A Hell of a Dog by Carol Lea Benjamin Page B

not. Then Beryl was on the stage, and hands were up all over the room. Beryl pointed to the owner of one of them.
    â€œWhy the great divide in dog training?” a young man in a green T-shirt asked. He must have been one of those rude New Yorkers you hear so much about, going right to the heart of the matter with no polite small talk to cushion the thrust of his question. “Why don’t the trainers who use food get along with—”
    Rick leaned toward one of the mikes, but he was too slow.
    â€œBecause, dear man, some of us find it devastating to have the public taught that dogs are nothing but furry little garbage disposals rather than sentient, thinking beings.”
    Half the audience laughed. The other half started grumbling.
    â€œAnd much as I detest having to disagree with my esteemed colleague, it is imperative that I point out to you professionals that barking is self-reinforcing, even at those times when it hasn’t just chased the postal person away. You cannot extinguish it by not reinforcing it, because the act itself gives the dog immense pleasure. You, my dear friends, are beside the point. The same, of course, is true with chewing problems. You can extinguish some bad habits by doing nothing. But why not do something? Why not take an active role in your dog’s education? ‘No’ is not a four-letter word, people. It’s merely one of the ways you can communicate annoyance, displeasure, or impending danger to your companion animal.”
    Rick leaned toward his mike again, but clearly Beryl had no intention of relinquishing the floor.
    â€œMoreover, you cannot discuss these issues logically, though heaven knows, that’s what people think they are doing. Instead, they are working off unconscious emotional needs set in childhood, using the dog to rewrite history, so that the owner with the cold parent becomes the indulgent good parent to his pet—”
    Cathy got up. I slid down in my seat and tried to look as if I were completely absorbed in the Q & A session.
    â€œSo that they are both the parent and the child in this scenario, indulging and being indulged, the way we may be all the characters in our dreams.” She turned to Rick, finally giving him a chance to respond. But it was too late. He looked shell-shocked. Beryl had just given him a powerful demonstration of the effectiveness of negative reinforcement as well as the principle of alpha.
    Beryl shrugged and pointed to a young woman whose hand had been waving frantically in the air all the while Beryl had been speaking.
    â€œIs there any breed that’s truly hypoallergenic?” she asked.
    As Rick began to respond, Martyn gathered up his things and quietly headed for the door. He looked lost in thought and didn’t seem to notice me.
    â€œI’ve been reading about drive training,” a man in the middle of the group was saying. There was something pinched and tight about him. Looking at the back of his head, I imagined his lips would be pursed. Perhaps it was the perfect little voice that put me off, the way he enunciated every syllable so carefully. As he continued, I realized he was speaking too slowly, even for a mid-westerner.
    â€œCould each of you explain how a dog’s drives can be used when obedience-training a client’s pet dog?” he said, reminding me that Ida once said that talking very slowly can be a passiveaggressive act, a way to hold someone’s attention without earning that right The result, she’d said, made the listener intensely irritated. It worked for me. I felt like slapping him.
    â€œHow using the dog’s desire to fetch,” he droned on, “could be a pathway to training, for example, or—”
    â€œClever trainers have always motivated dogs by capitalizing on what the animal finds exciting, dear,” Beryl interrupted. “Do you have a dog with you?”
    He was slim and narrow-shouldered, even smaller looking when he