“If the dog gets downright uncooperative and stubborn, there’s only one way to straighten him out: Thrash him…”

“One good jerk is better than a lot of nagging little ones. Make the correction and get it over with. Use the command NO with the jerk. It’s going to startle the dog more than hurt him. Some say never do it hard enough to lift the dog’s feet off the ground. Nonsense. That’s like saying spank a child but not hard enough to make it sting.”

Richard A. Wolters, Home Dog 1984

“A more sensitive approach is to make the introduction gradually, over the course of several days, building up the pup’s self-confidence as she learns to accept the leash. This way, the leash becomes a means of bonding, of communicating with your pup, and not an instrument of compulsion.”

Monks of New Skete, The Art of Raising a Puppy 2011.

I’m behind on leash training. My other dogs, Will and Bella, each lovely souls in their own ways, never gave up pulling on the leash. No training collars, “leash checks” or “thrashing” (I may have resorted once or twice) made any difference. To be on the leash was an invitation to pull. And they occasionally put that energy to good use. Will used to pull me and my kayak, Grinch-style, over the pass to Chaluknaxˆ, from Summer Bay to Beaver Inlet at Unlaska. And Bella had her moments ski-joring with the kids. (I’ll never forget Tim disappearing behind Bella. When I finally found their crash site, he admitted he was too scared to let go!)

So I find myself in a slushy place between the hard core behaviorists like Wolters (who makes an occasional reference to “the wife” making dinner while he trains his working dog and smokes a pipe out back) and the soft-hearted monks who really did write a book, How to Be Your Dog’s Best Friend. I’d like to stay out of both of those camps. Much as I love Cedar already, the role I want to take with her is a little less egalitarian than I want with my best friend.

Really, this quandary is tapping my educator brain. Extrinsic vs. intrinsic motivations. Somewhere in the middle of the misogynist (not really, but chauvinist doesn’t start with M) and the monks are the treat people, who I see as shoving treats into their pup’s mouth and brain at a rate close to their respiration. Sitting still? Treat. Still sitting still? Treat. So, I’m leaning toward the intrinsic motivation (actually both Wolters and the monks are on this side of the spectrum, although Wolters outlines a much simpler program with plenty of “aversives” – Thrash!).

How much will Cedar do because she loves to please? How much will I have to resort to behaviorist conditioning? The leash will be a good case study. I’ve had it on her several times and we’re nowhere close to “a means of bonding, of communicating” unless “communicating” includes the way professional wrestlers communicate their takedowns on the mat. (She’s had a few dramatic cartoon moments of hitting the end of the leash and sending her feet in the air.)

Meanwhile, we had a nice outing on a sandy beach yesterday to celebrate a momentary break in the rain. No instrument of compulsion needed!

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I’m still in the early stages of reading Cedar’s “personality.” It’s kind of complex. (I know. She’s a lab, so not that complex.) She’s patient. She sits in her pen, sometimes in her kennel, and watches me putter around the kitchen. When she whines (rarely) I either ignore it, console her briefly, or give a quick No (if accompanied by a jump up on the pen), and she’s back to watching me silently, or sleeping.

But…

She has a mind of her own. Lately she scoots out of the pen when I come in and out and one of the first things she does is bolts to my room to grab a sock. She then bolts to the futon on the living room floor (renovation upstairs) and has a chew fest. She also goes kind of nuts on brooms. That’s my fault because I started teasing her with a blue boat brush I’ve been calling the blue porcupine.

And she is still NOT a big fan of rain, which is either fortunate or unfortunate because we’re having a wicked October. Lots of rain and wind every day, it seems. And so we do our rounds, 8, 9, 10 times a day… Tentative steps out to the slippery deck, slow slinky down the two steps from the deck to soggy lawn. Over to the cedar rounds holding some ground cloth where a tree used to be…usually a pee there, sit on the cedar rounds almost long enough for the Cedar cliché pic I keep trying for.. then over to bite some salmonberry bushes…back over to the downspout to listen to the rain gushing from the roof…a stealthy stalk around the corner to bite the blue “porky” for a bit… then over to the bushes near the neighbor Holly’s place, usually to disappear long enough for a squat and a poo.

Then, often, a sprint back to the back door to head INSIDE and out of the driving wind and rain. Sometimes a chase of blowing alder leaves or a jump at a dangling salmonberry leaf teasing her from a just out of reach branch.

So many training quandaries to ponder… The astroturf I put in her pen each night works like a litter box, but how will I get her to stop using that? When to try the leash again (she was biting it incessantly), whether to stay away (as I have) from using treats to reinforce training. “Come” is coming along, along when Devil Dog is not making an appearance, and “Sit” is maybe 50-50…. Trying to set her up for success.

Twice yesterday Devil Dog turned to Angel Dog and melted in my arms and fell asleep. In those moments, I think my memory is just as short as hers.