Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

AMY TAN
afraid I never did much training with him, and naughty Poochini had
already chewed off the spines of some of Harry’s collection of first-
edition books.
“You must inform your clients, gently but firmly,” he often told his
disciples at lectures. “Dogs are not people in fur coats. No, indeed.
They don’t speak in the future tense. They live in the moment. And
unlike you and me, they’ll drink from a toilet. Lucky for us, they
are perfect specimens of how operant conditioning and positive re­
inforcement work, and beautifully so if only we learn how to ap­
ply the principles properly. Their human handlers have got to be
absolutely objective about what motivates their poochies—so quash
their tendency to ascribe Muggum-wuggum’s barking, growling, and
counter-surfing to anthropomorphic motives such as pride, revenge,
sneakiness, or betrayal. That’s how we speak of our ex-wives, former
lovers, and politicians. Remember that Canis lupus familiaris is
driven by his own jollies, which are usually harmless to others but
can be detrimental to white carpets and Italian shoes. The fact is,
dogs mark territory and they masticate. And if dogs resemble Homo
erectus in any respect, it is in those traits of the poorly socialized
male. Both do what pleases them: they scratch their balls, sleep on
the sofa, and sniff any crotch that comes their way. And you, the
brilliant dog trainer, must train the owners—that’s right, those
barely evolved humans holding those rolled-up newspapers in hand
like cavemen’s cudgels—you must train the humans to show the
dogs what lucky canines prefer to do other than nip and yowl, or
use the leather sofa as a chew toy. Ah! ‘Prefer’ is the operative word,
isn’t it?...”
Harry Bailley believed in training people early, before they could
inflict any lasting damage upon the wee and impressionable pooches.
“Puppy classes!” he would exhort on his television show. “A great
equalizer, the perfect socializer, far better than those bore-and-snore
book clubs that are all the rage on the other channel. Doggie classes,
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