Thursday, July 29th, 2010
Moon is eleven months old and I am struggling to train him to come when I call him. If I have a pocket full of treats, he is very attentive. But if I don’t have a pocket full of treats, or if he is too far away from me to see that I do, he may or may not come when I call. Sometimes it doesn’t really matter, but if he is on a jaunt up the road toward the highway, I am panic-stricken to get him to turn around and come home. Part of his drive to run toward the highway is the horse farm with four dogs just across the two lanes with a 50 mph speed limit, and cars and trucks that often go by at 70 mph.
The anxiety I feel when I think about Moon being killed on the highway keeps me awake at night. So I resolve to give him more playtime, pay closer attention to him, and be a better trainer. We had our first therapy session with a dog trainer last week. She admonished me for being imprecise and verbose. My homework assignment is to not use the word “No!” for two weeks. I am supposed to recognize good behavior while he is doing it, say the act’s name/command, and reward him immediately so he associates the act, the command, and the reward.
Sometimes I feel like I am on a game show. Puppy survivor. I am definitely the weakest link. I can’t remember to carry dog treats with me everywhere I go (maybe it’s because I don’t smoke them). I am inconsistent with my training vocabulary. My tone of voice is usually gruff, when apparently it’s supposed to be more like baby talk. And instead of saying “No!”, I find myself making the buzzer sound that goes off when you give a wrong answer on Jeopardy.
The best thing I’ve done is to take Moon to the dog park every morning at 8:00 am for an hour-long romp with ten to twenty other dogs. In the two weeks we have been doing this, Moon’s personality has evolved by leaps and bounds. He is more confident in himself, he is more relaxed at home, he has a routine he looks forward to, and he knows how to handle himself around other dogs. It has been a fascinating experiment in socialization. You might think that living on a thirty-two acre farm would be plenty of room to play for a dog. But now I see there is no substitute for letting a dog play in a pack of dogs, and experience the true nature of the species.
The trade-off for an hour at the dog park every morning is I’m not spending that hour in my vegetable garden. After two weeks without weeding the garden has gone wild. Last night I went looking for thyme to add to dinner and all I could come up with was a few straggly stems because the crab grass had all but killed my herbs with shade. But that’s the choice I’ve made — trading a well-behaved dog for an out-of-control vegetable garden.
Tags: Dog, farming, Sustainability