I’m a biased parent, but hear me out. Charlie’s damn smart. He’s smart like an teenager (though in dog years he’s older than that). What I mean is he’s smart enough to understand most of what we ask him to do and smart enough to do what will get him what he wants, but also smart enough to know when “not understanding” is the most “Charlie-beneficial” move.

When Charlie was a puppy we did some training classes with him. And he even “graduated”.

In the training Charlie should have learned a bunch of commands – sit, down, stay, leave it, come, wait and probably a few others that even I can’t remember. We used positive reinforcement to train him. Do what I commanded – either verbally or with hand signals – and he’d get a treat. Not do it, no treat.

As it turns out, we had the most fun with and the quickest response from Charlie to “sit”. He got it pretty much right away and it makes him look so damn cute. We used it a lot – and he got a lot of treats from sitting. He was pretty good with “down” and sometimes would respond to “come”. “Leave it” mostly works, but I think that’s more because the tone of my voice for that command scares him. On the other hand “stay” and “wait” were lost causes from the start.

Getting back to “sit” and how smart he is, Charlie is now so conditioned that he sits without being commanded to do so. And when he sits, he expects a treat. And, damn us, most of the time we indulge him. So in the picture above, he’s just sitting in the kitchen, waiting. He usually gives it a little while to see if by sitting it will remind us that we actually asked him to sit so that we could give him a treat.

I think we need a new command.