"Be Nice"

Since I need assistance dog and therapy dog work from my dogs and have the world's lowest threshold for boredom, Belgian Tervuren are a good match for me. They can do most things, and they don't need very many repetitions. The key is to keep the stress low and be very, very accurate with your training. They tend to remember, so if you train it wrong, they'll remember it that way. They know how to communicate with me, and have over the last twenty years taught me a lot about how they like to learn and work. They aim to please.

I was talking to hubby the other day about whether Believer would protect me or not, and we agreed that she would do it like Patrick Swayze told his bouncer employees to do in the movie "Road House." I never get this quote exactly right, but he tells them to, in a variety of situations, "BE NICE." And then says something to the effect of "Until it's time to not be nice." She's my assistance and needs an extremely high level of niceness and steadiness.

The first big dog hubby and I had together changed my life by taking away my fear of being home alone. Sometimes I forget what a dramatic difference that made, and take for granted what I've now had for so many years. Happily, I wanted right from the start to be able to take the dog for neighborhood walks and "be nice" to the dog and to everyone else. So though the thinking back then was that you had to use a tough voice to train a dog, I figured what my college psychology courses had taught about the cue that was reinforced being the cue that would be followed--was probably right. Indeed, as most everyone with training knowledge now knows, it is. So I use an extremely happy voice to direct a dog that pleases even the most tender-hearted non-trainer who hears it in public, and my dogs respond to it just as well as that first Lab/GSD named Saint did.

I train in a strip shopping center, where I have to make sure merchants are happy I'm there. It's private property, so if they don't want me around, I lose the location for training. I've been happily training there for 24 years. Once Saint and I made lots of evening trips after a clerk in a liquor store had been raped on duty. It didn't happen again.

Another time Believer and I were out training during her early work, when she was an impressive-sized adolescent. I didn't do tug-of-war with her. I was training her for therapy dog work, and had had a bit of a struggle getting the silly mouthing stopped. In fact, she's still hard on fabric leashes. A Terv without mischief, well, it may not be a Terv. They are stinkers, and you need a sense of humor. They are my four-legged anti-depressants.

This day, there was a suspicious-looking fellow sitting in a car in front of the dollar store. In the news had been several daytime robberies of dollar stores with a similar profile. He set off the car alarm when Believer and I were in front of his car. She was unimpressed, bless her breeder's heart--and my breeder, who gave her 4 months of little-kid experience before I got her.

I had a dishtowel in my shoulder bag to dry things off in general while out with her--people's fingers from dog slobber when giving treats, drips of water from giving her water, or whatever. I pulled that out and started our first tug game together. I knew tugging would make her look tough to the guy, and she of course thought it was great fun. She put her whole big self into it. He honked the horn some--which she also ignored--and another guy came out of the store with a very small purchase. They drove away and then we walked on. I'll never know, but I'll always believe we stopped a robbery that day.

Meanwhile, back at home, Believer chewed about half a dozen dish towels before I removed all such from our household routine. She's tall and smart and can probably get anything she wants. That she does not do so i really just her "being nice." I switched to paper towels in the kitchen, and 5 years later we're still using them. One consolation is that we do seem to get fewer colds.

No wonder dogs extend our lives.