Training. But for Whom

Obedience School, Week Five

That sentence alone should come with a disclaimer.

Captain and Morgan, my sibling golden retrievers, are what the experts would diplomatically call “a lot” and what I would call a two-part natural disaster with exceptional fur. I knew raising littermates wouldn’t be simple. But I’d done this before. I was seasoned. Prepared. Had books, charts, a plan with actual columns.

The Boyz reviewed the plan and peed on it.

So I hired a professional. Certified, experienced, the kind of trainer who walks into a first session with the quiet confidence of a man who has seen things and handled them. He probably had. Just not these particular things. He still had hope back then. It was touching.

Week one was genuinely encouraging. Sit, stay, come. The Boyz were executing. I beamed like a man who had cracked a code. The trainer nodded with what I now understand was professional courtesy. “Smart dogs,” he said. I chose to believe him.

Week two is when the philosophy started.

Something shifted between sessions. Whether it was a moon phase or the moment they each realized independent thought was an option, I cannot say. What I can say is that we went from one shared brain between them to two fully autonomous worldviews, and neither one particularly aligned with the curriculum.

Morgan is a diplomat and a negotiator and will work earnestly for food. Hold up a treat and he is sitting, lying down, making prolonged eye contact, prepared to confess to things he didn’t do. That dog would show up for jury duty if someone confirmed there’d be snacks.

Captain is a different conversation entirely. Captain is ideologically opposed to compliance he doesn’t personally endorse. He’s not defiant exactly. He just requires context. He wants to understand the philosophical underpinning of “heel” before he commits. He’ll consider “down” if the conditions are right and his interior life supports it at that particular moment. Otherwise he’s on his side in the grass, staring at something only he can see, and when you say “come” he makes direct eye contact and walks the other direction with the serene confidence of a man who has thought this through.

The trainer has been patient in ways that deserve formal recognition. He has tried voice modulation, body language adjustments, specialized equipment, standard rewards and what he calls high-value rewards, which turned out to be dehydrated liver. Morgan received this news like a lottery winner. Captain sniffed the liver, considered it briefly, and went to eat a stick.

There was a moment last week when the trainer stopped mid-session, looked at a point somewhere past the treeline, and exhaled slowly. Adjusted his hat. Rubbed his temples. Said, quietly, “They’re very individual.”

Trainer code. I’ve learned to translate.

We persist anyway. The Boyz are learning things, in their own sideways, unhurried fashion. I’m learning too, mostly about the nature of surrender. About how you can love something completely and still have zero leverage over it. About how a dog who will never reliably roll over on cue will absolutely roll in something deceased the moment your attention drifts.

They are not going to be perfectly trained. They are, however, perfectly themselves. And I’m learning, one session at a time, to meet these beautiful idiots where they actually are rather than where my charts suggested they’d be by now.

If the trainer makes it through this, someone should nominate him for something.

A cold Diet Sundrop at minimum.