Sit, Stay, Please, Thank You: Obedience and Manners

"I have something for you to see," my mother-in-law tells us as we unload our car for a weekend stay. Katie is bouncing around, sniffing everything, while we gather what ends up being mostly her stuff.

My mother-in-law has Tivo-ed an Oprah episode for us--appropriately, one on dogs. The central guest star is Tamar Geller, whose book The Loved Dog is currently a hot topic on Amazon (look through the comments, and the comment threads on the comments, for a cat fight about this dog book!) (And shame on Amazon, for apparently removing relevant customer reviews from a product's description, but that's another post.)

Geller's philosophy on dog training is that dogs need manners, not discipline or obedience. Appalled by unquestionably ruthless dog training practices in a military situation, she developed her kinder, gentler methods by observing wolf families in the wilderness. Memorably, she says (I'm paraphrasing here), "We need to train dogs like they are dolphins, not dogs." What she meant is that dolphins are trained with heavy emphasis on game play and treats because, Geller says, if they get bored or fed up, they can just swim away, back into the vast blue sea without a backward glance. Dogs are more captive and are therefore not treated so gingerly by (perhaps in Geller's view, many) owners and trainers. Ok, I'll buy that for a dollar.

With a mental note to check out Geller's book on Amazon, Oprah's show and my attention move on to the tallest dog in the world who takes up two seats in a commercial passenger jet plane and can say "I love you." And I don't think about any of it again until Mr. Hands and I are with Katie at her obedience class tonight.

I have a lot of respect for the "Dragon Lady" and the trainers at our dog training group. They clearly have years of experience with accepted methods, and a passion for dogs and working with dogs. Katie is responding really well, and all three of us are feeling comfortable with what's going on. Her personality certainly isn't being eradicated by cold disciplinary tactics that are turning her into an obedient automaton. And we have no intention of creating a canine servant; our goal is a four-legged family member who trusts us and whom we can trust implicitly around children, other dogs, the general public, etc... Best of all, the activity and perhaps the challenge suit Katie. Nobody celebrates more than her when we get a skill right--she literally wiggles with pleasure.

But make no mistake, we are being taught how to train Katie to be obedient. There is a time for play, and there is a time to get to business, and though all of it is done with respect and dignity for the dog, the business is: sit up and pay attention, no foolin'.

So as the class comes to a close and the instructor demonstrates with his own dog how the preliminary skills we have been working on prepare us to do more nifty and impressive skills, I think of Geller and the "manners versus obedience" question.

I lean over to Mr. Hands and whisper, "I don't think we're training dolphins here."

He chuckles and whispers back, "That's ok, Katie doesn't like to swim."