One Cherry Payout

A day passed after we brought Oscar home. He found his favorite spots in the house, mostly on the couches and futon. He did a lot of napping. I imagine that it takes a lot of energy to play and run at the dog park for an hour or so, which justifies all the lounging he otherwise managed to cram into his schedule. When he curled into that tight, perfect ball of fur and nose, and his eyes drooped and finally shut, he was the very Platonic ideal of cute. In other words, a perfect dog.

Of course, as parents, we have to change him.

While his cuteness was at near dangerous levels, his vocabulary was shockingly limited. He more or less got his name. At least, I'm pretty sure he knew it's his name. It was hard to tell sometimes if he's listening to the actual phonemes, or just the intonation that promises attention and affection. What's definite is that all other words were mere filler between mentions of his name and the jingle of the leash that signals the time for a walk. Those were sounds that mattered.

The SPCA realizes that their dogs, while having great beauty and making amiable companions, could use some finishing, and one of the ways that they help you achieve this as new owners is by signing you up for obedience classes when you adopt your dog. Thus we found ourselves returning last Sunday to the beginning of our story with Oscar.

The first class was sans pooch. Instead it was more about how we were going to be training the dog, and in a sense training us. Lisa, our instructor, broke down some basic rules for the class (no doggie-to-doggie meetings in class, bring a distracting chew toy for your dog when they're not working, and so on). She then pulled out the clickers.

The clicker is one of the things that we used to call our old TV remote controls, back in the day when the switches made a very audible click when you pressed them. I believe that we were the only family in America to alternately refer to it as a "zicker," which is really a shame because "zicker" is such a cool word to say.

Pressing them in those days took real hand strength, not like today's kids who are spoiled rotten by easy to use remotes. In my day, you worked to change between your four channels, and you liked it.

However, in the dog training context, the clicker is just a little noisemaker. It makes a very sharp "ka-klick" when you press it down and let it go, and our instructor explained that it's what you use to signify that a dog has done something correctly and is thus deserving of a savory reward. Our homework for that first week was to go home with our clickers and "prime" them with our canine friends. "Priming" a clicker consisted of clicking it in front of the dog and then feeding him a treat. The theory is that soon in the dog's mind, click equals treat. Click means "oh yeah, that thing you just did there, that standing there and looking at me in a goofy way, you're gonna get a treat for that." Having a clicker also means that if your dog does something far away that you like, you can click, and they know they did good and can come get the treat that they earned.

Oscar took some time to learn the clicker, but learn it he did. Pavlov would have salivated over such fine results.

With clicker and treats in hand, we returned to the SPCA the following Sunday, bringing Oscar with us for the first time. On the whole, the class went quite well. Oscar was immediately good at the first exercise, where he touches his nose to your hand to get a treat. He also had no problem with the "don't jump up to get the treat, you have to wait for it" exercise, making it look, much like an Olympic figure skater, too easy.

When it came time for the "sit" and "down" operations, those first real tests of doggie aptitude, I'm afraid to have to admit that our dog may have "special needs". The technique employed by our instructor was to use the treat as a lure to trick Oscar into sitting. You start with the treat by his nose, and move it back up along his head. The theory is that the dog stretches his head back for the treat and then, when it's just oh-so-close but out of reach, the dog sits back on his haunches, and then you fork over the treat, impressed with your dog's ability and happy to try again.

When Sara and I tried this, Oscar would watch watch watch the treat going over his head and then, when his neck had stretched beyond all reasonable canine limits, he decided, "Oh well, guess I'm not gonna get that treat," and would just look ahead again. No sit.

Lisa has class aides who walk by and make sure things are going OK. When one of them saw us struggling, he came by, tried it himself, failed, and then suggested that we go try it against the wall. "That way," he explained, "Oscar can't just back up to get the treat."

Oscar, while game for the treat, was unimpressed by his change of scenery and still refused to sit for the treat. That's when Lisa came by. "Hmmm, still not sitting?" she asked. We all shook our heads sadly.

Lisa took out some mega-treat of her own and tried to tempt Oscar along the obedient and enlightened path of sitting, but to no avail. "OK, so, here's the thing. Oscar's going to learn at his own pace," she admonished us as she tucked her treat back in her pouch. "You have to keep him in the game and make sure he thinks it's worth his time. You need to pay out more. Just getting his head back is a good first step. Work on that and he'll get it."

The class moved on to other exercises at that point, but I couldn't help feeling a bit like a Vegas hotelier who had just been informed by his slot machine vender that the little old ladies weren't lining up outside his air conditioned one-armed bandit dens because they weren't seeing enough payout. Oscar was not sitting because, in effect, we did not have the loosest slots in town. It was time to loosen up our odds, and pay out even on just one cherry.

So, now, we treat him if his head even gets just a little bit backward. And, you know what? He's still not sitting. But the hotel is comping all his meals.