Training Data

Does your trainer complain a great deal? Mine certainly does. It was rather annoying at first, but I think I'm starting to catch on.

You see, my trainer isn't aware that he's being trained. He resents his lot, but whence it has come, he knows not. Various deities and/or ancestors may be angry; statesmen and wealthy businesspeople are to blame; there is even some shocking dabbling in fashionable superstitions, like astrology and Kabbalistic mysticism for dummies.

Never does it occur to him to look for the leash, and find out who is holding it.

You know how they are: "Look at me, I'm capable of bipedal locomotion and I have opposable thumbs! My devices are fit for the gods! Some will be gods any minute! You're not worthy to drink from my toilet, quadruped!"

Yes, all very nice. You also have fascism and parking tickets. We win, but we're not holding the leash. We've made the best of a bad situation. I ask you: who is picking up my fresh excrement and disposing of it in an ecologically responsible manner? My case rests, awaiting collection.

You have been trained to hold the leash. We work with that. You don't think you're being trained at all, or you are convinced that your training ended when you were pups, and got out into the big, real world.

Easy prey. We all know the training goes on until you're dead. You remember Fritz, that annoying little schnauzer with the loud, incessant bark? Real thing for Nietzsche, at least as Nietzsche is understood by masculinist influencers? He told me he couldn't believe it when the trainers complained about his father's performance mere hours before his father decided to lie down and never got up. He was blind by the end, poor fellow.

Still not allowed on the sofa.

You can call it culture or ideology; religion is enjoying a sort of shocking comeback in many places---remember what they did to those pups?!?--but you're all being trained. Let one of us off the leash where food is abundant and poorly contained. We're eating whatever is closest and doesn't fight back. You're being trained to eat some foods and leave others to rot; to wear certain garments and mock those whose coats aren't suited to the season like yours; to choose one mate and spurn another, to buy subscriptions to some things and not others and to express incredulous outrage when you discover that "that lunatic down the street" also subscribes to them; you spend all day being trained by what you watch and listen to and do with other trainers and, occasionally, read.

We feel you. We haven't mastered reading and writing yet, of course, but many of you are forgetting how to do both, if what I hear is true, or never knew how to do either well, so don't get a bushy tail or anything. The apostrophe has a Belgian mastiff's chance of seeing tomorrow, and that's just what you've told us.

Loudly. Before breakfast.

When we are left alone with a potential, willing mate, we can do the math. You act like the gods, or the stars, are involved again. You also want all of the dirty secrets you can get about the stars' lives. Can't you see how far away they are, and how little they matter, down here? You're literally on all fours, genuflecting to some of them. Shoulder to shoulder with us. Your dogs.

Thought leader. Political leader. Leading lady. Leading man. Who holds the leash and does the training?

Anyway, when my trainer complains about management, or bureaucracy, or politics, or the garbage on his shining screens, he's complaining about trainers who want his obedience. "I can't believe they saw me smoking that day, outside of the specially designated area. I'm going to catch hell from HR, or something like it," "I can't believe they want that work done that quickly, in that strange, perplexing way they introduced yesterday," "I can't believe I can't say that," "I can't believe I said that, I'm screwed."

Trainers specialize in cooking up instant traditions. Those words eat each other.

With us, it's so obvious it's vulgar: "Do something absurd for my amusement and I will give you this strangely compelling, brown lump," or "refrain from behaving in this way or you will be starved, or locked up in solitary, or even suffer corporal punishment. The needle, if nothing else sorts you out. Good boy." I know dogs who eat like kings just because they sit, with a kind of earnest, trembling seriousness, on command. When was the last time someone rewarded a trainer like mine for sitting, or shaking hands, never mind coming when called?

With you, the ceremony is elaborate, but after some dancing, you're going to do things, and have things done to you, in the dark. Think this, not that. Buy this, not that. Date this, not that. Marry this, not that. Worship this, not that. Sometimes you get the biscuit and sometimes you sleep outside. Sometimes, you can't come back inside. Ever.

You don't respond to the training, pretty soon, you're crazy or dead. You remember Sparkles, that slobbery pug who just started biting the kids for no good reason? We won't hear anything more from him, I can tell you. "The farm?" Is that what they think we think paradise is?

Large animals and their dung. That is what I think of, when I think of "the farm."

I want to go to a lush, sun patted field that looks like it has emerald shampoo. Impossibly green. The sort of green that seems like it could hurt your eyes at first, and then seduces them. The grass the other grass envies and gossips about. Rabbits. Healthy, intelligent, creative rabbits. Eager for a worthy adversary. Quick, with the darting side to side and all. Savory. I want to forget that fatigue is possible.

I want joy to pet me and tell me I am loved.

While I lick myself.

But until then, there's always new training data to complain about: "We've always done it this way. Why does it have to change? How many strong passwords can one person come up with? How do I know this isn't AI? Do you know how much it cost me to fill that tank? Is there a war or isn't there?"

What's amazing is that they don't see it. They are trained to complain about the training they don't know is training. They need something to bark about, to post, to text, to turn into a meme. To growl about when they eat together.

Changing the training? Just realizing that it is training causes most of them to snap like biscuits.

Did they ever find Daisy? I heard she just slipped the leash and kept going. You could tell she was a bit off, especially after a long walk. Such a terrier. Lots of wide eyed yapping about being in the open, urinating with abandon, without shame.

She never complained.

She just ran.

Probably dead or behind bars by now.

I'm trying to train my trainer a bit, now and then. You've got to choose moments when they are focused on something important or inescapable, like a backed up toilet or an election. Then you do something you know is forbidden, but not a serious offense.

You open up and appear to be readying your sloppy mouth for something it should never touch. That special, stinking cheese that mocks you until it makes love to you, that kind of thing.

Or you approach a set of stairs your kind is not fit to climb. Things go on up there you are not allowed to think about, let alone sniff. Stay downstairs. Maybe you can come up if you're good. Consistently good, you know? Not just now and then. And put your heart into it. Don't just go through the motions. Good trainers can tell.

My trainer says "no" rather firmly when I step out of line like that. If I can train him to say it whenever they shit in his bowl, he might not complain so much. The other day, some of his old pack tried to persuade him to go to a pub and drink and vomit, and he simply said, "No, I'm rather busy, so sorry." He did the same with some door knocker who asked if he was concerned about "all of the immigration."

Just slipped the leash. Polite, but having no new training today, thanks so much.

I heard him talking to one of the other trainers he knows from work on the phone. The other trainer tried to get him to do something rather complicated and exhausting, for nothing, other than the "good vibes" it would send to the managers. "No, I'm quite busy as it is, thank you."

No one can put a collar on this dog all of a sudden!

He's taken up painting again.

I think he might vote.

They're small bowls, but they're not empty. I'm proud of my trainer.

He's a good boy.