Training Eddie, Raising Kids

Here is a piece I wrote for my newspaper. I thought it was funny, but some of the commenters thought I was inhumane for crating the dog while we run errands and for bringing the electric fence into the house. No sense of humor? Or am I inhumane?

Training Eddie

About a month ago we brought home a 2-year-old Walker coonhound named Eddie from the Quaker Hill Humane Society. Eddie is a lovely dog with a sweet personality, but he has spent much of his young life being shunted from shelter to shelter and has never been properly trained.

Having just escorted our spirited third child through “the terrible twos” and half way into “the turbulent threes” I have a few thoughts on the differences between training a dog and training a child (and yes, I realize we do not TRAIN our children, we RAISE and NURTURE them, but please bear with me).

I have always been against bribing the kids. This doesn’t mean that I have not on occasion stooped to saying, for example, “Get in the car right now and I’ll give you a bag of popcorn,” but these instances are few and far between, and most often uttered in moments of extreme duress – late picking up my mother at the airport, or late for a sibling’s very expensive horseback riding lesson. And I always feel slimy afterwards.

But training the dog is a whole different thing. Dog training is nothing but bribery:

“Come over here, Eddie, and I’ll give you a hot dog.”

“Get off the new sofa and I’ll give you a heart-shaped organic dog treat.”

“Get into your crate and I’ll give you a pig’s ear.”

I was at first reluctant to partake in these blatantly shameless and corrupt enticements. My parenting instinct was to reason with the dog, make him see how it was in his best interest to come down off the new sofa, make him WANT to get down off the sofa from the center of his being. Let him learn for himself how his dog nails were ruining the upholstery and greatly reducing overall quality of this fine piece of furniture.

I do this with the kids every day: “Stop jumping on the couch. You’re wrecking it!”

Never works. The couch is just too cushy and fun. But Eddie gets off in a hot second whenever the treats come out.

I worry that all of this bribery will stunt his emerging sense of ethics. How will he truly know right from wrong when his entire moral structure is based solely on the presence or absence of a kosher beef frankfurter?

Oh, Eddie, what are we doing to you?

I especially appreciate Eddie’s dog self whenever its time to, say, go to the grocery store. 2-year-olds are the worst grocery shoppers. You have to force them into their jackets and shoes, stuff them into their car seats, and keep a constant eye on them in the store to make sure they are not tossing candy and cinnamon buns into the back of the cart from their high perch in the front.

Eddie is so much easier. You simply bribe him into his crate with a pig’s ear, where he will munch and take a little nap until his people return. Easy as pie.

Another remarkable fact: Eddie can go outside and play in the yard ALL BY HIMSELF. He does not leave the yard (or at least not very often – we’re still working on this), because crossing the border to the neighbor’s yard results in an electric shock (or, as the invisible fence people so comfortingly state it, a STATIC CORRECTION) from a wire buried two inches under the grass.
There is simply no equivalent for the kids. You have to watch them every second.

And if you REALLY don’t want the dog on the sofa, and you don’t want him chewing the toys, and you feel like you are going out of your mind because you are trying to home school your three kids, but you are getting nothing done because you are spending all of your time making sure the dog doesn’t nip the boys’ butts, well – you simply demand that your handy husband splice into that wire outside and run it through the middle of the house. And when he tells you it will take three or four days to figure out a path for the wire under the floorboards and through the joists, you count to ten and growl, “No! No! We will run the wire in through the window and tape it to the floor. RIGHT NOW!”

And then you head out to T.J. Maxx to purchase a few funky throw rugs to cover the unsightly wire snaking across the floorboards.

Eddie now receives a static correction whenever he tries to venture into the living room or the playroom. One little shock and he never tries it again. My life is like a dream!

I really could have used this device when Simon and Ben were going through their bookcase-climbing phase. And their kitchen-counter-scaling phase. And their banister-sliding phase. And their table-jumping phase….

Tipping the balance to unschool

It happened yesterday. The balance in our homeschool finally tipped from "eclectic schooling" to "unschooling." And, man, did it feel good.

After two days of trying to force the workbooks -- math, writing and Draw Write Now being the last vestiges of the crop from early September -- I finally gave in, gave up, gave over. At least for the moment, we are unschooling. Though I tend to shy away from labels, this on does seem to fit.

I think the addition of a 2-year-old dog to the mix is what finally did it. Between walking the dog, letting him in and out, keeping him away from the boys (who love him, but get him riled up), and stopping him from chewing every hat, mitten and sock in the house, all semblance of structure eroded.



