Women Over Fifty

I know that question makes you wonder if I haven’t had my coffee yet.  Well, I’ve got it in hand.  I awoke this morning thinking about the book Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski.  (Harper Collins 2008) 

If you haven’t read this book yet, it’s about a young boy who is handicapped by an inability to speak.  He’s smart enough.  He lives with his family in the backwoods of northern Wisconsin where his family raises a special breed dogs.   These dogs are much in demand because they’re trained for a year before they are sent out to families.

So, Edgar learns sign language so he can talk to his family without having to write it all down.  I am reading the part now where Edgar is training a litter of his own, learning all about the dog breeding business from his Dad.  Edgar has a puppy, Almondine, who was given to him on the day he was born.  Almondine has always understood sign language because that was the language of his boy.  Now that Edgar is training dogs, it’s only natural for him to train the dogs using signs.

The question appears:  Do dogs understand sign language?    Or hand signs?  My answer is a definite YES!  We used to live in a townhouse clustered with many other townhouses.  If you were outside and you talked at a normal volume, everyone nearby could hear what you were saying.

At the time I got Honcho my children were grown, my husband was working out of town during the week, and I came home from work every day to a very quiet, still house.  I told my surprised husband that I wanted a dog for Christmas.  You see, I had always been afraid of dogs.

So, we lived in a townhouse in a complex not exactly ideal for a Norwegian Elkhound.  In the back we had a large patio, but that’s what it was, a patio.  It was clear he needed to be walked at least twice a day, maybe more.   Our complex had an area set aside for walking the dogs, but that’s not enough exercise for Honcho.  He needed 4 miles a day (and rarely got that much, poor puppy).

The question became:  How do you train a puppy to walk and behave when you’re walking him at 6 AM or in the evenings, or any time at all, without the neighbors complaining loudly? What about barking?

SHUTUP!  One of the first commands Honcho learned was SHUTUP!  The command was given by a quiet scratching on the window above his head.  If he wasn’t quiet, then I put him in the laundry room for the night, and he didn’t like that at all.  So, I told him to SHUTUP! by scratching on the glass.

Come.  I taught him to Come.  Norwegian Elkhounds are real blockheads when it comes to allowing anyone to control them.  Come?  For most Elkies it means “let’s play catch me if you can.”  I taught him Come on a leash by walking away from him, then holding my arms out wide.  If he came into my arms, he got a good and thorough rubbing and lots of whispered Good Boys.

Walk nicely.   This one is really hard for any puppy.  They want to run and play freely.  But in a Condo Complex near two busy streets?  No way.  I taught him this one by domination.  Domination is a nice word when teaching dogs.  Simply, it meant that when he eagerly tried to drag me down the street, I simply put the brakes on.  I stopped, and he was left pulling uncomfortably on his collar.  You may think this is cruel, but the only thing he needed to do was to stop resisting.  Did it break his spirit?  Not at all.  WE learned to enjoy our walks.

I’ve had it!   This is a good thing for a puppy to know.  How is he going to learn to please his mistress if he doesn’t know what makes her angry?  (I wish I’d known this when I was raising the girls.)  If we were in a public area and he simply wouldn’t be good (my definition of being good, not his), I would pin him.  We are talking about a very large puppy.  I would simply roll him over on his back, hold him down by his shoulders (gently) and yell at him quietly.  (Like your momma did in church.)  When he quit fighting me, I’d let him get up.  Pinning didn’t hurt him, but it surely let him know who was boss.

So, now I had a large dog who knew how to SHUTUP!, Come, Walk Nicely, and read my moods and most of it was by hand signs or body language.

People would laugh when I made my dog sit quietly with only a hand sign.  Imagine stopping to talk to a friend and having a busy puppy wanting you to continue the walk.  Imagine stopping his pulling and whining with a hand sign.  I didn’t even have to interrupt my visit, though I usually made a stern face with the sign.

I have a lot of theories on how to raise a dog to be a pleasant companion.  When people asked why I didn’t just take him to classes, I told them I didn’t want a show dog, I wanted a dog who was my companion.  I wanted him to study me and know what I wanted.

Now days I always train my dogs with hand signs.  By nature dogs are observers of body language.  It’s easier for them to respond to body language and hand signs than it is to figure out words that have no meaning to them.   The only words they need to know are their names and NO! 

Honcho has since gone to doggie heaven and Jake is my companion now.  (That’s Jake above.)  He’s a hundred pounds of loving dog.  Even though we now live on a big lot, he knows hand signs.  He will sit by my just looking expectantly at him.  His worst command is SHUTUP! 

I have a training problem.  I have a neighbor now who goes out about 6 AM to feed her animals before going to work.  She can’t resist giving Jake a treat every morning.  Every morning, while I’m still in bed, Jake wakes the neighborhood up with his happy barks at her coming with the treat.  I could change that behavior if I was willing to get up at that hour, go into the cold, and run around the garage to give him his sign.  It’s the neighbor I’d like to change.  She expects the barking, probably smiles and encourages him while she gives him his treat.  He gets so excited.  That’s the way she expects a dog to be. 

It’s the only time of the day Jake isn’t disciplined by me.  For the rest of the day, Jake confines his barks to announcing that someone is coming.  (That’s a loud, “listen up” bark - one or two of them while he runs to the gate to greet our visitors.)

Well, that’s a long, long post.   Happy hand signing.

Marilynne 

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