A surprisingly good book, a reflection on dog training as spiritual practice, and living grace.
Quotes:
Plenty in Life is Free,
she makes a clear case for replacing the “Nothing in Life is Free” training mindset with an approach that creates something else Kathy and I have had conversations about—an emotionally intact animal.
It turns out that my concerns with NILIF have at least as much to do with my own spirituality and personal view of relationships as with the pros and cons of NILIF as a training regimen.
Life has a way of revealing falsehoods, mostly, I believe, through suffering. It causes disillusionment, literally. Illusions get shattered.
Major General Geoffrey Miller, who was in charge at Guantanamo Bay, visited her in Baghdad and said, ‘At Guantanamo Bay, we learned that the prisoners have to earn every single thing they have. He said they are like dogs and if you allow them to believe at any point that they are more than a dog, you’ve lost control.’”
The whole paradigm of physical dominance needs to go.
In the long run, communication trumps control.
When working with extremely challenging dogs, I’m occasionally tempted to distill my training advice to, “Reward any behaviors the dog does except the three you consider most annoying.”
I suggest our new paradigm could be about exchanging reinforcers: your dog gives you reinforcers (in the form of good behavior) and you give reinforcers to your dog, back-and-forth in a continuous flow.
“Reinforce behaviors you like; prevent reinforcement for behaviors you dislike.”
make sure you’re creating a “to do” list of behaviors, rather than a “don’t do” list.
Just consider that perfection is vastly overrated. You can safely let some things slide.
most pet dogs experience life as a series of relatively mundane stretches of time punctuated by Big Thrills.
Dog Training as Spiritual Practice
quote by Nelson Mandela in his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom: “A leader is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.”
Each morning that I wake to see my two old dogs eager to begin another day’s adventures, I say aloud, “Thank you God for one more day with my companions.” And I’m reminded that this word, so descriptive of their role in my life, translates literally to “bread fellows.”
This, though, runs the risk of messing up the sacrosanct hierarchy of “human dominates/outranks dog.” Good. Out with this dogma! Give up your devotion to hierarchiology (a great term coined by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1969 book, The Peter Principle). Consider rank (hierarchy) rank (stale and smelly).
So, above all but nutrition and shelter, dogs need translators—cultural liaisons and advocates to help them make sense of the mystery of living with humans.
Besides, the world surely doesn’t need another dictator, benign or otherwise. But it never has enough lovers.
I gladly relinquish the chance to have Stepford dogs—mindlessly obedient and lacking humor—in exchange for the vibrant, silly, somewhat unpredictable dogs by my side.
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