Beyond Obedience: Training with Awareness for You and Your Dog

Filled with stories from her years of experience, the book sometimes leaves you smiling at canine antics, sometimes teary-eyed at inevitable failures. Yet, in the end, readers willing to work through the exercises to "connect" with their pets will come away with a much deeper understanding and appreciation of their canine companions, and training sessions are bound to become a pleasure for both handler and dog. Using even just a few of the methods, I personally achieved much greater success in training a very difficult puppy.


This should be the first book you read about your dog.   May 10, 1999
 9 out of 9 found this review helpful

April Frost and Rondi Lightmark's book not only taught me how to connect better with my two dogs, but also how to connect better with myself. I would highly recommend this book as the first book to read about dogs. The sections on the human-animal bond are so inspiring and the holistic medicines, massages, and flower essenses are educational. I laughed out loud and even teared in parts.


Frost is on the cutting edge of interspecies communication   March 30, 1999
 21 out of 29 found this review helpful

Two things I particularly like about this book are: 1) "The three a's" -- attitude, attention, and awareness -- come before the behavioral approach to obedience used in so many other training books, which tend to presuppose the human-canine relationship. But that relationship is the whole point of being together with dogs in a shared life-world, and it is what Frost's book is all about. 2) The traditional obedience explanations are exceptionally thorough, clear, detailed, and broken down into small steps. > >I look at the book from the viewpoint of a Great Dane breeder and academic philosopher. I recommend it to all our puppy buyers, and I want to try to show you why. It's going to involve a little philosophy and psychology. > >To appreciate what Frost is doing, it helps to recognize that behaviorism took over American psychology almost a century ago, displacing the previous introspective approach. The objective behaviorist attitude is now widely taken for granted as the only 'scientific' way of training dogs. There is no place in this scheme for subjectivity, either human or canine, and consequently no place for being fully present with our dogs, which in dog fancy is called companionship, and in philosophy interspecies intersubjectivity. > >Although some European approaches to philosophy and psychology (particularly phenomenology) cultivate interspecies intersubjectivity, American academics tend to dismiss such efforts as 'mysticism', understood (if at all) in a derogatory way. The development and enhancement of interspecies intersubjectivity, a sense of human-canine presence with one another, is what is beyond obedience in this book. > >Frost isn't the first writer of dog books to sense a problem with behaviorism. Already in 1956, in their classic study, Genetics and the Social Behavior of the Dog, Scott and Fuller wrote that their experimental "effort to standardize human behavior was largely successful," although "An unexpected result was that the quality of the [human-canine] social relationship ... was somewhat shallow" (1956.176). Clearly, what made for good behavioral science also (to their surprise) made for poor companionship. But even as they wrote, all kinds of philosophical objections to the behaviorist method began to surface. Hanah Arendt wrote, "The problem with behaviorism is not that it is false, but that it may become true" -- and that was the dimension that surprised Scott and Fuller. > >But behaviorism became entrenched in dog training. In The Body Language and Emotion of Dogs by Myrna Milani, D.V.M. (1986), the author frequently finds that she must go beyond behavior to deal with the psychological mindset of her clients -- a subjective problem inaccessible to objective scientific method. In The Dog's Mind by Bruce Vogle, D.V.M.(1990), he contemplates the strange gap between what he learned as a behavioral scientist and what he actually experienced with his own dog. But both of these excellent books raise a theoretical problem they leave largely unresolved: How can we bridge the gap between academic behaviorism and the personal presence which is the whole meaning of being together with dogs? > >More recently, Capt. A.J. Haggerty again raised the issue in a short article called, "Timing is Everything" (The AKC Gazette 115.2, 02/98). There he applies techniques of Zen Buddhism to dog training, specifically to overcome some of the deficiencies of the behavioristic method found in Pamela Reid's Excel-erated Learning (1996). But he misidentifies the problem. It isn't just good timing, which Reid (and of course Frost) emphasize just as much as the good Captain. The real issue is the depth and breadth of attention we achieve in being truly present to our dogs. Where Haggerty turned to Zen Buddhism for this 'attitude adjustment', Frost