Dog Training

I always had Labrador Retrievers as pets when I was growing up. When I was in second grade, we got a new puppy named Angel. My mother had no experience training dogs, but she still fearlessly took it upon herself to train and discipline our dog. Her philosophy was the same as most Jewish mom's - fill it full of treats and cookies and you can teach it just about anything.

One day, we were watching "Candid Camera". In the episode, an innocent secretary was typing in an office. Every time the bell would "ding" on the typewriter a dog would run in, pull out the paper and throw it in the garbage. I thought it was a riot! My mother was unimpressed and assured me she could teach Angel to do the same trick. The next thing I knew, she had me typing and bell dinging. At each ding, she would put the dogs face and mouth to the paper and give it a biscuit. Sure enough, in under an hour that dog could have been a stand-in for the one on "Candid Camera". We had a good laugh and forgot all about it. Several months later, my brother was home from college and had started to type a paper for school. Much to his surprise, Angel ran into his room upon hearing the dinging typewriter, ripped the paper out and ran away. He thought it was a fluke and tried it again with the same result. He couldn't believe mom had actually taught a dog this trick, and promptly typed all his papers with the door shut.

In addition to performing tricks, my mother made sure Angel had chores of her own. It was her job to deliver any stray, dirty clothing to the door of the laundry room, where it could easily be accumulated by my mom. If the cat was scratching on our furniture, it was up to the dog to bark at her until she stopped. Angel was also trained to act ferocious anytime she heard the word "scat". A normally tame and sweet animal, would suddenly turn into Cujo at the mere utterance of this word. I mostly used it on the cat because she had a really bad attitude.

My mother grimaces whenever she is around my sweet, but relatively ill-mannered dog. She wishes I had trained Kasey to be as well behaved as my kids. I think I did a great job. She only barks at me when I'm on the phone and can't give her my undivided attention. Who can blame my poor baby?