I once heard about a management course in which the participants had to train a chicken to perform a particular task. Clearly, raising your voice and pointing out “If I’ve told you once I’ve told you a thousand times how to do it” is not going to achieve the desired objective. This week I needed to put this understanding into practice.
We moved into a new house last Friday currently “owned” by a young – about 18months old – Schnauzer named Molly. We know she goes for a run at a local park every evening about 4pm and so, being very diligent and responsible, we prepared to take her for her daily run. Attempting to put on her harness and lead turned into a rather complicated exercise. She kept running away from us and when we eventually managed to get a hold on her to put it on she nipped at my face. She was clearly distressed and so I sat with her for a while patting and calming her down. Once she settled down she was very happy to get into the car and go for a drive to the park.
I, on the other hand, was dripping blood from the bite on my nose and being concerned I was going to end up with a bruise across my face which would make me look like I’d “walked into a door” I spent the rest of the evening wearing an ice pack.
What we hadn’t taken into account was, from Molly’s perspective, a bunch of aliens had taken over her house. What she experienced was: very early that morning (they had to be at the airport by 6am) her owners had left her. A few hours later some strangers arrived with lots of boxes and took over the house. Fortunately, there was a four legged member of the new inhabitants who Molly did get on with very well but these two legged ones were a real challenge. They didn’t know how to talk to her, what her signals were etc. We worked out the way to get Molly to come and get her harness on was to stand by the front door ready to leave but on our first night we hadn’t got that message.
Now, a few days into our new residency we’re getting on quite well – it just took a while for her to train us 🙂