Training Your Dog

The following spouting is directed at the less thoughtful human — you who have a pet and you leave your pet alone for ten hours a day. Not to romp happily on acres of woodlands but to stay practically immobile, tethered as it is to a limiting post or trapped as he or she is within the confines of a cage no bigger, proportionately, than a bathroom is for a human. How about, that is, training your dog instead of punishing it for your limited capabilities to “own” a dog?

Instead of caging the poor mutt, consider training your dog. Train him not to flee. Train her not to bark. Train her as you would be trained. The thing is this: when you lock her in a cage, she is unhappy. Think of your dog (ala George Orwell’s animals in Animal Farm) being the homeowner and you are the pet. Knock the ceiling off the bathroom and put a chicken wire fencing across the top instead. Then, take away your ability to speak words and take away your hands.

Now, Mr. Pooch, who is preparing to go off to the mill for a ten hour shift grabs you by the nape of your neck, your scruff, and leads you into the bathroom, then leaves. There is no music. You have no toys. The floor is cement. (Thinking about training your dog, yet?)

The temperature drops. It begins to rain at the same time the wind blows more of itself cold into your cubbyhole. It gets dark. Weird sounds, traffic, and smells taunt you. Some smells remind you of food. Others make you nervous. Kids come by and poke at your little walls. A lawnmower cranks up right by your head. All you can do is walk back and forth in your own poop and howl and yip. (Think about training your dog, yet?)

Because you are a pet, you are cute, so Mr. Pooch has bought you and brought you home. But when he left you inside the main house on the first day, you chewed the hell out of his favorite material belongings. You have a tendency to gnaw, for different innate reasons, but he doesn’t get that and didn’t think about it (or anything else) when he added you to his wealth of belongings. So you must be beaten. Then you must be remaindered to a pet prison. Your cuteness has worn off

Come ON, humans. Training your dog is EASY (as dogs are trainable). Training your dog is cheap. Training your dog, as well, can be done by someone else, who will teach you the few commands you need and the logic of the rewards process you could use so that an animal with natural instincts or needs to chew or bark will be re-trained to chew only select items or to bark only when there is danger.

You can’t take it out on the dog that you do not understand dogs. You must figure out a way of training your dog, understanding that it is a gift to the animal to train it and a punishment to neglect to do so. If training your dog is not yet clearly the message here, then maybe you need a few lessons, a bit of training. Your sleepless, angry next-door-neighbor will gladly oblige.