What My Dog Taught Me

My dog started learning when I quit trying to train him. We both ended up learning, but it was what I learned from him that I’m still just really getting.

My dog, Gonzo, is a rescue. When I adopted him he was nine months old, and, other than that he had been born in Mexico, I didn’t really know much about him. He had had another owner for a short time, and it looked like that didn’t work out. He had a couple of scars on his belly and his ear, and he had an attitude.

He seemed completely relaxed, happy, loving, and secure around me, but around no one else, dog or human. He lunged, snarled, growled, threatened in dog-talk to tear apart any dog or human that dared get near him. When I took him for a walk, we had to cross streets to avoid anyone or anything coming the other way.

He threatened motorcycles and garbage trucks.

He was only thirty pounds, but thirty pounds of leashed anger when provoked, and it didn’t take much to provoke him.

So I hired a trainer. The trainer wanted me to be his pack leader, to establish a strong hierarchy. He was only to follow me through doors, up stairs, always in my shadow.

I struggled with this. I’d grown up with dogs and always seemed to have a good way with dogs, and this wasn’t that way. But I tried. I took my trainer’s direction — how to hold his leash, how to keep him in my shadow, how to give him commands with authority, . . . .

And he made slow progress.

Sometimes he would miraculously abide another dog’s presence, usually smaller ones, and he even made a few hesitant friends.

Sometimes he would do the same with a human, usually women, but not all women.

He wasn’t fit for company at all. When anyone came to my house, I had to banish him to the backyard. He’d charge at the backdoor, snarling, sure that Visigoths were sacking our house and he had to save us at all costs.

Little by little, the idea worked its way through my own thick skull, past the idea of training him, that maybe we, really he, could build on the situations he was somehow managing well. If we could find more situations like those, to let him handle them on his own, maybe he could use those situations as his starting place. Maybe just let him figure it out, since he seemed already to be doing something like that in his few good experiences.

My job would be to recognize the situation and his reaction, to see that whatever this was in front of us now was probably okay. And to make sure he wasn’t creating a problem for innocent bystanders.

He started learning. He learned how to read other dogs, to tell who wanted to be friends. Same with people.

It wasn’t a light switch going on, but it was almost that. We began walking by barking dogs in yards without a twitch of reaction. We even dared to go to the beach, off leash. Gonzo ran around with the other dogs without threatening anyone’s life! Mostly.

He would have setbacks, but they were his own setbacks. He would learn from them. That Aussie Shepherd, the one that nipped him, let’s give her a wide berth whenever we see her. That Jack Russell mix that yapped and charged at everyone, somehow he was okay if you just showed him you wanted to play.

Mostly I just watched and stood by, just in case. There were a few just-in-cases, but not really that many.

I hadn’t needed to train him, I just needed to encourage him to learn (and have treats ready when he did!).

When I was in high school, I was a good student, but a boring student. I didn’t really care, no ambition, no direction.

But somehow my teachers got the idea to put me in an independent study program.

Wow! It was the same thing! They quit trying to teach me, and let me learn! Just like Gonzo was doing now.

Everything changed for me when they turned me loose to learn. College, grad school, PhD, and on into my career. Every once in a while, somebody would try to train me, and I’d put up with it like a good soldier as well as I could, but training never did it. Learning did it.

Then Gonzo. He finally taught me the thing I should have learned, that it’s always that way. It’s always about learning. And people and dogs want to learn way more than they want to be trained, or even taught.

I wouldn’t claim I’ve learned a universal truth, about dogs or people. Some dogs may really need Cesar Millan. And some people may really need a drill sergeant. But I know Gonzo’s not the only dog who just really wants to learn, and I’m not the only human.