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| Cooper! |
Cooper, the three-ish year old Welsh Terrier who visited us
for two months this fall, is an opinionated, intense and extremely funny little
guy. He grew up in Guelph, attended puppy
classes at Dogs in the Park, moved on to our Levels program and spent a good
deal of his time training his person to be the best she could be. He taught her for instance that Welsh
Terriers don’t like cuddling. They like
scheduled, short periods of affection, in private, quietly, at a predictable
time. He taught her that Welsh Terriers
DO like hunting and ratting, but that toads taste bad and should not be
disturbed. He also began teaching her
about ratio strain, schedules of reinforcement and many of the vagaries of
operant conditioning, but then she moved him to the United States and they
started on her advanced education.
In the US, Cooper could not find a training school that fully
met his needs. He did find an agility
class that was kind of fun, where he taught the instructor that luring is lame
and shaping rocks and rolls. He taught
another instructor the value of the one hour sit stare. That is when the dog doesn’t like what is
happening in class and sits. And
stares. For an hour. He taught his person the value of a scale of
reinforcers and that sometimes you need a variety of reinforcers to keep a
Welsh Terrier in the game. Cooper took
great pains to teach his person that the more you spend on Rally-O trial fees
the more likely it is that you are going to be embarrassed by your dog. When I visited, Cooper was so pleased he took
a hour out of his precious day to demonstrate to me all the Rally moves he had
learned successfully, but since I wasn’t at the trial, he took the opportunity
to show his person new ways to do the Halt-Stand-Walk Around that included
Halt-Stand-Pee on the Rally Sign while your person is on the wrong side of you.
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| Cooper teaching dog training |
Along the way, Cooper’s person had a very good job and settled
into her new life until a calamity occurred, and then Cooper needed temporary accommodation
for two months. Here at our farm, life
is quite different than it was at home for Cooper. Here Cooper lives a very structured life in
our kennel with regular house time and training time and long country walks,
but that doesn’t include things like “watching your person get ready for work”
or “tolerate snoogling on the couch”. At
our house, Cooper spent every night in his crate. He got yard time several times a day in the
company of a very wide variety of dogs-sometimes as many as twenty different dogs
in a week. At least five days a week Cooper
got to go to class, and some days he got to do class twice and had some private
sessions with a variety of trainers in training. Cooper was fed twice a day in his bowl at
predictable times, with the rule of if you don’t eat, you can have dinner in class
for training treats, and if you don’t want dinner as treats, then you probably
aren’t terribly hungry (and yes, we kept track of how much the little dude got
each day, so that he never actually missed a meal-sometimes he just got more
training opportunities). Cooper taught
us the true meaning of a schedule nerd; he loves his schedule!
When his person came to pick Cooper up, he was delighted to
see her and showed her a bunch of cool things that he had learned and then
asked to go back to the kennel. Three
times that afternoon he came up for short visits and asked to go back to the
kennel. He was happy to see his person,
delighted in fact, but he also was very clear that there were aspects of his
life here that suited him just fine. One
of those things was a lot more down time than most pets get. For whatever reason, Cooper likes to spend
time in his crate. By himself. And he likes to spend time with his dog
friends, unencumbered by the responsibility of always training his person.
On the first evening, his person brought him upstairs to
sleep in her room. After an hour, he
asked to go down to the kennel. First
vaguely, by being restless ,and then firmly by sitting and staring at the
bedroom door. We have long known that
Cooper is a dog who likes his sleep, and prefers to sleep long and hard each
night. In the morning, Cooper was
thrilled to have some training time, some attention and some scritches by his
person, but again, he wanted to go back to the kennel.
Cooper’s person has struggled in classes in the states, and
not because she doesn’t do her homework or because she has lacked for good
coaching. Part of the problem lies in
the philosophy of training that Cooper espouses. Cooper does not “get” trained. He participates in it. Cooper teaches his person as much as his
person teaches him. Cooper will accept
nothing short of a 50-50 partnership.
Not only does he want to learn tricks and skills, but he expects his
trainer to be actively learning too. In
our classes, with vet students and our staff working with him, with John and me
participating in training, Cooper worked willingly for an hour or longer at a
time, where at home, he would often quit on his person and give up in disgust
after short periods of time. If the
trainer isn’t learning, Cooper isn’t interested in learning either.
I have often thought about what Cooper might say if he could
talk. The first thing that I think
Cooper might tell us is that he is an intensely private little guy, and
somewhat of an introvert. Cooper would
not tell you about his birthplace or the puppies he met in puppy class, because
I think for Cooper, that is private information. Cooper would also tell us that he likes his
sleep. Lots of it, in private, without
disturbances. On the other hand, Cooper
is a responsible little guy, and he will tell you when the new neighbours
upstairs get home from work at one in the morning. Or when the person in the next hotel room
gets up and goes down the hall for ice in the middle of the night. Those are activities Cooper thinks you should
know about.
I think Cooper would tell you that if you cannot think up a
way to make the game meaningful to both of you, he isn’t interested in playing
it. Cooper is very interested in what
makes people tick, and he manages to hit the nail on the head reliably time
after time. Cooper isn’t interested in
being pandered to, and if you are not at least equally interested in what he is
interested in, then he isn’t interested in playing whatever game you want to
play.
When Cooper is working with a vet student who is at Dogs in
the Park to learn about training, he decides when they are ready to move to a
variable schedule of reinforcement, and stops giving them cued behaviours the
first time they ask. Sound weird? Yup!
Just when the student begins to grasp a one to one behaviour to
reinforcement ratio, Cooper will start embellishing the system, adding bits and
pieces, taking bits away and challenging the student to fine tune his or her
skills. He reinforces good timing with
desired behaviours, but when the student is sloppy with his timing or cues, Coop
throws nonsensical behaviours to make the student back up and start fresh. He knows exactly when to apply the pressure
of a lack of interest and participation to give the student just what is needed
in terms of a learning experience.
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| Cooper has needs...and is most co operative when his needs are met |
Cooper would also tell you that a doggy social life is
essential to his well being. Without social
time, Cooper is a sad little puppy, and he will impose his view of this matter
on you by dragging towards dogs he wants to meet. Cooper isn’t unreasonable. He will work off leash, in the presence of
food on the floor and other dogs in the room, provided his needs have first
been met. From Cooper’s point of view,
fair is fair, and if you aren’t going to be fair in letting him have social
time, he will take care of that matter himself.
Cooper is a unique, highly communicative dog. He is a fascinating fellow and I am fortunate
to have worked with him for the past two months. I think if Cooper could talk, he would have a
lot to tell us, but the real lesson to learn from Cooper is that training is a
partnership. When you meet all of your
partner’s needs, and you are willing to learn from your partner, you can both
achieve great things. I think Coop can
teach us a lot about training not being about skill acquisition, but rather
about meaningful activities that you do together, or more simply, about your
relationship. A good relationship is a
careful weaving of needs of both parties and boundaries you each need to feel
fulfilled. It is a blend of common goals
and activities and give and take on both sides, and Cooper is a dog who is
unwilling to accept anything less than his fair share of the relationship. Cooper is perhaps the best trainer, dog,
horse or human, that I have ever met.
Thank you Cooper for an instructive two months.
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