Training (the Untrainable?) Jordan

Jordan, once she settled in, turned out to be something more challenging than we’d first expected . . . an angry, protective whirlwind of intimidation and violence. Like so many tiny dogs before, she was just so full of hate.

The reality of this is a little . . . stressful. She seemed very very intent at getting very very close to anything that moved, and then hanging on to it with her very very tiny teeth.

Which is funny, at first, in the abstract. She was so tiny. So obviously not a threat. But when we have to walk the other way because the young Indian family the next block over is walking their toddler our way, the thought that Jordan might actually be dangerous was an uncomfortable one.

So that’s why, when we received a recommendation for a dog-training place nearby, we headed over immediately to take a look.

Once there, we quickly decided to commit. I think we’d made our mind up before we’d even got there. We were at one of those life junctions and had to decide on the path we needed to take.

We wanted Jordan to have some structure - and to be able to walk among people without taking small chunks of flesh from ankles. The first step in the training is an orientation, so we signed up for that. Orientation consists of my wife and me, along with five or six other people, sitting in a semi-circle on stools that a primary school class would consider a little on the short side while a dog trainer tells us what’s what.

She explained the complicated route that dogs can take through their program: puppies can take these classes, experienced dogs go straight into those classes, psycho dogs have the option of individual training sessions, away from the temptation and blood-letting of a group. I squeezed my wife’s hand significantly at this news. She didn’t notice as she had been handed a clicker - a little plastic do-dad that’s just a button set in a brightly colored oval. Press the button and it makes a loud, sharp CLICK sound. And it was killing her to not click it.

And so she clicked it.

And everything went quiet.

And then I was holding the clicker, as the responsibility was too much for her.
I’m no better, of course. I clicked it maybe three or four times before the orientation is done. No one else with a clicker seemed to have the problems we had with basic self-control. We’re clearly not ideal role models for over-excited dogs.

After our pep talk, we got homework: introduce the clicker into Jordan’s life. When she hears the noise, she gets a treat. Then, when she does something we ask her to do, we click the clicker so she hears the noise, and then she gets a treat. It’s basically how my youngest was toilet trained. I think I can handle this.

We walked out of orientation, past the rows of for-sale items, and I couldn't stop looking at the rows and rows of animal parts. Turkey feet, cow trachea, kneecaps, sheep lungs, hooves. A reasonably skilled Dr Frankenstein could construct a whole animal from these parts. I’m tempted to give it a go myself.

We explained to the nice young lady at the front desk about our Jordan Problem and she quickly arranged for us to have an assessment with one of their trainers. The trainer gives the yea or nay on whether Jordan can be in a class with other dogs or must face her issues alone. It was a tense few days as she built up to her review.

I spent the week telling people the obvious: Jordan is a killer and there’s no way she’s getting in a class with other dogs. And walking her around the apartment complex, dragging her away from temptation, and picking her up when she gets to be unmanageable, I knew I was right.

It took five minutes with the trainer to show me I’m wrong.

At the assessment, the first test is what she does when faced with an unconvincing stuffed Alsatian toy. I let her off the lead as the trainer jerks the toy around in a way that does not remind anyone of how any actual dog moves.

Jordan bolts toward the fake dog and, in true Jordan fashion, she takes a nip in the general direction of the fake dog’s nose. And then, nothing. She wanders around, sniffs, walks back to us.

Yeah, but what about a real dog? The trainer has that one covered, too. She brings her puppy in. This puppy is the kind of big stupid dog that any right-thinking person adores: he’s all ears, and paws, and yaps, and excited vertical jumps. He loves Jordan, from across the room. He continues to love Jordan as he watches her race toward him. When she slides into him and makes a play for his nose, he adores her.

They play.

“She’s not vicious,” the trainer tells us. “If she was really going to bite him, she’d have done it by now.”

Yes, that does seem to be the case.

She’s just “playful” . . . she needs to calm down when she’s around other dogs, but she’s not evil. You know what doesn’t help a dog calm down? Being dragged away from the thing it’s trying to get to. You know what’s worse? Picking the dog up.

Jordan’s fine; it’s her parents that need the training.

And we’ll get it. We put our money down for 8 lessons. Jordan will be much better trained after that. And so will we.

