I’m thinking of writing an e-book short – 3,000 words or so – about my ideas and experiences relating to the training of dogs. I am not a dog trainer, and do not wish to be one, but I have trained a number of dogs, learned a lot , done well in recent years and am thinking of sharing the experience. E-book shorts are really just essays – they usually sell for 99 cents, and Random House would be the publisher.

Training is so important. It is our language with dogs, or way of communicating with them, our only way of showing them how to live safely in our world. When training fails,  we fail our dogs, and they often end up paying – returned to shelters, euthanized, hurting people or dogs, or living tense lives amidst tension, scolding and anxiety.

And training usually fails. According to the North American Veterinary Association, only about 3 per cent of America’s 70 million plus dogs are trained at all. It is not possible to know how many are well-trained, but how many well-trained dogs do you ever see? Red is perhaps the best-trained dog I have ever had, but I didn’t train him. Lenore is well-trained, Frieda is a work in progress. My dogs do not run off, come when called, walk off-leash,  behave inappropriately, honor the street. This is the best-trained group of dogs that have lived with me.

But you can do the math. If all of these books and TV shows worked, the number of trained dogs would surely be a lot higher.  And training a lot easier. There is an inverse principle to training books:  the more people fail at training their dogs, the more books they rush out and buy. Cesar Millan has the right idea: his best-selling book is brilliantly titled: “How To Raise The Perfect Dog.” And it is very popular, much more than some dog-related books I could mention.

An interviewer asked me recently what I thought about Cesar Millan, and I admire and respect him in many ways. But the pursuit of the perfect dog is just like the Boomer pursuit of the perfect child. It is a fantasy, and a cruel one in so many ways, as it sets dog and human up for failure and frustration. I have never had the perfect dog and do not want one. I don’t want the perfect life either.  That is a lot of pressure to put on an animal without ambition. Good marketing is not good dog training.

I think dog training  a catastrophe in America, a scandal, a lucrative pyramid scheme where a small number of people make a lot of money advocating theories, approaches and techniques that have no relevance to the vast number of people trying to follow them. When people fail to follow these often rigid and dogmatic guidelines – dog lovers seem desperate to be told what to do with their dogs – then they feel foolish and quit. I meet people all the time who are stymied when it comes to training their dogs, and their shelves are always filled with rows of expensive training books. The less they work, the more they buy.  I don’t know of any single theory that works for me and all of my dogs. I have no wish to be a pack leader, and I am not capable of being positive every minute.

I need to acknowledge that I no longer buy or follow the training books of other people.  I am my own expert. I study my dogs, research animal behavior, factor in the individual circumstances of my life – me, Maria, the farm, the environment, the other animals, the dogs – and see what gets the dog  to react and listen. Then I think and try things until I figure out what works. Every dog loves something, and once you know what it is, he is yours: Frieda loves to walk in the woods, Red chase sheep, Lenore anything that remotely resembles food. I use these things to leverage the behavior I want. It works.

Training is not a general philosophy. None of the best training ideas I have had came from books or videos. They came from the individual circumstances surrounding my dogs and me.  From seeing each circumstance as individual. Nobody who is not here with me on my farm can tell me  how to train my dogs. And I can’t tell you. How could I? Unless you are on a 90 acre farm in upstate New York with paths, fences, meadows, how could my experience relate to you? Let’s say a family living in Cleveland with no yard and four kids?

My approach is this: thinking about dogs, experimenting, listening to them, giving them an opportunity to succeed. Summoning the patience for thousands of repetitions, finding the time to work with my dogs every day. Attitude is so important – projecting confidence and clarity. Every time I work with my dogs I tell myself, I will succeed, we will work together, we will keep at it until we communicate. We will do the best we can. And then, tomorrow, we will try again

Each dog is precious. Each dog, like each human, is an individual. No two dogs are exactly alike, as no two people are exactly alike. Only the dogs owner knows them well enough to truly train them. Is there one approach that would work for teaching all of our children? One curriculum? One odd theory like pack training, or one simplistic one like positive reinforcement? Educators have long known that each child must be understood as an individual entity, their course of learning tailored to them and their gifts and needs. Dog owners do not know this. They are forever looking for the guru with the right book or TV show to give them all of the answers.

But dog books often make people feel inadequate. They assume they know nothing, a formula for failure. Real training begins when we empower ourselves, when we see ourselves as the guru, when we create or own theories from our own lives and judgements. That is all of the expertise we need and it’s free. I can tell you that training a dog is not brain surgery. It takes time and patience and clarity and common sense.

So I think I might do that e-book short. And share some of the things I have learned.

Mmmm… Maybe I’ll call it “Training Your Dog to Be Perfect for 99 cents!” Could be big.