“Do you train husbands too?” It’s a question we’re asked surprisingly often during a dog-training session. Sometimes it’s husbands, sometimes wives or partners, and occasionally someone suggests the children could do with a session as well.
Our standard answer is always the same: “Yes — but we charge extra.” It usually gets a laugh, but there’s actually a surprisingly good training lesson hiding behind the joke.
It’s not such a crazy idea
We’re hardly the first to spot the possibilities. In 2005, Britain had an entire television series called Bring Your Husband to Heel, in which dog trainer Annie Clayton taught women to apply dog-training techniques to their husbands. Years later, Train Your Baby Like a Dog took the idea considerably further, using positive training techniques, including clickers and rewards, with children — and creating considerably more controversy.
We’re not suggesting you start clicker-training your partner or children and dispensing roast chicken when they get it right. Apart from anything else, they’ll probably work out what you’re doing. But underneath the joke is a perfectly sensible idea: some of the principles that make us better dog trainers can also make us better communicators.
Catch them being good
Good trainers don’t wait for a formal training session to notice behaviour they like. Your dog is pottering around the garden, you call and they race back? Tell them they’re brilliant. If you keep a treat stash handy, grab a reward. Your dog comes bounding up to you and manages to keep four paws on the ground? Notice it, praise it and reward it if you can. If you want more of a behaviour, don’t let the good ones pass unnoticed.
We humans aren’t so different. We can be remarkably quick to notice the one thing somebody forgot while overlooking the ten thoughtful things they quietly did. Nobody needs a piece of roast chicken for emptying the dishwasher, but a genuine “Thanks, I really appreciate that” can go a surprisingly long way.
Manage rather than nag
Management is a huge part of good dog training. If something repeatedly goes wrong, we look at the setup instead of repeating the same instruction louder and hoping for a miraculous personality transplant.
Humans might occasionally benefit from the same approach. Your partner keeps leaving the knives and forks in the sink. You’ve asked three times. You could ask a fourth, fifth and sixth time — increasingly loudly — or perhaps it’s time to change the arrangement. Swap jobs. They clear the plates, you do the cutlery and they take over something you hate doing. Sometimes solving the problem is more useful than winning the argument.
The same applies to dogs. If your puppy repeatedly fails at something, ask whether you’re expecting too much or whether you could change the situation to make success easier. One of the most common things we see is someone asking a puppy to “Stay… stay… stay… STAY!” long after the puppy has reached the limit of what it can currently manage. Eventually the puppy moves, the human gets frustrated and nobody learns very much. Ask for less, reward the success and gradually build from there.
Don’t sweat the small stuff
Not everything has to be perfect and not every imperfection needs correcting. That applies to dogs and, perhaps even more importantly, to the people we live with. Pick the things that genuinely matter. Reward the good stuff. Change the setup when something continually causes trouble. Adjust your expectations when they’re unrealistic. And occasionally decide that the towel hanging crooked, the teaspoon in the sink or the puppy sitting slightly wonky really isn’t the hill you need to die on.
That’s probably the useful crossover between dog training and human relationships. Apply the principles, by all means: communicate clearly, notice success, make it worthwhile to get things right, manage predictable problems and don’t sweat the small stuff. Just be a little careful about applying the actual techniques.
If your partner comes home from Bunnings and you throw your arms open, call “Come!” and produce a piece of roast chicken when they reach you, the game may be up.
And if they woof, you’ve probably taken things too far.
