From The CC Vault: The Case For How Dogs Train Us

by Chris Robinson

Good morning, your honor and may it please the court: It never ceases to amaze me how adept dogs are at training people. If we were half as good at training them as they are at training us, every dog would be field, obedience, agility or tracking champions, no question about it. And, that’s excluding the things they routinely train us to do–scratch me, pet me, rub my tummy, feed me, let me out/in. Certainly they can be a bit demanding when teaching us to do the routine stuff, but at least on those rare occasions when they have had enough petting, scratching or tummy rubbing, unlike cats, they don’t turn your hand and arm into a scratching post. And, as far as mealtime is concerned, I may think I’ve taught them to sit before I put their food dishes down but that’s definitely not how they view it.
From their perspective, once they sit down to the table, so to speak, that’s my cue to serve their meals. They have unfolded the napkin, tucked it in their collars and they’re ready for the entrée. Bo, my young dog, regularly makes polite conversation when he’s preparing to sit saying that he’s starved, his meal smells delicious and he can’t wait to dive in while I stand, like his personal head waiter, holding his “plate” until he gets comfortably situated for his meal. So this is not about the usual things they train us to do but rather about the sophisticated tasks in which they school us, sort of like a retriever making 150 yard retrieves on a straight line through a half dozen cover and terrain changes or herding dogs de- taching themselves from their person and putting the sheep/cattle/ducks between them and the shepherd.
The dogs are capable of teaching us some pretty elaborate concepts. Take, for example, Bo. He has taught me to respect the fact that whenever we go anywhere in the house, he’ll “walk point,” the most exposed position in a combat formation as the lead element moving through enemy territory. This also applies to entering the front seat of the truck and immediately upon exiting the truck. In addition, he has trained me to accept that when I make a “head call” or take a shower, he’ll always be right outside the door facing outward on sentry duty manning, or perhaps I should say, dogging, his post ready to dispatch any terrorists foolish enough to happen along and disregard his challenge. In this effort, he is much like the late, great comedian George Gobel who spent World War II as a flight instructor in AT-9 aircraft and later in B-26 Marauder bombers in Oklahoma. When he said this, it inevitably got a laugh and Gobel responded, in his quiet, low-key style, “Go ahead and laugh but if you think back, there was not one Japanese aircraft got past Tulsa.” Bo has been at least as successful at deterrence as was First Lieutenant Gobel. Not one member of Al Qaeda or ISIS has gotten past him to create carnage in the bathroom.

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110 – September, 2017

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