It’s a Mad World
Every dog trainer has certain clients she’ll never forget. Pogo, the aptly named Goldendoodle puppy who came to his new Brooklyn family fully equipped with an internal trampoline, still stands out. When guests came through the front door, Pogo introduced himself with WWE body-slams and turned their sleeves into fishnet from all his playful biting. When the family left for work, Pogo took to howling and thrashing so intensely in his crate that neighbors above, below, and on both sides were complaining. His leash-walking acrobatics entertained passersby with a free Cirque du Soleil performance, though sometimes he took a break to help rid the Brooklyn sidewalks of their ubiquitous chicken bones and food wrappers.
Pogo’s kind but exasperated humans had raised dogs before, but not one like this. Never a Goldendoodle, and never in a city. I awoke one morning to their tearful late-night voicemail: “He’s crazy! This is not normal! He’s not like this when we go to our country home. My vet thinks he needs to be medicated.” And I can only imagine that Pogo, just doing what Doodles do, was thinking the same thing about his humans. In fact, Pogo was perfectly normal; it was his humans’ world, with its leashes and doorbells and off-limits chicken bones, that was crazy.
City streets offer a lot of distractions for dogs.
Normal is subjective. That holds true for people from different backgrounds or cultures, and even more so for different species. Take the concept of personal space. Imagine you are standing in line at the post office, with a gentleman you’ve never met in front of you. A typical American will put roughly an arm’s length of space between him- or herself and the gentleman in front; any closer than that would begin to feel uncomfortable. People from Mumbai might put only a few inches between individuals, with each person close enough to feel the breath of the person behind. (Americans, are you cringing yet?) And if Pogo were in that line, well, he’d jump right up onto that man’s shoulders and slobber all over his back. The thing is, there is no right or wrong here, no good or bad, just different interpretations of what normal means. The problem for dogs is that they’re participants in our world, and we expect them to follow our rules—and what crazy rules they must seem to be. Consider these examples:
When Pogo’s exhausted family left me that late-night voicemail, they said something that stuck with me: “He’s not like this when we go to our country home.” This reveals how the problem is not the dog himself; rather, has to do with the circumstances into which we put the dog.
When I was growing up in rural Connecticut, we rarely had to deal with problems such as incessant barking or difficult leash walking. Our family dog, a Golden Retriever mix who just wandered into our lives one day (and who I named Cindy as a tribute to Cyndi Lauper, whose style I shamelessly emulated), lived what most dogs would consider a “normal” lifestyle. She chose to stay outside from morning until evening, wandering around the property and interacting with other dogs and livestock while we humans were at school or work. Cindy had the autonomy to walk, poop, and sleep when she liked, and, as with most of the other dogs in our area, she developed good social skills on her own. That’s not to say she was friendly to everyone, but if she didn’t like certain people or other dogs, she had the freedom to simply avoid them or give them ample warning that they should stay away. Because of this, confrontations were infrequent.
Of course, there were certain risks to leaving dogs unsupervised, and Cindy’s playmates were occasionally involved in accidents with cars or other animals. (Were I to live that lifestyle again, I would take more precautions than we did back then.) But, in general, these dogs lived happy, easygoing lives. The only time we ever used a leash on Cindy was to go to the vet. I’m sure her leash skills were horrific, but in the context of a rural lifestyle, it really didn’t matter. Did she bark at the doorbell? Well, I don’t think we even had a doorbell, and she was outside anyway, ready to size up whoever walked over.
In my early twenties, I moved to a cramped Boston apartment after college, and I immediately adopted a three-legged sato (Puerto Rican stray dog) who, despite the indignity of my naming her Three, became my doggie soul mate. In the city, I saw dogs put into a very different lifestyle. Three’s routine was the polar opposite of Cindy’s. My Boston life was busy, structured, and stressful, and somehow I expected this scrappy little street dog to adapt to a confined lifestyle. Though she did adjust remarkably well, I certainly went through my fair share of replacing chewed furniture, scrubbing pee stains, and regularly extracting dead animals from Three’s jaws. I also learned what happens when, due to the restraint of the leash, dogs are forced to face what scares them and aren’t able to engage in the normal reaction of fight or flight. Three, unable to practice flight by walking away from triggers like moving cars or children, turned to fight.
