Word Is Born

Last night, we attended our first “Growly Class.”

We were already acquainted with the trainer, Deborah, through our private lesson, but this was the big meet-and-greet with our classmates. To minimize owner anxiety, this first meeting was “humans only.” It’s a smart tactic considering everyone in the class has dogs with medium to severe behavioral issues, and it’s easy to get defensive about your dog when it misbehaves. By meeting people first, you get on the same page in case your dogs are less friendly toward each other.

The meeting felt like a hybrid of dog training and group therapy.

To begin, we all took turns talking showing pictures and introducing our dogs. Many people had rescued their dogs so the histories, ages and breeds were guesswork.

Our turn: “Hi, my name is Paolo and this is my wife Amanda. Our dog is Gianna, and she’s a 6-year-old Collie.”

After reviewing some definitions of behavior issues and talking about cognitive psychology and B.F. Skinner, we got into another round of introductions about our dogs’ behavior issues. Amanda went after the guy whose Husky has bitten him hard twice.

“Well, Gianna is a really sweet little girl and didn’t care much about other dogs after we first got her. She plays well with other dogs that she knows, but she gets aggressive when she’s on a leash and sees dogs she doesn’t know. She lunges and growls and barks at them.”

I cut in, “She’s a couch hog.” Not my finest moment.

I’d like to think Gianna was on the lower end of behavioral issues, but she sounded fairly common compared to others’ stories. There are a couple dogs in the group that have gotten into major fights before, but that didn’t concern me. I went to Stadium High School, so I know what it’s like going to school where people get into fights daily.

During the rest of the session we learned about the importance of rich rewards, breaking up bad dog interactions, dog “zen” (basically getting the dog to relax and focus — dog-version of meditating) and masking or losing our own anxieties.

That last bit about anxiety was why we were all there dogless. This training session was for the humans. We all have good intentions for our dogs with issues. Unless we have confidence, our dogs won’t heed to us and build confidence.

So, we listened, reflected and built our own confidence as handlers, not much different from “sit” and “stay.” Next week, the dogs meet and we’ll get tested in our ability to take command.

The irony of it all is the high expectation we put on our dogs. They’re not people and people misbehave far more often without notice. How often do you swear or skip a chore? As much as this series of lessons will be about calibrating Gianna’s behavior, it will also be about resetting our expectations.

According to the Washington Trails Association, Green Mountain is the second highest peak on the Kitsap Peninsula. That’s not saying much as it tops out at just 1,639 feet, but over our 5 mile round-trip hike and 1,000-foot elevation gain, we broke a sweat.

We drove about an hour from Tacoma to the peninsula to the trailhead. Though rain has been light, mud was on the Gold Creek Trail that we took to the top. On the way down, we took Plummer trail, which was more dry and offered some great views of the Olympics. Enjoy the pictures!

I reduced balsamic vinegar and glazed it over baked tilapia. The salad was cherry tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, avocado and red pepper tossed with olive oil, garlic and light seasoning.

You know what sucks? Being a sixth grader and having a stranger tell you to start over with third grade math.

I couldn’t swallow the diagnosis at the time, and I cried about it on the car ride home. I felt embarrassed. I was attending a private school and told by those teachers that my learning was advanced compared to kids in public schools (which proved to be true). My parents literally paid for me to get ahead.

They also paid for Nina and I to attend a Kumon Learning Center for a short time to supplement and ensure academic success. For our first visit, the Kumon staff administered a timed test to place us in the program. I didn’t realize that the number of questions completed was part of the testing criteria, so I took my time rechecking each answer for accuracy. Based upon my slow performance, those bastards at Kumon told me to start over at third grade math. Nina received a similar demotion for her grade level, but I think she only cried about it to mimic my reaction.

I don’t remember how long we continued the Kumon program, not too long, but it helped me better master fundamental math and with speed. I continued with success on the math track from there — all the way up through calculus my senior year of high school — until public school culture influenced my decision to drop the math for “Independent Study – Jazz” (i.e. extra-long lunch hour). I rounded out math completing business calculus as an undergrad.

I give a lot of credit to all the teachers I now know as adults — Aunt Rhonda, Nina, Jeff, Keeley, etc. In my world, “multitasking” is responding to people on Facebook while taking a conference all and eating lunch. In their world, multitasking is keeping the order of their classrooms while figuring out how to get food for the kids whose parents didn’t get the reduced lunch form in on time. It’s encouraging the engaged students while disciplining the students who flipped them off.

The systematic failure of standardized academia continues to take the backburner while at the front of our minds and in the front lines on Wall Street people question why jobs aren’t available and leadership sucks. The answer is simple: We don’t have flexible education systems in place to develop the best minds and most capable leaders. I gave George W. Bush a bunch of crap when he was in office for a variety of reasons, but I credit his priority for addressing educational reform during his term. Of course, the system he installed went the opposite direction that education reform needed to go — more standardization. No Child Left Behind works as well as putting out a fire with gasoline, but at least he tried.

Enter Khan Academy. WATCH THIS VIDEO.

Anyone who gets Bill Gates’ approval gets mine.

If you have a child struggling with basic or advanced math, sciences or humanities, get them plugged in with that free educational platform. NOW.

In essence, Khan Academy appears to be similar to what I experienced with Kumon — do not pass until you’ve demonstrated mastery — except Khan Academy is scalable for any teacher, tutor or district to adopt and more convenient to access. At minimum, Khan Academy can serve as an education supplement like a Flinstone pill for the mind.

