RSS Subscription
losing your mind 1 click at a time
Jed and I are experiencing emotional and sensory overload thanks to this dog.
THIS dog?
I mean, thanks to Charlie. Sorry, Charlie. (hehe, I couldn’t resist)
First of all, we apprehensively ride the roller coaster of vet visits (i.e. the bills that accompany them) and pulling chewing gum off of footpads at 6am after the poopie scoopie bag burst while picking up dog bombs during the morning walk.
Both are expected. Neither are fun.
Speaking of fun?! Let’s talk about obedience training.
You see, Charlie has this thing about other dogs. That thing is “Omigawd I SEE another DOG and I’m GOING to GET IT and if you don’t LET ME I’m going to FREAK the EFF OUT!” and then when we let her meet the other dog it’s “OH NO YOU DIDN’T just try to SMELL my butt NOW I WILL BARK and SHOVE and SCARE your owner HAHA I SHOWED YOU.” She’s pretty harmless, but that behavior is not great for meeting new people, yanno.
So, $100 later we meet Tim the Trainer and yesterday began the process of teaching Charlie to, well, behave like the good girl we all know she is. That process involves meat (lamb, that fancy/gassy bitch) and a clicker thing. We click the thing and she gets lamb. And we click. Lamb. Click. Lamb. And then we feed her dinner one kibble at a time. Click. Kibble. Click. Kibble.
We are in the midst of the maddening process of getting Charlie to “love the clicker” as Tim the Trainer puts it. See, the clicker is really an annoying training device. It’s piercing. Frankly, all involved are put off by it. That’s the point. We teach Charlie to not worry about insanely irritating things by giving her delicious noms when she hears a click. (That’s not completely accurate, but I can’t explain the concept in any sort of concise manner. So, we’ll go with what I got.)
Clicks for every piece of food at breakfast and dinner. One hundred thousand million gajillion clicks a day.
I hate the clicker. At least Charlie gets lamb when we use it. Know how I can learn to love the clicker?
I’ll give you a hint:
Click. Ice Cream. Click. Manicure.
But, it’s not about me.
So, Jed and I are holding on to bare threads of sanity and hoping that Charlie “loves the clicker” soon so we can move to Phase 2, which Tim the Trainer promises will be less intense. And that’s awesome. I can’t wait.
Click.
Click.
Click.
More later…
PS. We LOVE this dog. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t put ourselves through this madness. I hope you understand. Doglovers, do you know what I mean?
September 1st, 2009 at 9:09 pm
Wow – that is very similar to how we are trained, as computer users, to click and click in order to get rewards or to behave appropriately. The clicks are annoying, but the meaty rewards (content) are delicious. Are we very different than happy go lucky dogs in our own Internet lives?