has turned to her own Iroquois Indian heritage, the works of Deepak Chopra, and the Japanese discipline of Reiki, a kind of hands-on healing. > >Of course none of that is heavy-duty academic philosophy. But it doesn't have to be. The point is to regain our sense of subjective presence, dulled by years of being told to "be objective," as well as by the modern rush "to get things done," mental lists, and the like. What makes for good objective science may actually obstruct direct face-to-face communication. For that reason, not only Frost's basic approach to dogs, but her very method of Awareness Training is founded first and foremost on love and respect. > >You don't have to cultivate these essentially ethical qualities in the same way Frost does; you can make connections with Transcendental Meditation, the history of Christian or Jewish mysticism, existential philosophy, phenomenology, or whatever turns you on and tunes you in to the great adventure of deepened personal and spiritual experience. The basic structure of Beyond Obedience shows you how to do this with dogs, because it's written on the three interacting levels of insight development, supportive metaphysics (pick your own flavor), and practical instruction. > >The first section (Chapters 1-4) ushers us into direct and immediate canine communication. "Look at your dog as though you're seeing him for the first time.... When you are in a relaxed state, gaze softly, without staring, into your dog's eyes.... We need to examine ourselves, too, and avoid using dogs simply to project an image." Bonding with your dog is "aligning the consciousness of two individuals," and doing it in such a way that the species difference becomes as inconspicuous as possible. "I give ... pure acknowledgment of who he is, rather than an assessment of his performance as a dog." > >The second part of the book, on Awareness Training proper (Chapters 5-8) seeks to increase mutual human-canine bond of respect and communication. The greater the bond, the less need for other tools. "Other sensitivities predominate; intuition is medium of exchange" for a more sensitized consciousness. "The animals are my teachers, companions, and friends.... That is why I no longer call myself an animal trainer.... I do not do 'obedience training'. Awareness Training is communication training based on love and respect, and it must go both ways." Let the dog teach you. Because dogs are individuals, there is no one right way. Do not cling to the methods of your own upbringing. "Being in the now is your only point of power." > >Consider using music, meditation, and relaxation, Tellington Touch, and Reiki. The main communicators are eye contact, praise, caresses, and food rewards. "Dogs ... use their eyes to indicate a range of attitudes from aggression to acceptance," so use your own eyes wisely and be theatrical. > >"Behavior is a flow of energy that is manifested in the physical world." If you change the metaphor to, "Behavior is an expression of spirit that is manifested in the physical world," you have a good phenomenological definition of behavior. In both wordings, it's something far more than the objective pattern of actions through which it's expressed. > >Here and elsewhere, Frost's basic thrust points far beyond her own personal experience. When in difficulty, she suggests, use the dog as a mirror of yourself, or become a detached observer. "This is the principle of detachment which is well-known in meditation." Indeed it is, lying at the foundations of Sankara's approach to Advaita Vedanta, as well as the mysticism of Meister Eckhart (detachment=Gelassenheit, 'non-attachment'), and the commentaries of the existentialist philosopher, Martin Heidegger. > >"Training is something you do for the dog, not to the dog." > >The final section of the book (Chapters 9-15) are devoted to a minutely detailed exposition of walking on lead, come, wait, sit, down, stay (in that order); behavior problems, health and nutrition; and games based on retrieving, carrying, and finding things, instead of games like tug-of-war, roughhousing and chase that can get you into trouble. Her training sequences follow this general outline: > >1) Define the goal (walk on lead without forging, etc.). >2) Get prepared with equipment, treats, etc. >3) Mental and emotional preparation: Focus, breathe, clarify intent. >4) "Open and honor the practice," for which she uses Reiki symbols. >5) The series of behavioral steps (say "Heel," etc.). >6) After release, "Close and honor the practice." > >Anyone who has read a book like Eugen Herrigel's famous Zen and the Art of Archery (recommended to me by a piano teacher several decades ago) will immediately see that the technical activity is embedded in a kind of dedicated or consecrated time-space opened in steps 3 and 4 and closed in step 6. For this very reason I myself started meditating with dogs before Frost's book appeared. Her use of Reiki symbols reminds me of the mandala symbolism investigated in psychology by Carl J