When Dog was a puppy, we took him to obedience training. Most dog owners in this town use the same trainer, so virtually every dog in town responds to the same hand signals and voice commands. If you stand in Market Square and make a biceps-curling motion with your right arm, 80% of the dogs within visual range (and both of my children) will sit. It’s kind of magical.

The trainer espouses the “either you lead, or the dog leads” philosophy, and she sets a number of ground rules that are meant to show the dog that the human is boss. For example, the dog is not supposed to eat until after the people are finished, and the dog has to sit and wait politely while you fill his dish, until you tell him, “Okay.”

As you can imagine, it’s pretty hard to train a puppy to wait in most circumstances, but at dinner time they tend to be especially inattentive. Our trainer advised us that if the dog got up to eat before hearing the command, we should take his dish, ostentatiously pour the contents back into the dog food bag, and then walk away without a backward glance.

Well. If you every want to see an expression on a dog’s face that unambiguously indicates “What the hell, woman?” try this. It’s hilarious, and also effective. Our dog learned very quickly to sit and wait until we told him it was okay to eat.

But we couldn’t leave well enough alone. We started getting cute with the trick. We’d put the dog into a “wait” and then talk to him for a few minutes using words that sounded very much like “Okay” to tease him. “Oh no, oh well, oh hey…okay!” Then we changed it up by giving him a kiss on the head with the “Okay.” Eventually the kiss became the proxy signal, and then we teased him a bit more by kneeling down and giving him a few minutes of pats and caresses before getting to the final kiss.

Eventually, the kids came along and we didn’t have as much time for the dog as we once did, so the pre-feeding petting ritual was a twice-daily chance to lavish some affection on him. I suppose that Dog has caught on to this, because lately when I tell him to sit and wait and then give him a few pats and a kiss and then tell him “okay,” he refuses to eat until we spend a few more minutes petting him. He actually holds out for more love.

I know the trainer would tell me to dump all his food back in the bag and walk away, but I can’t. It’s a total power play, but you would have to have a heart of stone to resist this.

Dog Portrait