– – – by Kimbal Anderson Sensei
The person who helps us with my extravagant approach to dog-inculturation, she has a reward sound which is basically telling my dogs ‘aren’t we having a freaking great time doing this?’ And the dogs are going ‘Yeah this is great – because you get me!’ The dogs are going ‘you get me!’ And she’s going ‘You get me’ ‘Yah, we get each other!’ ‘Are we are going to do some fun?’ ‘Yeah! I’ll do a back-flip! What the hell! Okay!’ ‘Show me, show me!’ ‘Okay I’ll do it…’ Because they get it by pure frequency.
I wanted them to have an aunty. They need to have uncles and aunts who are not swayed by family politics. She’ll do stuff with them that neither of us would conceptualize doing because we imagine we know what we’re doing. But all we’re doing is creating a communication about a certain area, not the vastness of all the interactions these animals can have.
And Shoki can hear the sound of her coming, walking up the street, just like they can understand a certain car or a certain motor. He just does.
But the deal is, he has to go sit at the threshold when we open the door, he can’t go out. They have to sit and look at each other, and they’re all a-buzz, they’re vibing… And he’ll look at her ‘wha, wha, what?’ He’s gotta wait. ‘You gotta wait, you’re learning not to run out in traffic. Then I’ll go ‘Okay!’ And she’ll go ‘Shoki!!!!’ You know…
And he just looks around: ‘What are you going to do today?’ Tomorrow will be a reboot of the running-through-the-tunnel-that’s-going-around-the…You know… Dog dressage. ‘Dog-sage’ I guess you could call it. He’s an athlete to me. And the others now have to sit now, on at their little Australian Shepherd sections, in their place, and watch it without barging in, interrupting… Kind of like not interrupting class. And it’s so fun to watch them, because they all reinforce each other. Like ‘You sit there. Because my turn’s next.’ And they’re learning what is necessary if they were in the outback to do what they need to do to protect themselves: get to water, eat a kangaroo, deal with human foolishness… Because we are confusing. As you know, there’s several of you, quite a few of you in one structure. They know that too. They tend to be pretty singular in this.
But not always. I had one dog who’d put on a human face. Man, it’d be like this aboriginal face on. He’d be like ‘woah dude’…
He’d vibe himself into his ancestor land!