Broader adoption by school districts could be even more promising. As Salman Khan says in the video, the program can flip learning on its head. Instead of learning in the classroom and taking homework on solo, students can watch videos at home in advance or in the classroom at their own pace, as often as they need to, and work on the problem solving in the classroom with teachers and peers available for assistance. It’s all self-paced learning at a pace faster than programmatic lecturing and testing can produce.

At this point in the GOP primaries, I’m counting on Obama getting re-elected. I’m hoping that in his second term, Obama’s long-term economic plan is an educational reform that produces a generation of Americans that ask not what they’re country can do for them, but what they can do for their country. We don’t need policies. We need people who can invent, innovate and lead and develop their own companies and jobs rather than rely on government to do the work for them.

And I’m not talking about everyone becoming MBAs or Ph.D.’s. I’m talking about the college drop-outs like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg who developed their minds outside the standard paths of learning and produced American economies around them as tangible as Bellevue and Palo Alto.

Long-term economic recovery won’t come from stimulus packages or tax breaks. It will come from brilliant minds fostered in classrooms and homes today. We’ve got to stabilize the foundation or the structure will continue to shake and fall.

Even if Gianna didn’t growl at the vet and act like a spaz on a leash, I would still get dog training lessons for her. They are good practice for owner and dog to develop structured communications.

So, I bought Amanda Growly Classes for her birthday.

You can see my predicament with delivering the message. It doesn’t read well.

Although I am a master of communication (by degree), I stumbled, “Happy Birthday, I got you dog training lessons! … for the dog, not you, but with you… They’re Growly Classes to help with her over-excitement… for adults, because she’s no spring chicken and neither are… you know how she doesn’t listen to you…  I mean, Happy Birthday!”

I got through the shaky delivery without finding myself in the dog house, thankfully.

The lesson package I purchased included a one-time home visit by renown trainer, author and overall badass dog whisperer, Deborah. I scheduled the home appointment with her the Saturday after Amanda’s birthday.

Deborah provided us with some homework by email, including reading a couple of articles about her dog training philosophy. I read them with great intensity as if I was preparing for a college final — only I hadn’t taken the class yet.

She also instructed us to check our gear and, of course, we didn’t have the right gear by her standards — wrong leash material, wrong harness. So, we bought a new leash. The harness would have to wait. I’m already in deep with the dog gear. I didn’t know I had to save for college for my dog, and there’s no student loan program to fall back on.

We were a little nervous about the meet-and-greet training at our house. Deborah has seen a lot of dogs and dog owners, and we wanted to be in the 95th percentile by her standards.

This required a lot of work on our end, sort of like cleaning for your visiting parent. We vacuumed, swept, straightened, put away and brushed the dog (of course), all so that Deborah could judge us competent, capable dog owners.

I turned on the TV and scattered the newspaper shortly before Deborah arrived so that it looked like we hadn’t prepared at all.

“Oh, sorry for the mess here,” I would say, leading her into our spotless home. Then Gianna would prance over and sit in front of me, raising a paw and balancing a treat on her nose that she had gotten herself and carried over to me to reward her with.

Knock, knock. Back to reality.

For a whisperer, Deborah was quite loud. She came in with a booming voice and made herself comfortable as she jumped into interviewing us about Gianna and our story so far. It’s an odd thing being interviewed in your own home, but I think we fared OK. She didn’t call the pound on us or refer us to a therapist, so that was a good start.

Amanda answered the initial line of questions and Deborah could sense (that’s what whisperers do, they sense) that Amanda had some anxiety. Her first command wasn’t to Gianna, but Amanda: “I hope you don’t take this offensively, but you need to take a breath and relax. The dog can sense you are nervous and channel it. If you’re calm, you’ll have more success with calming Gianna.”

It made sense and instilled a confidence that Deborah wouldn’t just help the dog, she would help us. Perhaps I did buy the dog training lessons for Amanda after all.

During the rest of the session, Deborah also earned my trust by swearing every so often. It made her more human and not some prissy, dog-obsessed “Best In Show” character.

After some initial success with Gianna, she said, “Look, Gianna isn’t doing all of this because she wants to please you. She wants a damn treat.”

I liked the straight talk. Deborah also talked about her dog’s bad habits and annoyances. Her stories helped ground our expectations for our dog. Gianna may be a cousin of Lassie, but she’s not going to tell us Little Timmy fell down the well unless there’s a treat involved.

We learned some attention games to help Gianna focus on us when distractions are present, and by the end of the hour we felt really good about our choice of trainer and the weeks ahead in Growly Class. Before Deborah left, we reviewed our gear for Deborah’s approval. Amanda bothered to get all three leashes and not just the one new leather leash we had bought.

They all failed.

“Six feet is too long for that dog and the leash is too thick for her weight. It’s overkill,” Deborah said.

Amanda and I looked at each other and said without speaking, “Jeez! Why didn’t you get the 4-foot leash?!”

We’d lost traction in our progress but recovered from our blame game to wish Deborah farewell.

Looking back, the best part of the home visit was that Gianna rocked it. She was totally attentive and didn’t growl or show aggression or over-anxiety despite the fact that Deborah was all over her case. In fact, Deborah complimented her for intelligence and train-ability. Gianna’s only fault was about halfway through the session when she stopped working, even with a treat in front of her, and rolled on her side to take break.

“She doesn’t have a strong work ethic,” Deborah said. “She’s a little lazy.”

I’ll take a lazy dog over a growly dog any day. Maybe Lazy Classes are cheaper.

We hosted a Top Gear and Kevin Bacon-themed birthday party last weekend at the Chaffee’s. The theme was inspired by Scott and Amanda’s favorite sources of entertainment, respectively.