A very interesting article by Jon Katz about the failure of dog training...the most recent article in Slate.com's highly enjoyable Heavy Petting - Pets and People series.
Neurotic and compulsive dog behaviors like barking, biting, chasing cars, and chewing furniture—sometimes severe enough to warrant antidepressants—are growing. Lesser training problems—an inability to sit, stop begging, come, or stay—are epidemic.
Pack theory, for example, asks us to behave like dogs in order to communicate with them. This works better if you have a tail.
It requires an estimated 2,000 repetitions, behaviorists say, before most dogs can fully learn a behavior. If you've told Ellie to "sit" 1,000 times, and she complies half the time, you haven't failed, and neither has she. You're both halfway there.
