"So which of the kids menu items would you recommend?"
The hostess stared at me blankly, then turned the menu over, pointing to the kids menu, starting to slowly read off the options to me. I felt like a heel - she didn't speak English.
I wracked my brain for pieces of Spanish I learned twenty years ago to ask her the same thing. I had a few phrases floating around in there, where is the bathroom? and eventually settled on "Lo siento" because I was sorry I couldn't ask her more competently.
I had spent two years learning Spanish and it availed me nothing in the moment I needed it.
It is a terribly common thing for people to gasp when I tell them my board and train program is three whole weeks. That is forever! I have never, in my fourteen years of training, heard somebody say "Wow! That's really fast to learn the entirety of the obedience language!"
It is fast. It's very fast. In fact, I genuinely hate how fast it is.
I am currently learning traditional Koehler Novice training, which is a twelve week program. I am still struggling to keep up with the level of detail, nuance, and precision that it embodies. The places where I'm struggling are entirely because after years of trying to adhere to an impossibly short period to educate a dog in, I am going too fast.
FASTER! FASTER!
Three weeks? But that other trainer only takes two weeks! One week!
I imagine by the end of those "board and trains" the dogs can execute some commands while on their ecollars and in a controlled environment. But can they ask about the kid's menu in Spanish?
Lo siento.
Koehler appeals to me for the same reason that Tai Chi appeals to me. It is thorough. It is adaptable. It is based on the repeated application of physical movement in such a manner that it becomes second nature.
Which is exactly what you need in the heat of the moment, in the real world.
It is HARD. I won't lie about that. But it's WORTH IT.
I mourn a world where I can actually talk people into working at this long enough to become really, genuinely proficient at it.
A world where people hear FASTER, FASTER and know what it really means. WORSE! WORSE!
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