Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
recent search, I was having Solo check what I was sure was a pile of sand deposited by a recent
creek flood, though one careful investigator thought it looked gravelike. I simply asked the
searchers to stand away while I ran Solo through the area. They all obediently stepped well
away and turned their backs, but they couldn't help looking over their shoulders to see what
he would do. Solo sniffed and moved on. Over the years, he has been increasingly proofed off
dead animals. More important, he's been increasingly proofed off the human gaze.
It's hardly dogs' fault: We humans hardwired them through selective breeding to be utterly
responsive to us. With working dogs, we take it a step further. We ask them to be both deeply
bonded with their handlers and to act independently. They need to be both obedient and to
think for themselves. We train them to ignore us and go get their work done. Push that door.
Don't look at me to do it. Open that gate. Find that body. Stop watching me and do your
job. The game is to be together
and
separate. Bonded
and
independent. For some breeds, and
for some dogs, it's easier than for others.
It's partly why one of the hardest exercises in advanced obedience can be the “go out.” An
obedience dog is used to being fed treats in exchange for gazing lovingly, unstintingly into
the handler's eyes on the heel and recall. Then the handler asks the dog to run enthusiastically
straight away. If it's not taught with the proper chain of treats and rewards, you can witness
an otherwise fine obedience dog walk away slowly, sulkily, gazing back at his owner: You don't
love me anymore. You want me to go away.
We humans are hardwired, too. We are attached to our dogs. The handler or even the
helpful trainer can unconsciously play an unhelpful role in creating dependency, wanting the
dog's success. That's why a handler training a sniffer dog should start training on blind prob-
lems, where the handler doesn't know the location of the hide and can't help the dog cheat.
Then she should go on to double-blind problems, where the trainer flanking her doesn't know
the hide's location, either. That's why it was good when Nancy Hook started forgetting where
she put the hides in the fields and woods early in Solo's training. She was unconsciously
providing all three of us with double-blind trainings. She was helping us avoid bullshit.
• • •
So what's the harm with a cadaver handler here and there saying, with some bravado among
friends at a seminar, that her dog never false alerts? Or a bloodhound handler bragging that
his dog can follow a two-month-old track, or trail someone driving in a car for miles? Aren't
they the harmless equivalent of big fish tales?
No. Bragging on your dog provides a tiny contribution to the general spreading of bullshit
about working dogs. It creates a wishful blindness that doesn't just end up hurting the train-
ing of a particular dog. It also helps create a filmy fiction about working dogs in general—a
kind of milky, soft-focus portrait that helps us practice Hero Dog Worship.
