River Song Takes Her Parents To Training

After two weeks living with my family I came to realize something:  These humans needed training.  I told Pocket how surprised I was that Foley had not had her parents professionally trained.  Pocket told me Foley had her own unconventional training methods but she was afraid without Foley’s reinforcement they had fallen behind on their training.

Human training is very basic and very easy.  You want them to give you treats for things that you would do naturally.  Like sit.  Everyone sits.  When we get tired we can’t help it.  But, when working with another cooperative human, we can actually train our humans to give us treats when we do this very natural act.

The first thing you have to do to train your human is not listen to a word they say.  If you act like you have no idea what they are saying not only will they enroll in training classes, they will pay for it.  My parents took me for training at a Petco.  But I had to let them know that I was in control from the start of this adventure, so the first thing I did  as part of my “training” was take a crap on the floor.

And of course my humans cleaned it, which Foley taught me is the essence of the dog “master”, parent “pet” relationship.   They buy us food and prepare it for us and when we digest it and leave crap on the floor they clean it.  So crapping on the floor and having them clean it establishes my dominance before the training begins.

Also crapping is a very exhausting act.  That is why most humans do it sitting down.  Even after doing it sometimes they get off the toilet and say “Wow, I need to sit down.”  And if they are in one of those countries that you have to squat, well a human is sitting for a good hour after that.  So, after crapping, the first thing I want to do is sit, and the first command I get after crapping is “sit”, which I was about to do anyway from exhaustion, and I got a treat.

Then we keep doing it, and I keep sitting because if there is one thing about sitting it’s exhausting and sometimes after sitting a dozen times you really need to sit.  After sit is down, which seems like a good idea when the trainer said it.  Yes, thank you, if you don’t mind, I would like to lie down for awhile, and then I got a treat.

Then the trainer gave my parents the treats and this is where the important part happened.  They started giving me treats for basically getting tired and falling down.  And then they did it so much all my blood rushed to my digestive tract which made me dizzy and I started falling down, and getting treats.

There were some other things we went over.  There was stay, which means do absolutely nothing and get paid for it.  At first I got confused because I thought I just got elected to Congress but once I got the hang of doing nothing I got lots of treats.

There was one thing I didn’t like called “leave it.”  I don’t know why the trainer had us do that.  I thought the entire point was getting my parents to give me treats.  Leave it didn’t have them give me treats.  But then I realized that this was just an exercise in making my parents think they were in control.  But I am still too stubborn to “leave it,” so I just walked away from it and barked at some people.  

We still have some classes to go to but Mommy and Daddy are learning.  Now I just have to learn how to make them give me a treat for napping.