On the way out, I buy two kneecaps for Jordan and John Henry. Because everyone should have the chance to chew on a cow’s kneecap at least once in their life.

Training a dog the modern way takes a lot of treats.

You see, if you’re not going to dominate your puppy into doing as they’re told, as people did in the dark days of the too-recent past, then you have to bribe them with treats. And, at least at the beginning, Jordan needs a lot of persuasion - and so, a lot of treats.

What Jordan gets, John Henry gets, so the week after Jordan’s first official lesson meant both of them get more treats than was strictly necessary for dogs-of-very-little-tummy-capacity. So, it would be no surprise to anyone (except us) when first JH and then lady Jordan find themselves throwing up on the carpet, on the bed, on the sofa. If you need an example of too much of a good thing, then I am happy to provide it here.

And seeing our little angels ill and sad naturally scared the hell out of us. . . training screeched to a sudden and dramatic halt.

Vets are visited, special dog food is purchased, and anti-dehydration injections are paid for.

And soon enough, they are back to normal. But we are still afraid of setting the whole thing into motion once more.

Because dogs are gross. They throw up and eat it, throw up and eat it again, and then they want to kiss you. My wife doesn’t stand for that kind of behavior from me, and we certainly don’t allow it from the dogs. So, we put the training on the back burner.

But someone had wildly decided to pay for 8 lessons in one go and they needed to be taken, so my wife books us in for a Saturday afternoon. This means that we have to do at least some of our homework - what follows is a Friday evening spent doing the dog-training version of dashing off some math questions at the back of the bus an hour before the homework has to be handed in.

We click the clicker, give (much smaller) treats. Praise effusively. Have a certain amount of success in getting Jordan to not lunge at anything that crosses her path that she felt looked either like a threat or a good time.

We aren’t perfect, not by a long way, but with a couple of hours’ worth of training, it feels like she won’t let us down.

As soon as Jordan gets into the training room the next day, she immediately lets us down.

Under the watchful eye of a trainer we hadn’t met before, first she lurches toward a skinny, nervous Alsatian mix, then toward a spaniel, then toward a table (she’s on a roll at this point and doesn’t want to waste a moment). We are a little embarrassed, but we are saved by Buddy.

Buddy is on a different level.

Buddy has springs on his feet and a bark that was set to “Constant and Loud”. He will not be calmed. He barks and bounces, bounces and barks, at anything and anyone. Buddy’s owner, a guy maybe in his 50s, is stoic, good-humored, but nearing the end of his tether. Nothing he nor the trainer does will calm Buddy down enough that he could take part in the lesson.

They try taking Buddy away from the group, calming him, and bringing him back. They try putting up a blind around Buddy so he can’t see other dogs. They try bribery with treats. They try.

But Buddy is just so excited about everything. He refuses to allow his enthusiasm to be dimmed.

And no one judges, because so many of us have been there - and, to an extent, are still there. After all, we are in a dog-obedience class. If we were any better with our own dogs, we wouldn’t be here.

Buddy’s human has been in that role, he said, for two weeks. Before that, Buddy had been a yard dog, permanently living in someone’s yard, with little-to-no training or socialization. The road back to full pet-hood is going to be long, loud, and bruising, and the guy already looks forlorn. The trainer is cool; she’s seen it all before, I guess. She cancels his appointment, makes sure he gets his money back for the lesson they never quite had. She sets up solo lessons for Buddy, at least at first, so they can work on the basics before re-introducing him to the exciting world of groups of dogs.

She tells him to go home, pour a glass of wine, chill. It was going to be OK. He looks like he really wants to believe her. And that he really wants that glass of wine.
It is genuinely touching.

During all of this, our little monster is perfect. Relatively. The bar for how we judge her behavior has lowered.

Sure, she still occasionally dashes off like she’d been shot out of a cannon toward another dog, but mostly she is focused. Focused on our faces, our voices, our instructions . . . but mostly on the little orange clicker we hold in one hand and the small, hard half-treat we hold between our fingers as we worked.

Sit. Click. Treat.

Stay. Click. Treat.

Leave it. Click. Treat.

She does it. She is trainable.

And the whirling dervish she returns to as she leaves the class? That’s just Jordan. It is who she is. But maybe, I dreamed, not for much longer.