
			Dog Obedience:  Who's boss??
				by Dave Barry
	

    If you were to ask me, "Dave what are the two words that summarize
    everything that you truly believe in, other than beer should always be
    served in a chilled glass?" I would have to respond: "Dog obedience." I
    own two dogs, and they have both be trained to respond immediately to
    my voice. For example when we're outside, all I have to do is to issue
    the following standard dog command: "Here Earnest! Here Ziggy! Here
    Doggies! Here! I said come HERE!!! You dogs COME HERE RIGHT NOW!! ARE
    YOU DOGS LISTENING TO ME???  HEY!!!" And instantly both dogs, in
    unison, like a precision drill team, will continue trotting in random
    directions, sniffing the ground. 

    This is of course exactly what I want them to do. Dogs need to sniff
    the ground: it's how they keep abreast of current events. The ground is
    a giant dog newspaper, containing all kinds of late breaking dog news
    items, which, if they are especially urgent, are often continued in the
    next yard. We live next door to an aircraft-carrier sized dog named
    Bear who is constantly committing acts of prize winning journalism
    around the neighborhood, and my dogs are major fans of his work. Each
    morning, while I am shouting commands at them, they race around and
    scrutinize the most recent installments of the ongoing Bear oeuvre,
    vibrating their bodies ecstatically to communicate their critical
    comments ("Bear has done it AGAIN!" "This is CLASSIC Bear!")

    Of course you cannot achieve this level of obedience overnight. You
    have to take the time to understand dogs as a species, to realize that
    they have not always been peaceful domesticated animals who fulfill
    their nutritional requirements primarily by sidling up to the coffee
    table when you are not looking and snorting taco chips directly out of
    the bowl. Millions  of years ago dogs were fierce predators who roamed
    in hungry packs; if some unfortunate primitive man got caught out in
    the open, the dogs would surround him, knock him to the ground and,
    with saliva dripping from their wolf-like  jaws lick him to within an
    inch of his life. "Damnit Bernice!" he would yell to primitive woman.
    "We got to get these dogs some professional obedience training!" This
    is still basically the situation today.

    We had our larger dog, Earnest, professionally trained by a very 
    knowledgeable woman who came to our house and spent several hours
    commanding Earnest to "Heel." Wouldn't it be funny if it turned out
    that animals actually had high IQs and understood English perfectly,
    and the only reason they act  stupid is that we're always giving the
    unintelligible commands? Like, maybe at night in the stable, the horses
    stand around asking each other: "What  the hell does 'giddyap' mean?" 

    But the trainer had no trouble getting Earnest to comprehend "heel."
    Her technique was to give commands in a gentle but firm voice; to
    consistently praise Earnest for obeying properly; and to every now and
    then as a reminder, send 75,000 volts of electricity down the leash. At
    least that's how I assumed she did it, because in no time she had
    Earnest Heeling like Vice President Quayle. Whereas when I take Earnest
    for a "walk" I am freq- uently yanked horizontal by dog lunges of
    semi-nuclear force (Earnest could tow a bulldozer across Nebraska) so
    that my body, clinging desperately to the leash, winds up bouncing
    gaily down the street behind Earnest at close to the federal speed
    limit, like a tin can tied to a newly wed couple's car.

    But "Heel" is not the only obedience skill our dogs have mastered, They
    also know:

    ANSWER THE DOOR-- When a person, real or imagined, comes to our house,
    both dogs charge violently at the front door barking loudly enough to
    shatter glass, because they know, through instinct, that there is a bad
    guy out there and they,

    MUST PROTECT THE HOUSE-- So when we open the door, no matter who is
    standing there, --a neighbor, a delivery person, Charles Manson holding
    a  4-foot-long machete-- the dogs barge right past him and race
    outside, looking for the bad guy, who for some reason is never there, a
    mystery  that always causes the dogs to come to a skidding four-legged
    stops and look around with expressions of extreme puzzlement. Foiled
    again! He's a clever one, that bad guy!

    GO TO SCHOOL__ The highlight, the absolute pinnacle, of our dog's
    entire existence is riding in the car when we drive our son to school,
    an activity that gives them the opportunity to provide vital services
    such as barking at policemen and smearing dog snot all over the rear
    window. So  every morning they monitor us carefully, and the instant we
    do something  that indicates that our departure is imminent, such as we
    wake up, they sprint to the garage door and bark at it, in case we have
    forgotten where it is, then they sprint back to us and bark some more,
    to let us know that they  are ready to go, and then they sprint back to
    the garage door, then back to us, and so on, faster and faster, until
    they become barely visible blurs of negitive-IQ canine activity
    rocketing through the house at several hundred revolutions per minute,
    and you can just imagine how difficult it can be for us to make them
    understand the concept of "Saturday." One non-school morning my wife
    felt so sorry for them that she went out in her bathrobe and drove them
    around the neighborhood for a while, looking for things they could bark
    at. 

    So don't try to tell me dog training isn't worth it, OK? I can't  hear
    you anyway, because there's a bad guy at the door.
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