As our time in Puppy School drew to a close, the teacher warned us that in the winter puppies generally don’t get as much outside exercise and therefore occupy themselves by getting into trouble indoors. To keep your dog from getting bored, she said, get a book of dog tricks and start teaching them to your pet.
I found a nice one on Amazon and started working with Geordie as soon as it arrived. We started working, but we didn’t always have success. One trick I had wanted him to do was to spin on command. To teach him, I decided to use one of his toys as a lure. I would spin it in a circle, and he would follow, getting a treat at the end. After a while, I was sure that he understood the circular motion, so I dropped the lure and gave a command-with- gesture instead. When I did that, Geordie simply wouldn’t budge.
One afternoon, we had been working on the trick over and over with Geordie refusing to move on command. I threw up my hands and asked the ceiling above, “I know he understands the concept. So why won’t he spin?” Geordie had been listening to what I said. He walked over, grabbed his toy, shoved it in my hand and yelled at me, “Because ‘Spin!’ means ‘Follow the toy!'” When he said that, the light bulb went on above my head and was reflected in the wide-eyed, open-mouthed, comprehension-dawning”Oh!” on my face.
That was such a watershed moment for us. Up until that time, I thought that I simply had the angriest, bitiest little dog ever created. Suddenly I could see that he was frustrated that whenever he talked, I didn’t understand him. It reminded me of stories I had read about Helen Keller when she was young. She was often angry and threw tantrums which turned out to be the expression of her frustration at not being able to communicate with the world.
For me, the incident showed me that my puppy had great intelligence, but he spoke differently from other dogs I had known. For him, he saw that I actually was capable of comprehension and willing to work with him to communicate.
As an aside, from that moment on, Geordie always has done “Spin” without a lure.
The Adventures of Bitey Dog 