In Good Company: Training The Family
...It’s the owners who come in for some reprimanding. ‘Oh do move your dog away from that nasty puddle, dear,’ one handler was admonished. She couldn’t have looked guiltier if she had left the watery message herself.
Enid Blackburn wrote this article years ago, inspired by a then-popular TV programme.
Have you been watching the effervescent Barbara barking out canine commands on BBC television’s Training Dogs the Woodhouse Way? Doggy-love oozes from her tongue as she bounds around laughing and panting at her learner puppies to ‘Come – sit – stay.’
It’s the owners who come in for some reprimanding. ‘Oh do move your dog away from that nasty puddle, dear,’ one handler was admonished. She couldn’t have looked guiltier if she had left the watery message herself.
The healthy looking 70-year-old Mrs Woodhouse was quoted recently as saying she is in fact never ill. She believes in freezing germs to death. If you want to cure flu her advice is to get out in the cold, which viruses detest, and they will immediately depart to pounce on the cosseted and cosy, in their sick beds.
One can imagine her on a bitingly frosty morn, ensconced on a breezy hill top bringing her germs gloriously to heel: ‘Go – now – at once! There’s a good virus.’
Although I applaud her efforts, personally I believe training animals is easy. I am living in hope that one day some terrifically overpowering personality will give us a weekly session or two on how to train and control adolescents. Just simple commands for a start, like ‘Sit, stay, turn it down.’
I would love to see mine react as docilely as our dog to my suggestions; indeed I am prone to contemplating more and more of late what quality my life may hold if, say, I had chosen to have five dogs instead of five children?
No more brain-rotting breakfast quizzes: ‘Where’s my biology book, skirt, comb, games kit and bus fare?’ ‘Why don’t we get Swiss cereal anymore?’ ‘Because this week you had new socks and luxuries like new bras, pants and socks have to come from somewhere.’ And of course dogs never interrupt your pep talk on economy cuts with irrelevant questions like ‘How much did your hair cut cost then?’ Or spend hours on the phone oohing and ahing over friends’ new outfits, and then sit gazing despondently at ‘old’ shoes that cost twenty quid last Saturday, before demanding pathetically ‘Mum, why are we so poor?’
At least dogs would not cry heart-brokenly on teacher’s shoulder, like my youngest did recently, sobbing unmercifully because ‘My mum’s just made me a new suit and – sniff – sob – I don’t like it.’
I have this cruel streak you see. I sit up all night sewing expensive velvet into a trouser-suit, in order to enjoy the look of complete loathing on daughter’s face when she tries it on the morning after.
I am just as heartless in the kitchen. Instead of giving them their favourite meat and two veg, day after day, I go to sadistic lengths preparing Italian pasta with rich nutritious sauce, all for the pleasure of seeing the suicidal expressions when I explain that, no, Lasagne is not garnished with Yorkshire pud.
There is no limit to my meanness. How can I suggest my teenagers wear the same disco outfit twice! I mean, who wants to dance opposite someone in the blinding semi-darkness wearing the same trousers one wore last Saturday? ‘Why can’t a woman be more like a man?’ asks Henry Higgins. But why can’t children be like dogs, say I?
Happy footnote: My 15-year-old pet dog was on his last legs seven days ago. Thankfully next door’s bitch saved his life. She came into season at the weekend – he looks ten years younger already!
