A reporter asked me recently if I believed in Positive Reinforcement Training. Of course, I said (did he think me stupid?), who on this earth is against being positive with your dog? The animal trolls online would call the mob together and charge.

Then (he wasn’t stupid either) he asked me if I was always positive. I am a former journalist and I have a rule about never lying to journalists. Too close to home. I answered truthfully. I am as positive as I can be for as long as I can be.

The fact is, I yell at my dogs often and heartily. I enjoy it, they don’t seem to mind, and in fact, they rarely much attention to me, unless I get really loud and angry. Then they pay close attention to me. I like yelling at my dogs, it makes me feel good and keeps me from wanting to strangle them.

People who claim they never, ever, yell at their dogs make me a little nervous, they are a bit too saccharine for me, a little creepy. Not real, I guess, would be the way to put it. I grew up in a family of screamers. My family fought about whether the sun came up in the morning, we screamed right through meals and rides in the car.

I didn’t realize until I was older that some people talked to each other in a normal voice.

I love Fate dearly, as is obvious, but Fate is a dog who calls out to be yelled at. Even Maria yells at Fate, and Maria re-homes spiders and inch-worms caught in the house. She cried the other day because she inadvertently killed a tomato plant.

I yell at Fate when she chases after the chickens. Or scarfs up chicken droppings. Or jumps up to look out the window and knocks things over.  I yell at her when she rushes out the door to the pasture without permission, or when she forgets to wait at the gate and plows into me. Or tries to open a bag with Thai take-out.

I yell at her when she climbs up onto the bed in the middle of the night and gnaws at my face or lies down to sleep on my stomach. I yell at her when she tries to jump into a stroller to kiss a baby.

I used to yell at her to be more assertive with the sheep, but I gave that up. I do yell at  her when she lies down in front of Chloe when the pony is eating. I rarely yell at Red, but once in awhile he gets excited while working or barks when he hears a video. I don’t need to yell at Red, if he were any calmer or more obedient he would be dead.

We live in an increasingly puritanical and intrusive world.  Everyone has a label and and an ideology, usually of victimization or outrage, and demands that everyone else bow to it.

The positive reinforcement police are just like the other animal police who patrol the vast boundaries of social media looking for people to judge and harass. Nuts to them all. I belong to the Church Of Minding Your Own Business, you perhaps have never heard of it, it is a small and unobtrusive sect.

We live on the fringes of social media, where minding the business of other people has been elevated to a constitutional right. I love positive reinforcement training, but I also love honesty and realism. We are human beings, none of us are inherently positive all of the time.

Our dogs, who love us and are smarter than we often think, love us for who we are, not for who other people tell us to be. They can handle getting yelled at once in awhile, as long as it is framed by love and good care. I can’t fake it with them, I am just not always positive.

I yelled at Fate the other day when she tried climb into my lap with her muddy paws. “I’ll be honest with you, Fate,” I said, “that is not going to happen. Get off!” It was actually a growl more than a shout. She backed off. I couldn’t believe I was actually telling her I was going to be honest with her, I am perhaps losing my mind.

But I think she appreciated it.

The point of this is this: don’t feel badly if you yell at  your dogs once in awhile. Dogs are not made of crystal.  It just means you are a human being, not a bad human being.