JEREMY CORBETT
JEREMY’S NEW PUPPY HAS FORCED HIM TO RETHINK FATHERHOOD
Last week, I was talking to someone I was sharing a car with about my kids, as parents often do. She added apologetically that all she had at home was a dog.
After a pause to absorb the chasm of experience now sitting between us, I told her I believed a dog was excellent training for having children. My experiences with our new puppy, Spud, lead me to believe I was not only accurate, but the lessons we learn with canines should be applied more often to our little humans.
On the weekend, we took wee Spud to puppy training. Three things occurred to me from the experience.
The first was how puppy training is, of course, human training. You must be trained yourself in order to train a puppy.
We called our dogs over and when they sat for us, we gave them a treat and laughed about how easily controlled they were. Then we compliantly walked over and stood by the wall as we were instructed to. Dumb humans. By the end of the class, though, us dumb humans had learned the correct methods for helping our dogs learn. We all got a treat and a tickle under the chin.
My point is, people also need to be taught how to raise a child. Pretty obvious but looking back, I think Megan and I spent less time in antenatal classes than we will at Barkley Manor.
The second revelation was that pretty much every method for training your dog is reward based. Applied properly, the results were fast. And everyone, hominid or canine, was happy. I can’t say we’ve used the same ratio with our children. There are a few lumps of consequence, penalty and screaming in our recipe.
Since then, I’ve paid particular attention to how we are guiding our girls and the reward-based lessons strike me as more effective.
Although it does seem the lesson children learn the fastest is how to game the system.
Currently the reward-based method has been turned on its head and instead of seeing a reward as an incentive for good behaviour, they’ve turned it into a more mafia-like payment for not going rogue.
“If I had an ice cream,
I might not remodel the hallways with felt pens.”
The third lesson from puppy training was that dogs do not look like their owners. There were few, if any, matches. Especially ours: Megan is a good-looking woman. Spud is a pug dog. He has a face that suggests he’s run at full speed into dozens of locked dog doors. He has no nose and there’s something guppy-ish about his eyes.
I’d have to check with Megan to be certain I don’t appear that way to her, but I’m pretty sure we’re unlikely to get confused for our dog any time soon.
And this is where my doghuman parallel diverges: If you are that radically different in appearance to your children, there may be cause for concern.