LETTERS FROM HOME: CARLA RETURNS TO RETRAIN PET OWNERS AND TEACH THEM TO CLICK

June 5, 1997

Dear Patty,

Our personal dog trainer Carla thinks Hank and especially Lucy aren't hopeless cases yet. Not so sure she's as optimistic about DC and me as dog owners.

Carla first came to our house a year ago to instruct us in basic pet control. We were supposed to keep the dogs in a pet caddie while we were away during the day, never let them run around the house or backyard unsupervised and do various things that would make them understand that we are the leaders of the pack. None of which occurred.

DC couldn't bear putting them in the caddie during the day when there was a large, homey kitchen for them to stretch out in. And when we're at home, confining them to the kitchen when there's a spacious home to roam seemed unreasonable. So Hank and Lucy took over the couch.

Much worse, Hank is so afraid of the world that he challenges any stranger who comes into view, especially small ones. He tore our friend Carlos' coat and snagged our neighbor David's house shoe for daring to walk onto the back porch.

More disturbingly, he has nipped a niece and a nephew and a teen-ager who simply got out of her car for a day at a lake. Apologies, a trip to the emergency room. This can't continue.

Carla says such behavior may be due in part to the lack of little people around during the dogs' first two years of life. To a fearful dog, anything that isn't in his memory bank of safe experiences can be considered a threat.

Carla doesn't like people analogies much, probably because she's often called on to help people undo the damage they've done by anthropomorphizing their pets. But she says dogs develop bad behavior habits just as people do, and one way to break those habits is to reinforce good behavior.

So now Carla has introduced the Clicker into our attempts to domesticate our pets.

The Clicker is similar to the noise-making toys you used to get in Cracker Jacks. It's used to train animals like dolphins and whales, critters you can't restrain with a collar.

The idea is to reward good behavior immediately with a click and then a treat. A puppy is clicked for relieving itself where it should. Rather than a scolding, a barking dog gets clicked for silence.

If I comprehend the theory, once the dog knows which behaviors elicit a click, which is followed by a treat, the dog begins to initiate good behaviors all by itself.

Following Carla's instructions to think like a dog is sometimes difficult for us. We want to reason with Lucy because she's so bright and we want to understand Hank because he's so scared.

The thing is, human beings aren't so different in the way we put some situations in the Safe Box and others in the Unsafe Box based upon past experiences.

Our Unsafe Box is overflowing with falling in love, intimacy, honesty, being yourself, caring and taking risks because at some time or other all those and others have knocked us down.

How so much safer to just watch TV.

But if dogs can be reprogrammed, so can human beings. Our positive reinforcements are the moments of recognition that we've been in this situation before and have made illuminating mistakes. To be wiser for our experiences rather than more fearful is one measure of our maturity.

Moments of recognition and maturity can strike instantly, anywhere at anytime. Just listen for the click.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.