Last week, I read a review of a book and wanted to go to a bookstore to get this book. As much as I love the ease of Amazon ordering, it is not the same as going to the bookstore. I find a great spiritual connection in the physical: fresh pages, unbroken bindings, coffee smells. So, I put Marshall in his service dog vest and we went to go see what we could find.
As I looked at the collection of titles, I thought about authors and other research I had read by them, about research that completely refutes most of the books on the shelves. I began to reminsce about how I started learning about dogs and how that learning has developed over time.
My father trained his dogs to hunt grouse. As bird dogs, they had to have pretty specific rules and the whole family had to be consistent with them. My father was a big fan of Barbara Woodhouse, a well-known dog trainer from the 1970s. If you know anything about her, it is probably her theories on dog vocalizations and human commands. Dog tips like naming your dog a two-syllable name come from her research, as well as certain emphasis on 't', 'sh', and 'ch' sounds in commands. My dad's stories and intuitive bits of wisdom about his dogs peppers my childhood memories.
When my husband and I first got married, I wanted a dog so much I couldn't stand it. A dog meant family. A real family. I started checking out every book at the library about dogs and puppies and dog training. Cesar Millan had just published his first book and although my father had been far more gentle with his dogs, I recognized so much of my dad's training methods in the Millan methods that I felt a special kind of connection to his dog interactions. I knew though that working as a financial consultant with sixty- to seventy-hour work weeks and my husband's work travel would not make a good environment for a new pup and put the dog idea on hold. I was content for the time being to snuggle my bunny and befriend the stray cat who would become Orange Cat and read my library books on dogs.
As my job got more stressful, I decided I needed an outlet and started volunteering at the county dog shelter. My shifts started out with simply walking the dogs and giving them exercise. I started signing up to taking adoptable dogs to various events. Working with the shelter dogs was one of the only things that I looked forward to in my life at the time. When I quit my job (a story for another day), I started volunteering more and more, helping out with adoption counseling, education seminars, events, and day programs to socialize the pooches in the adoption wards. I think those dogs at the shelter helped save me as much as I helped them.
In order to communicate better with these furry creatures, I kept reading and found better science and methodology in the animal community. Essays and research by Patricia McConnell, Sophia Yin, Stanley Coren, Karen Pryor, and The Monks of New Skete kept me fairly busy. We adopted Ollie somewhere halfway through that stack of books and I was so glad I had researched so well. His fragile temperment would have broken if I had implemented some of the old training techniques my father had used.
We moved back to Michigan and I started volunteering for no-kill shelter that had lofty goals but unfortunately was also very poorly run. While I cleaned kennels and worked with Akitas, Staffordshire and American Terriers, and Rottweilers that had failed their Humane Society temperment tests, I tried out different techniques I had learned and over the next five months figured out that the strongest connections were made when I talked less, watched more, and focused more on my body language. Each of these interactions gave me more information about the nature of dog-human communication.
By the time we adopted Marshall, I was a pretty good judge of temperment and learning ability. At seven weeks he was showing fabulous skills that would lend well to therapy dog work. New groups of books on therapy dog training and research about the benefit of therapy dogs in a variety of settings towered on the coffee table. As I began to work with Marshall on socialization and task training, I noticed Marshall's alerting and encouraged it. Hyperlink hopping through Delta Society and Therapy Dog Inc. website links, I found the Psychiatric Service Dog Society. I started working on Marshall's public access training and together we developed an incredible range of skills and tasks and a bond like I have never quite experienced with another animal.
A few months after Marshall's first public access training sessions, Gus came to live with us and my focus became educating myself on the problems faced in rehabilitating puppy mill dogs and dogs with little to no human interaction. I finally started researching alternative therapies and conditioning to overwrite the damage done from years in an overstimulating, undersocialized environment.
And that brings us to the day at the bookstore, with Marshall in his vest and me on tip-toe reaching for the book I came for. I feel like spending time around dogs gives me a type of intuition and experience in communicating with them. However, learning about the biology and behavior of these amazing animals helps me undercover the more subtle lessons they are trying to impart.