I don’t know if the rest of you have this issue, but it has been very difficult to teach Gretel the concept of ‘down’, I think because she’s so low to the ground anyway. We got ’sit’ right away, we got ’stay’ without a problem, she does ’spin’ and ‘fetch’ and ‘meerkat’ and ‘high five’, but ‘down’ … well. Not so much.

I had dogs in obedience for 4-H as a kid — farm dogs, mostly shepherd mixes — and back then, we all used choke collars because the group leader said we should and we didn’t know any better. I wince a little thinking about all of us kids with our long-suffering family dogs at the beginning of the training season, yanking on their chains. Now, I would never in a million gazillion years put a training collar on Gretel, but she’s my first “little dog”, so it’s been a bit trial-and-error. I got a clicker and a couple of clicker books, and for the past two months I’ve been doing that ’shaping’ thing where if I look up and she happens to be lying down, I click her and say “Good down” and throw her a Cheezit or a piece of popcorn or whatever’s handy.

Well. Today I was sitting in the living room and she was sitting next to me on the sofa, and I figured I’d just try it, so I said, “Gretel, down,” and she looked at me for a second and then lay down. So we had an “oh my God you’re such a good dog” moment and I cracked out the freeze-dried liver snaps, and then we went crazy running into all the other rooms in the house and practicing everywhere. And she’s got it, she’s really got it, there’s that look in her eye that says she recognizes the word and she knows what it means and what she’s supposed to do, and I’m just unreasonably happy about it.

Unlike any other dog I’ve ever had, this one keeps making me realize over and over that if she doesn’t do what I tell her to, it’s because I’m not giving clear instructions. And the minute I am clear, she’s so happy and proud of herself that I just fall a little harder in love with her.

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