Puppy bench enthusiast

Watching the World Go By (Or: How I Accidentally Trained My Dog to Become a Bench Enthusiast)

We are still working on the puppy being less reactive. By “less reactive” I mean ideally he would like to stop attempting to greet every individual leaf, blade of grass, and passing breeze like a long-lost friend.

To help with this, our trainer introduced a new game called “watching the world go by.”

The concept is simple. You go somewhere vaguely public—a park, a street, possibly an asylum depending on how the week’s been—find a bench, sit down for half an hour, and… watch things happen.

Every time the puppy notices something interesting (cars, dogs, children, a football match, small aircraft incidents—you know, the usual) without reacting, he gets a treat.

Simple. Calm. Almost peaceful.

The puppy, naturally, thinks this is the best idea anyone has ever had.

He gets roughly a sausage and a half for sitting still and staring vaguely into the middle distance like a tiny, slightly unhinged philosopher. The first time we tried it, he was confused. The second time, he was fully invested.

Unfortunately, while I believed I was training him to calmly observe the world…

I have in fact trained him to identify seating.

With remarkable accuracy.

Every bench we passed on the way out of the park was enthusiastically located, mounted, and presented to me as a business opportunity.

“Oh look,” his entire being says, “a bench. We could sit here. I could receive sausage. This seems like a good plan.”

I did not realise how many benches there are in a park.

There are so many benches.

Also:

• Why is there an outdoor rowing machine?
  
• Why does it have a seat?
  
• Why had I never noticed it before?
  

The puppy noticed it. Immediately.

Because it has a seat.

And therefore, obviously, it is a sausage station.

We have also discovered that the following may or may not qualify as acceptable seating (depending entirely on the puppy’s interpretation):

• Fallen trees
  
• Low walls
  
• Anything vaguely horizontal
  
• Bins (jury’s still out, but he’s optimistic)
  

So on the plus side, the puppy is now extremely observant and excellent at environmental scanning.

On the downside, it now takes approximately three to five working days to walk around a park.