Tonglen Healing Arts for Animals

Articles

Family School

March 2004

Bobbin eyed me curiously out of the corner of her eye as she rested her body in her person's lap. Devon had brought this sleek white and tan Jack Russell to see me because she wanted to bring Bobbin to work with her, but there was a problem that needed to be addressed before that could happen. "Polly, we need to tell her she can't keep ignoring me when I call her." I could hear the frustration in Devon's voice as she spoke.

I asked Devon to give me an example of what Bobbin's ignoring her looked like. "Oh, that's easy. I call her and she doesn't come. As a matter of fact, she just keeps on doing whatever she was doing and sometimes even runs off to do something new." At this point Devon picked up Bobbin, held her at eye level and gave her a raised eyebrow glance before returning Bobbin to her lap.

Talking to Bobbin, I explained that Devon loved spending time with her and wanted to be able to take her to the place where Devon spent her daytime hours. Bobbin liked this idea of going off to Devon's workplace. I then explained to Bobbin there was a problem stopping this from happening. I showed an image of a scene of Devon calling Bobbin to come and Bobbin staying where she was. I asked Bobbin if she understood that scene and asked if it was true for her. She said yes to both. I then explained how Devon wanted her to come over right away to Devon when she called. Bobbin didn't have a clue what I was talking about. I explained that whenever Bobbin heard Devon call her to come she was to stop what she was doing and come right over. Again, Bobbin didn't seem to understand what I meant. At this point I turned to Devon and said, "What sort of training have you done with Bobbin?"

"What do you mean?" asked Devon.

"Have you taught Bobbin what the command 'Come' means and have you shown her what you want her to do each time she hears it?"

Devon laughed and said, "She knows what I mean."

"How? Did you do training with her?"

"Well, no. But she knows, she's just ignoring me."

"Devon," I said, "you can dress me up as a brain surgeon, put me in the operating room, surround me with a great staff and top notch equipment, but if I never learned how to perform surgery, I won't be able to do it."

As Devon nodded in agreement, I asked her why she hadn't taken Bobbin to a training class or gotten material to do some training on her own. She said she didn't want to be mean to Bobbin and the idea of obedience training was just too harsh. After all, Devon just wanted to live peacefully with Bobbin, not be a bully.

None of us wants to be mean to our animals, but when we don't teach them things, we are doing them a disservice and setting them up to be the focus of future frustration and resentment. I think one of the factors standing in the way of teaching our animals acceptable behavior is a negative perception many of us hold about training. With classes being referred to as "Obedience School" I can understand why people might shy away. We want to be loved by our animals, not feared by them. The word "obedience" conjures up thoughts of oppressive dictator methodology. I've heard clients say they love their dog's personality too much and don't want to change it with training. From this perspective, why would anyone want to train their dog?

I look at this issue from a different angle. I am not sure many of us need our animal's unwavering obedience. However, I do think we all need to be able to function as a unit, a pack, a family. Families have rules. When the rules are fair, age appropriate, clearly explained (or in the case of our dogs, clearly taught) and consistent, following them allows the family to work cohesively.

For our canine companions, fair means we don't want to set our dogs up to fail. For instance, I don't offer a stuffed animal as a chew toy and then get mad when my dog destroys one of my favorite childhood stuffed animals. That's not fair. They both look alike to the dog, don't they?

Age appropriate rules mean I have very different expectations for a puppy than I do for an adult dog. Just like with human children, puppies have short attention spans and don't have enough life experience to grasp how things work. They are still learning about their world. They need chances to try things many times, to make mistakes and to have successes. That's the way they learn how their world works.

Puppies and dogs also need to be taught what we mean and what we expect of them. Their bodies need to learn what to do when they hear a word like "Come." It's not enough to talk with them about it. When learning new skills it is crucial to practice over and over again in a setting safe enough to make mistakes without real harm coming to them.

We can put all the above into play, but without the final piece, consistency, it's really hard to pull it all together. Without consistency our dogs learn sometimes the world works one way with one person and then it works another way with another person. Sometimes it might even work different ways at different times with the same person. This creates a lot of confusion and can undermine the best attempts at education. Debbie was having trouble keeping her dog Toby off of her bed while she was away from the house. I asked Debbie if there were times when Toby was allowed on the bed and she said in the morning she always cuddled with Toby on the bed before starting the day. When I talked with Toby about staying off the bed he was confused because sometimes it was okay and other times it was wrong. That wasn't consistent and didn't make any sense to him.

I propose the idea that instead of going to "obedience school" we need to go to "family school." Family school is a place where the entire family goes, not just one or two members of the family, to learn how to work together with our dogs. What's the point in having a dog that understands one family member but is confused by others? This sets up everyone to have a poor living experience. Instead, I like to think of family school as a place where all the members, human and canine, go to learn how to set up good rules, to teach and practice these rules and to ensure that the rules are consistent from one member of the family to the next.

A few months after I met with Devon and Bobbin, I received a phone call from Devon. She had decided to take Bobbin off to training where they had each gained a better understanding of each other. Gone were the days of Devon feeling ignored and Bobbin being confused. Now the two are happily enjoying their days at the office together.

There are an abundance of positive teaching techniques out their for helping our dogs to learn. When we start this education process with them as young puppies, their personalities do not change but their behaviors do because they know what we are asking them and they know how to do it.

It's great to be able to talk with an animal through telepathic communication, but it is unrealistic to expect to talk your animal into a behavior it has never learned how to do. I encourage all of you to gather up the family and go to school.