Training & Behavior

I hate a draught. The crate sits by the back door, where the wind finds the gap no weather strip quite closes, and every evening the dog would shift, and sigh, and turn, and press himself into the far corner, and I would feel bad and do nothing, because a draught is a draught and you live with it, or so I told myself until the sighing started to sound like a complaint I could actually answer.

The answer was a trick, which is the part I did not expect to enjoy. I taught him to nudge the door closed with his nose. Not a big door, the inner one, the lightweight one between the hall and the kitchen, the one that always stands ajar and lets the cold through. A dog can close that, with a target on the panel and a treat on the other side, and within a week our Pip would wander over, bump it shut with his muzzle, and look at me as if to say, fixed it, where is mine.

The training was simple and silly and the best ten minutes of my day. Target on the door, nose to target, door swings, click, treat. He learned it as a game, because to a lurcher everything is a game if you frame it right, and the game happened to solve the draught, which is the nicest kind of training, the kind where the dog thinks he is performing and you are quietly fixing the house.

Now the door stays shut through the cold hours, because he closes it, often before I ask, because the draught bothered him too, it turns out, and he had a tool for it now and dogs use tools. The crate corner is warm. The sighing stopped. The treat budget took a small hit, worth every crumb, and the inner door has a faint smudge at nose height that I refuse to clean, because it is the mark of a dog who fixed his own problem.

I did not set out to teach a door trick. I set out to stop feeling bad about the wind. The two turned out to be the same project, and the dog was the better engineer. He closed the gap I had tolerated for a year in an evening of nose-bumps, and I stood there with the treat like a spectator at a thing I should have done myself. The draught is gone. The trick stays. The smudge stays. The dog, smug, stays warm, and so do I.

If you have a draught and a dog and a light door, skip the weather strip and teach the nose. The strip falls off in a month. The trick, once learned, is forever, and the dog will do it before you think to, and you will owe him a treat and a thank-you, and the back of the door will wear his signature, and the house will be warmer for a lesson neither of us meant to learn.

The target I used was a sticky dot from a pack meant for cupboards, the kind that glows in the dark, which Pip found hilarious, batting at it before he learned to press it, and the dot is still there, faintly, a small green circle at the height of his nose, and I leave it, because it is the hinge of the whole arrangement, the place he aims for without thinking, the spot that turns a draught into a game. The other doors in the house now wear dots too, because once he had the trick he offered it everywhere, bumping the bathroom, the bedroom, any ajar thing, and the house, suddenly, closes itself, one nose at a time, and the weather strip I bought sits unused in the drawer, a monument to the fix I did not need.

The smugness I mentioned is real, and it has spread. He closes the door, then looks at me, then looks at the treat jar, then looks back, and the timing is flawless, a small performer who knows his value, and I pay, because the bargain is fair, a crumb for a warm room, and the draught that ruled the crate corner is a memory, and the corner is his now, properly, and the only thing I taught was where to aim, and the only thing he learned was that aiming closes the wind, and the only thing either of us needed was the dot, and the dot stays, glowing faintly, the most useful thing in the house, and the dog, smug, and the door, shut, and the evening, finally, warm.

The dot stays, glowing faintly at the height of his nose, the hinge of the whole arrangement, the place he aims for without thinking, and the other doors in the house wear dots too now, because once he had the trick he offered it everywhere, bumping the bathroom, the bedroom, any ajar thing, and the house, suddenly, closes itself, one nose at a time, and the weather strip I bought sits unused in the drawer, a monument to the fix I did not need, and the draught is gone, and the dog is smug, and the door is shut, and the evening, finally, is warm, which is the only review either of us required, and the crate corner, once cold, is his now, properly, and the smudge at nose height is the signature of a dog who fixed his own problem, and I, the spectator with the treat, could not be prouder of an animal who simply aimed where I pointed and closed the wind.