I think the worst thing about the Outrage Addicts and informers and amateur prosecutors that now swarm around the animal world is that they discourage people from owning up to their shortcomings and mistakes, they punish honesty with cruelty and  ridicule.

Last week, I wrote that to stop Fate from leaping up enthusiastically into the face of a frightened and crying young girl – Fate has a lot of energy and exuberance when she is excited – I kicked her in the stomach. I didn’t qualify it, I didn’t say it was a light tap or that it was very necessary or that I didn’t know the girl would be in the  yard.

I don’t like the very defensive culture of qualifying and rationalizing action and thought, although Donald Trump is helping me to re-think that.  I work hard at being  honest about what I do, mostly because I learn so much from my mistakes and stumbles and so, I believe do other people. It would have been very easy to leave out the kicking of Fate in my training  reports – she showed no sign that she noticed it all, but she stopped jumping on the young girl and ran off to the gate to get to the sheep. I could, of course,  simply present myself as the perfect trainer,  a dog hero and guru, someone with a wonderful dog who makes no mistakes and is all cuteness and fun and energy.

I know that’s the story many people would like to hear. There is perhaps some malevolent part of me that knew some people would get upset when I wrote about the kick, and some did. Not many really, four or five. One woman told me that I should buy a crate and use it, she explained what a crate was.

Another sent me a long letter of Outrage, the emotional drive of social media, and said she was horrified that I had kicked Fate, I should know better and send her back to Dr. Karen Thompson. (Dr. Thompson, I can tell you, is not into letting her dogs jump into the faces of people.)

When I was young, I was often called stupid by my father and my teachers, and I am sensitive to it. The idea that a writer of dog books would not know what a crate was is difficult for me to grasp.  I never criticize someone of I have not stood in their shoes, of course I had no idea the girl was in the back yard when I let the dog out. My favorite was the woman on Facebook who said she hoped I had kicked the dog to protect the child and not for any other reason. Like for fun, I wondered?

Kicking Fate was a good and timely move, the girl stopped  crying and ended up calling Fate back and cuddling with her. That is what I wanted to see.

But my many missteps and surprises are important, they are what you and I both can learn from. Fate doesn’t go outside now unless I look to see who is there, and when someone is there, I put her into an immediate lie-down and we go slowly and calmly to the visitors, or we do not go at all. The jumping is getting under control. I do this all of the time, except when I forget, which I have done several times.

I think vigilance is one of the most important things about training a puppy, and one of the hardest. We all lead busy lives, full of distraction. I can hardly imagine training Fate with three small children in the house, it would be next to impossible. When she is out of the crate, Fate still needs  continuous vigilance – to make sure she eliminates outside, to make sure she has something to chew that is hers, to keep her out of the pantry and bathroom and bedroom, where she will find things to move around and chew that we don’t want her to move around and chew. Sometimes, we see her carrying around pieces of Maria’s fabric.

That does not go over well.

It is, for example, very difficult for me to stop and reconnoiter the yard every time we go out, on a farm life is busy and informal and continuous, it is hard to think of it all the time. I am vigilant much of the time, but not all of the time. And that is okay. I make mistakes, and Fate makes mistakes, the overall arc of her training is wonderful, she is getting more responsive, calmer and easier  every single day. I have worked hard and learned so much from her.

My training is far from perfect, but it is good, she is going to be a great dog, she already is. Like my other dogs she is now trained to keep away from the street, she walks off-leash, she comes when called 90 per cent of the time, the other 10 per cent being when there is fresh chicken poop on the ground. And she is getting to be a star around the sheep, calm and keen and smart.

Her herding training has been wondrous, she is really coming along, now she is teaching me. So I insist on sharing my mistakes, the dumb things I do (oddly, kicking Fate was not one of them, under the circumstances), the things I learn along the way. I am no Cesar Millan, you get the good Katz and the bad one, all in one package, if I am not honest with you, I am useless to me and not helpful to Fate either.

I do not sugarcoat me or my life.

The next time you see someone jumping on someone who admits to being less than perfect, think about pointing out that perfection is not a trait known to affect human beings. We are human, that is what unites us, and we are especially human when training our dogs, that is what unites us in our love for them and our wish to train them well.