Theorists Vs. Pragmatists on the Road to Llandielo

"There's facts about dogs, and then there's opinions about them. The dogs have the facts, and the humans have the opinions. If you want the facts about the dog, always get them straight from the dog. If you want opinions, get them from humans." 
.    .       .    .           .         .           .   .  . -- J. Allen Boone

I have always liked this quote because it is true, and it is more true in the arena of dog training and field work than anywhere else.

Donald McCaig's most recent book, Mr. and Mrs. Dog is framed around this idea.

The book itself is a carefully woven tapistry, one part delightful story about a man for whom old age is no longer rumor, and his current set of working dogs who are in their rippling prime. 

Donald decides he is going to try to compete in the World Championship sheep dog trial in Llandielo, Wales. 

He would be a Virginian, a foreigner, working farm land he had never walked, on sheep he had never seen, among people whose road signs seemed profoundly short of vowels.

Just making the American team would be a stretch -- there would be a lot of outruns, lifts, and successful sheds to get there, and against no shortage of competent dogs and people. 

Could it be done?  Who knew, but if not now, when?

The warp to this weft, is the story of dog training, or to put a point on it, the battle between theory and fact, romance and reality, laziness and work. 

Donald McCaig is a border collie man and so he knew, right from the start, that he would be gifted with some insight into the mind of dogs, but that he would also have some blindspots as well.

Could he learn to turn his head to see the world of dog training through the eyes of different needs, different breeds, and different people? 

Would it change how he saw his own dogs, and the world of dogs around him?  He set out to find out.

The backstory, of course, is that Donald McCaig has been witness to many years of fence-fighting between various factions in the world of dog training. It is an old battle. 

Rather than roll in the theory of it, however, McCaig set out to detail the history behind it, even as he visited a few dog trainers who are leading proponents of various techniques.

We are presented with:

• The dolphin trainer who seems to have missed the fact that a dolphin tank is a controlled Skinner Box, but that the real world of dogs is not;
  .
• The veterinarian pill-pusher who does not own a dog, but who has written a book featured on television (and praised by Bo Derek!) which suggests that doggie prozac is just the thing for dogs with separation anxiety;
  . 
• The disciple of Bill Koehler who teaches with a collar, a simple leash, and a long line -- but whose real dog training skill may come from his own paucity of body movement;
  .
• The evangelical clicker trainer who, at the end of a five weeks, gives clients a bone shaped piece of cardboard rather than a dramatically improved dog;
  .
• The E-collar trainer who seems to have happy dogs that learn quickly, but who readily agrees that ignorance and sloth are too common, that abuse is easy, and that e-collars should probably not be sold across the counter at Petco.

Along the way, we learn about the Prussian roots of AKC obedience work, and we are schooled about how behaviorists differ from ethologists -- the "nuture vs. nature" debate come home to the dog house.

The best dog trainers, of course, are not behaviorists or ethologists -- they are pragmatists.  Like the dogs, they operate without theory or religion.  They ask only one thing:  Does it work? 

I will not step on any plot points and punch lines, but suffice it to say that this book is exquisitely written, with charming revelations, warm humor, and keen insight into both the world of dogs and the people who claim to train and speak for them.

This book is more than good story well told, however; it is also an important book that moves the conversation about dogs and dog training forward, in no small part because it illuminates with such a light hand that all sides in the world of dogs might actually hear what is being said.

Would that be a miracle?  Oh yes.  But this book might just be the book that helps do it.

.

.