When Brian came home from work Tuesday afternoon, I was fit to be tied. "This dog needs to be contained!" I yelled. (Actually, that's not what I yelled at all. It was more like, "We need to keep this fucking dog out of the playroom and living room or he's going back to the pound, so help me!").

Whatever it was I said - I only remember a day full of yelling -- it worked. I don't get easily worked up. Brian saw I was a mess. He said he could splice into the electric fence outside and run a wire through the middle of the house. But it would take a few days to figure out the path the wire would need to take underneath the floorboards and through the joists. (Brian has a lively working knowledge of the innards of the house, which I lack entirely.)

"Oh, no, no, NO!" I said. "You run the wire through the window and tape it to the freaking floor!"

Bless him, he did it. He brought the wire in through some duct work in the basement and taped it across the playroom and living room floors. It almost killed him aesthetically, but he did it.

So yesterday we had a dog-free day in half of the house, which made all the difference. We love the dog, lovely Eddie, but he simply cannot have run of the house.

The kids were so thrilled to be able to play with their toys in the living room and play room without fear of Eddie stealing them and chewing them that they more or less played all day. All three together. Not wanting to disturb that magic, I let them.

They built a city for the guinea pigs while I made whole wheat anadama bread. We all played a fractions game from Family Math (best book I've bought this year, which is really saying something). They created a town for their stuffed animals in the living room complete with houses, stores and a library. I went online to research unschooling on Sandra Dodd's wonderful site. I read to them from American Tall Tales while they painted and drew. We went apple picking in the afternoon (last time this season) and carved pumpkins when we got home. And Brian and Nell took Eddie to obedience school.



It was a great day. I did not feel like my head was going into orbit at sundown.

It seems to be a question of control and trust. Do I trust the kids have some (or all) control of their learning, or do I not. I am slowly giving over. I can plainly see that their instinct is to learn. Left to their own devices, they learn beautifully. And get along beautifully. Which is itself perhaps the best lesson of all.

Eddie

I haven't written here for a while. Trying to adjust my schedule to our newest family addition: Eddie the 2-year old Treeing Walker Coon Hound. He has been with us for two weeks now and is just starting to setting into our family.

We found Eddie at the Humane Society. Nell had been begging us for a dog, and one afternoon Brian and I cracked and we made a family trip to the dog pound. We stayed for about an hour and didn't see any A-Ha! dogs. Just as we were about to leave, one of the workers walked in with Eddie and for Brian and me it was love at first sight. Nell had set her sights on a smaller dog, but once she saw we were serious about Eddie, she quickly changed her tune.

Eddie is about 50 pounds and he looks like a beagle on stilts. He has the same coloring and ears as a beagle, but longer legs. Brian calls him a beagle and a half. As I write this he is bouncing around the living room desperate for a romp and a play.

The day we brought him home he was painfully shy. He cowered in the basement and wouldn't eat. He had been at a different Humane Society location for months before coming to ours 2 weeks ago. Coon Hounds need lots of exercise, and he clearly wasn't getting enough. He was frightened and freaked out and depressed.

He gets tons of exercise here, which has endeared us to him forever I think. I take him for long runs early in the morning, the kids and I walk him around the block after breakfast, Brian plays with him in the yard in the afternoons, and Nell and one of us takes him around the block again in the evenings. If he would only stay inside the electric fence, his outdoor life would be complete.

I like having a running partner during my dark early morning runs. Eddie is mostly good on the leash, but he does get easily spooked. I tried to take him under the I95 bridge on River Road yesterday and he nearly had a heart attack with the trucks and police cars roaring overhead. He pulled me all the way home, Gentle Leader collar be damned.

I am running a 50K on Sunday and it's tempting to take him along. I bet he could make it, especially at the pace I am planning to run. I wonder what the dog policy is for trail races? I've never seen a dog in a long race, but that may be because most dogs can't run that far. Eddie could! ("Treeing Walker Coon Hounds will run tirelessly in pursuit of game." I have no trouble believing that.)

Once we teach the boys not to act so bizarrely around Eddie, we'll be home free. They never pass up an opportunity to freak the dog out. They dance around him, fake wrestle, poke him, anything to get a rise out of him. Makes me a little nuts. Eddie too, I'd imagine. I give it another week until the novelty wears off.

But Eddie is a great homeschool project for Nell. She goes with Brian to his obedience classes and is learning how to handle him beautifully. She adores Eddie and the feeling is clearly mutual.