Instead, the comeback stays in her little mutt brain, for only her to enjoy, as I sit and contemplate every terrible thing she could be thinking about me.

Our dogs see us at our most vulnerable times: naked, peeing, stuffing our face with cookie dough after we learn our "the one's" most lofty goal is to have tattoo sleeves, etc. Let's hope that evolution doesn't lead to talking dogs; they've got far too much on us.