Training & Behavior

The remote lived on the arm of the sofa, and every evening one of us would reach for it, miss, and a small war would start about whose turn it was to get up, and the dog, a lurcher called Sage who is technically my brother's but lives with us, would watch this nonsense from the rug with the calm of a creature who has his priorities straight and his legs already folded.

I decided, idly, to teach him to bring it. Not because we needed a dog butler, but because the bickering was stupid and I'm petty enough to solve a household dispute with a trained animal, and Sage, being a lurcher, will retrieve anything that moves or that I pretend moves, so the remote was comfortably within reach of his skill set, which mostly consists of speed and a soft mouth.

We started with a dummy, a wooden spoon, because the real remote's got buttons he could mash and a price I didn't want to test, and I taught him the word bring and the word drop with the spoon, chicken for the return, a different word for releasing it gently into my hand instead of dropping it like a brick, because a brick-drop is funny once and expensive forever.

Then we swapped the spoon for an old dead remote, the one from the telly we threw out, and ran the same routine until he'd trot to it, pick it up soft, bring it across, and place it in my palm on the word, at which point my partner started placing bets on whether he'd actually do it live, which is the kind of faith that really motivates a trainer, I'll tell you.

He did it live. First time with the real remote, on the arm of the sofa, I said the word, he looked, he went, he brought it, he dropped it in my hand, and the room went quiet in a way it hadn't at telly-time in years, and my partner, to give her credit, admitted the dog had won, which is not a sentence she says lightly or often.

The arguments didn't vanish, mind, we're still us, but the trigger did, because neither of us had to move, the dog moved, and there's something disarming about a tall thin dog delivering the remote with a serious expression, like a butler who's seen things and regrets none of them, and who would very much like his chicken now.

He knows the word now, and the spot, and he'll fetch it from the floor, the cushion, the far end of the rug where it always ends up, and he does it with a little trot of pride that suggests he knows he's settling a matter of state. Lurchers are vain, I've found. They like an audience for a job well done, and the telly audience, frankly, is the best one going.

I've taught him a second one since, the slippers, because once you've got a dog delivering the remote the rest feels like underachievement, and the house has taken on a faint air of a country manor where the staff are furry and motivated by chicken. My partner says I've ruined a perfectly good dog with domestic expectations, which is the kind of complaint that arrives right after she asks him to fetch her phone.

The real win, though, isn't the fetched remote, it's the five minutes a day we spend practising, because a dog who's got a job is a dog who's calm, and Sage, who used to pace the evenings, now settles after his deliveries, tired in the way only a working dog pretending to be a butler can be, and the pacing, it turns out, was just unused talent looking for somewhere to go.

So the telly gets watched, the remote gets fetched, the arguments get settled by a lurcher with a soft mouth and a serious face, and I get to be petty and helpful at once, which is, I'll admit, my favourite combination, and Sage gets chicken, which is his, and the evening, which used to be a small war, is now just a dog trotting back with the thing we both wanted and neither of us wanted to stand up for.

It won't last, the novelty, not forever, but the habit will, the little errand he runs that makes him useful and us less petty, and when the remote finally dies of dog-delivered love I'll buy another and teach him the new one, because a lurcher with a job is a lurcher at peace, and the telly can wait for the walk, which is the other lesson he's quietly taught us, that the thing we fought over was never worth the fighting, only the fetching.

The sofa's calmer for it, if nothing else, and the remote, once a small daily excuse for a row, is now just another thing the dog brings, like the paper or the slippers or the general sense that the house runs a little more smoothly when someone's willing to get up and fetch, even if that someone has four legs, a serious face, and firm expectations about the chicken that follows the delivery.