She felt she had to defend herself with the only tool she had: her teeth. Seeing my dog so stressed by living in a world that never gave her space or freedom, it became clear how much pressure we put on our urban dogs: they are expected to walk calmly on short leashes and ignore everything out of reach, to remain quiet when left home alone for long periods, and to tolerate frequent interruptions by doorbells, sirens, and delivery people. We’re asking a lot of our dogs to live by our crazy human rules.
The good news is that both you and your dog can live together peacefully amid the chaos of a city, and it doesn’t take as much effort as you might think. You don’t need to quit your job to train your dog full-time (but wouldn’t that be nice!), and your dog doesn’t need to be able to balance an upright broom on his snout or jump through hoops of fire. In reality, by building clear communication with your dog and teaching him a handful of useful, straightforward behaviors, you can show your dog how to behave in ways that are polite to humans as well as rewarding for him. At the very least, this will require you to make some minor adjustments to your routine; at most, it will involve practicing and perfecting a few key training behaviors and learning how to apply these behaviors to various indoor and outdoor situations, all of which are outlined in the chapters that follow.
I know you’re busy, so in true Brooklyn style, this book gets right to the point. It will address the most common dog behavior problems that urban owners face and provide practical solutions to getting a polite dog both indoors and out. Chapters 1 and 2 lay the foundation for training. Starting with Chapter 3, you can read the chapters in any order, depending on what your most urgent need is. Rather than give you a broad list of tricks and commands that you might never use, BKLN Manners™ focuses on fully developing a few polite behaviors and giving clear instructions for applying these behaviors to a variety of real-life situations. Nevertheless, if you’d like to learn additional city-friendly behaviors, such as Heel through intersections, Sit-Stays at crosswalks, Recalls at the park, or Drop Its for garbage on the sidewalk, you’ll find the steps for these cues outlined in Chapter 7.
While all training takes time, commitment, and consistency, I will provide you with training solutions that can be smoothly integrated into your regular routine. In many cases, it doesn’t take any extra time at all because you can train while you’re already walking or spending time with your pup. The book is organized so that you can identify the problem you’re having and then read through the different strategies to help. You’ll notice that each chapter has multiple management and training strategies to modify your dog’s behavior issue. See which strategies fit your lifestyle best. It is more effective to practice one strategy thoroughly than to superficially try many different ones. Dog training is not a one-size-fits-all endeavor; it is a unique experience based on your needs. If I see three clients in a row who all need help with leash walking, it’s possible I will use a different strategy for each, depending on the dog’s temperament, the owner’s patience and interest in training, the external environment, and other factors.
This book covers four main areas of dog behavior that we consider problematic, with one chapter devoted to each:
Within these chapters are more specific problem-and-solution sections. You’ll find that there is some overlap; for instance, a dog who jumps on passersby while walking with you on leash falls into both the K and L chapters. You’ll also find that there is more than one problem in each chapter because, as you may have experienced, a dog can bark in more than one circumstance or may have more than one undesirable behavior while walking on leash. When you are ready to start training, check out the Appendix, which includes charts to track your progress.
And what about Pogo the Goldendoodle? I worked with his family for several sessions in their home, where he learned the foundation of being polite as outlined in Chapter 2. Later, he was one of the first graduates of my BKLN Manners™ group class. For walks, Pogo’s family has learned how to teach Pogo polite behaviors, like sitting, rather than jumping on people, and when they know he is too excited to sit, they apply pain-free management strategies instead. Now, instead of mauling incoming guests with love, Pogo either takes a break in the bedroom while guests enter, or he sits politely on his mat until he is released. His home-alone freak-outs have been reduced from constant screams to a few whimpers now that he is getting the exercise and stimulation he needs. Walks are just that: walks. Pogo’s acrobatics have subsided, and his humans have the tools to divert him from the sidewalk garbage buffet.
Is he a perfectly mannered gentleman all the time? Of course not! He’s a dog, and still a young one at that. The last time I spoke to Pogo’s family, I reminded them that training isn’t really about what the dog does but about how the human reacts. Even the most well-behaved dog will do things that humans find undesirable. Fortunately, with some time and practice, we owners can learn how to prevent these rude doggie behaviors from happening. Pogo’s family has learned how to address Pogo’s doggie needs in a way that fits their busy urban lifestyle, and, as a result, everyone in the family is more at ease and learning together.
