``It is worthwhile, then, to describe part of one of the language
games of training, namely retrieving, in the hope of discovering
what sort of moral cosmos is revealed thereby.  I am going to
begin with William Koehler's work, not only because Koehler
is one of the great trainers in a tradition whose locus classicus is
Xenophon's Cynegeticus, but because his method is the most formally
complete one I know.  That formal completeness, together with his
muscularly insisted-on freedom to talk anthropomorphically,
gives his theory - his theology, if you like - a clarity and
comprehensiveness rarely found since the collapse of the world
views that made obedience a part of the human virtu.  We may
read Spenser with pleasure, but how do we imagine ourselves
obeying anyone or anything the way his knights do?

``Koehler holds, against the skepticism that in the last two
centuries has become largely synonymous with philosophy, that
getting absolute obedience from a dog - and he means absolute -
confers nobility, character and dignity on the dog.  Dignity?
This is such a repugnant notion in a world still reeling from
the shock of the Third Reich that his books and his methods
have had to survive legal challanges from animal lovers
confused about what cruelty is.  Now, even though the courtroom
battles have been largely won, a serious segment of the dog-oriented
population can't say his name without attaching to it epithets
like devil or monster ...

``A sharp, two-handed, decisive upward jerk on the training lead,
performed as impersonally as possible, is a correction.  Irritable
nagging, coaxing tugs and jerks are punishments, as beatings are.
The self-esteem of the handler gets into them, with the result
that, by obeying or failing to obey, the dog takes on responsibility
for the handler's emotional well-being, as we can make children
or spouses responsible for our souls.  With some dogs, managaing to
exact a pretense of such obedience is as dangerous as it was for Lear
with Goneril and Regan.

``Corrections, in Koehler's vision, are administered out of a
deep respect for the dog's moral and intellectual capacities.
Punishments on the other hand are part - and this matters
tremendously - of the demeaning repertoire of so-called trainers
who propose babbling at the dog as sweetly as possible.  Cooing,
``Oh my goodness, what a GOOOOOOD doggie!'' as one training
manual actually suggests, is, for Koehler, profoundly cruel,
dishonest and dishonorable, the flip side of a beating.  Even
moderately self-respecting humans grab their hats when addressed
in such a fashion.  And although dogs are on the whole surprisingly
tolerant of our specious doctrines, many of them will, like Cordelia,
attempt through precisely administered bites to turn the rhetoric.
It is usually a diet of syrup, bribery and choked rhetoric,
rather than physical abuse, that creates character disorders such
as viciousness and megalomania in a dog.  Biting is a response
to incoherent authority.

``It is difficult to see this through the sprawled and tangled
rhetoric of the informal training that most pets perceive, but
highly trained animals have sufficient control to make the point
with sometimes telling cogency.  I am thinking now of Hans, a
Doberman, one of the most talented and competent dogs I have ever
known.  His response to the command ``Fetch!'' was so instantaneous,
accurate and powerful that it sometimes seemed the air must
ignite as he leaped forward from his handler's side.  Among his
more spectacular performances was the Drop-on-Recall.  In this
exercise, as performed in competition, the handler tells the dog
to stay and moves some thirty to fifty feed away, then turns
and, facing the dog, commands, ``Joe, Come!''  When the dog has
traveled some distance, usually about halfway, a drop command or
signal is given, and the dog must drop to the ground and wait for
a new recall command.  With Hans it was generally necessary to say,
``Hans, Come Down!'' in one breath, for by the time the handler
had finished pronouncing come, Hans was already halfway home. And
it was risky to perform the exercise on blacktop, since Hans responded
to the command by simply flattening out in midair and sliding,
accepting like a base runner the ripping of skin and joints the
game of being a great dog entailed.

``Even insensitive and inexperienced observers were impressed by
this dog.  But unfortunately, it was possible to be moved by Hans
without understanding that you might have to earn the right to
say ``Hans, Down!''  A person called Uncle Albert accompanied
Hans and his handler one day.  Uncle Albert decided it would be
nice to have Hans do his ``tricks'' for Uncle in the absence
of his handler, who had gone off to fetch some training equipment.
Uncle Albert held out a liver snap to Hans while saying,  ``Come
to Uncle,'' or some such folderol.  Hans looked at him for a moment
in disbelief and then, with a stiffness expressive of deep disgust,
got up and walked slowly away, thus disobeying both the Stay command
his handler had given and Uncle Albert's phoney recall command.
His handler, returning in time to witness disobedience of a sort
that hadn't been possible for years, refrained from correcting
Hans.  (The complications of that moment require separate consideration.)

``Bill Koehler puts the bribers and coaxers together under one
heading - humaniacs. (To be distinguished sharply from
people who devote themselves to the prevention of genuine
cruelty.)  Koehler calls humaniacs

   ``kindly'' people, most of whom take after a ``kindly'' parent
   or an aunt ``who had a dog that was almost human and understood
   every word that was said without being trained.''  They often
   operate individually but inflict their greatest cruelties
   when amalgamated into societies.  They easily recognize
   each other by their smiles, which are as dried syrup on
   yesterday's pancakes.  Their most noticeable habits are
   wincing when dogs are corrected effectively and smiling
   approvingly when a dozen ineffective corrections seem only
   to fire a dog's maniacal attempts to hurl his anatomy within
   reach of another dog that could maim him in one brief
   skirmish.  Their common calls are ``I couldn't do that -
   I couldn't do that,'' and ``Oh myyyyy - oh myyyyy.'' They
   have no mating call.  This is easily understood.''

Vicki Hearne,  ``Adam's Task: Calling Animals by Name''  Knopf 1986.

``How to say Fetch''  (originally in Raritan v3 n2 1983)