Teaching Your Dog To Find A Job.

Dogs are begging for employment opportunities, hopefully with benefits.

“The thing that would bother me most would be a dog smoking a cigar.” Steve Allen

We have to stop thinking dogs are happy, content animals. Being cute and going for the occasional run is totally under-utilizing them. They need viable employment, otherwise they’ll vegetate like cats. Most cats are vegetables.

We had a cat once that slept 23 hours a day. How do you work up an appetite sleeping like that? Cats can do it, dogs can’t. Dogs feel obliged to earn their keep. They don’t expect to be high-income earners necessarily. They just want a job, preferably one with park breaks and flexible hours.

This is the important distinction between dogs and cats. Dogs stand by the window, watching you go to work, and they’re, frankly, miffed. You get to be a viable member of society, they sit around watching the cat throw up fur balls.

When you come home from work, dogs wag their tails, showing they appreciate you bringing home the bacon. Cats want to see the bacon. If there isn’t any, they walk away like you’re the worse person in the world.

Books on healthy workplaces speak to the importance of interaction. Dogs love to interact. Cats don’t give a crap. They think dogs should be put in straightjackets.

Dogs believe, if they had a job, they’d be out of the house by eight-thirty, chase a few birds, sniff a few lampposts, and still make it to the bus on time. Dogs would also say hello to everyone they meet. Books on healthy workplaces speak to the importance of interaction. Dogs love to interact. Cats don’t give a crap. They think dogs should be put in straightjackets.

Now, with all this fervour dogs put into wanting to work, it seems only fair we do our part to make them employable. According to the Whole Dog Journal, more and more dog owners are doing just that.

To start with, they’re giving their dogs more chores. Some pooches fetch the newspaper, carry groceries in from the car, or dust the floor with their butts (usually indicating worms, but give them A for effort).

We had a dog growing up that fetched my father’s pipe tobacco from the store. This made our dog very happy. She figured it would lead to other employment opportunities, but it didn’t. She eventually left the pipe tobacco on the front lawn, figuring she was already more qualified than most dogs. No dog wants to be seen as over-qualified.

One woman went to a lot of effort teaching her Scorgidoodle, Bonnie, to sort laundry. Dogs are partially colour blind, so sorting by colour was out of the question. Instead, Bonnie’s owner created piles set about eight feet apart, and gave Bonnie a treat for each article of laundry she put in the right pile.

Sometimes it was a verbal cue like, “That doesn’t go there, you dumb mutt,” which Bonnie’s owner would never say, preferring encouragement like “Good girl, Bonnie, you’re the smartest dog I know.”

Eventually, her owner could simply point to the appropriate pile and Bonnie would put the item there. Sometimes it was a verbal cue like, “That doesn’t go there, you dumb mutt,” which Bonnie’s owner would never say, preferring encouragement like “Good girl, Bonnie, you’re the smartest dog I know.”

Positive reinforcement gets better results than negative ones where dogs are concerned. It certainly worked for Bonnie. She’s since taken up accounting and does the occasional tax return for Seeing-Eye Dogs.

A woman in Atlanta, Georgia, taught her dog to close cupboard and refrigerator doors. Supposedly, you start by getting the dog to bump her nose against your hand, thus getting a reward. Then you hold your hand next to a cupboard door. When she goes to bump your hand, you do the old switcheroo, pulling your hand away. Her nose hits the cupboard door instead. When the dog goes “What the f**k?” you give her a treat.

This is explained in Utilize Target Training, along with other nifty switcheroos that get dogs closing car doors, cabinets and sheepherding.

Now, sheepherding dogs, mostly Border Collies, normally look smart because they’re next to sheep, and sheep are dumb as mushrooms. Switch the sheep with, say, a pride of lions, and Border Collies still come off looking smart because they jump in the nearest jeep and drive off.

If cats were forced to find employment, they’d be artist’s models.

I mention Border Collies because they have lifelong jobs. So do their kids and their kid’s kids. It’s steady employment, something most dogs can only admire on television. “I sure wish I could do that,” they say, usually to the cat, who thinks it’s about the stupidest job in existence. If cats were forced to find employment, they’d be artist’s models.

There’s a brilliant Border Collie named Chaser who’s been the subject of multiple cognition studies. He knows the names of more than 1,000 objects and can retrieve them by name. With that kind of memory, Chaser should be managing a McDonalds, but Chaser is happy showing off his skills and earning quite the name for himself on television.

Now, obviously not all dogs have the memory of Chaser, but employment opportunities still exist requiring fewer skills. Take the Trump administration. If folks want Trump to be more inclusive, you can’t do better than making Chaser your Secretary of State. He’ll chase world leaders around the table until they sign whatever Trump wants them to sign.

Of course, every dog sees Companion dogs or Seeing Eye Dogs as great jobs. That is until they find out the hours are brutal and, after a while, you get tired of everyone saying, “What a good dog.”

One vocation where dogs can always find work is trash collecting. All you do is get them used to picking stuff up and bringing it to a container. When they do, you give the command “Drop.” If they drop the item in the container, you give them a treat. If they go off and eat the garbage, it’s still being binned, as they say, and litter collection agencies don’t ask a lot of questions — which is why it’s so popular as a Community Service.

Of course, every dog sees Companion dogs or Seeing Eye Dogs as great jobs. That is until they find out the hours are brutal and, after a while, you get tired of everyone saying, “What a good dog.”

You’d think a dog could hear that until the cows come home, but they don’t. They worry it’ll make them overly confident, and possibly boorish. To maintain their humility, which they know is a desirable — and hireable — trait, they hang around the cat who calls them every name in the book.

Cats can deflate an ego faster than they can deflate a balloon, so it’s good to get a reality check, and cats are really good at that since they’d rather you go to work and let them sleep.

Still, all it takes is one shady character coming up to the house, and suddenly you’re a hero, even if the shady character turns out to be the police looking for shady characters.

Of course, dogs can always find employment close to home by being great guard dogs. This doesn’t require a lot of credentials. All a dog has to do is bark at anything that moves outside the window. Some dogs might be accused of being overly zealous. Still, all it takes is one shady character coming up to the house, and suddenly you’re a hero, even if the shady character turns out to be the police looking for shady characters.

I mentioned off the top that dogs look for employment opportunities with benefits, something dogs figure could be anything from doggie treats to full medical and dental. This is usually included in dog ownership, so most dogs figure they’ve got pretty good coverage. It’s still nothing compared to what bomb-sniffing dogs get, but who cares? They’re adrenalin junkies, and all it takes is being stuffed up one day and suddenly you’re doggie mush.

Drug sniffing is a much safer vocation. If your dog is doing it right, they can have a hell of a good day at the airport, although most drug-sniffing dogs spend their nights seeing all sorts of crazy things. Even cats don’t mess with them at that point. It’s best to just let the dog ride it out.

Together you can make this happen, hopefully creating an employable animal that could one day bring home the bacon. Cats will expect real bacon.

One thing is for sure, dogs want to work, and it’s up to you to help them. Training is a good start, just as positive reinforcement helps build a sense of accomplishment and confidence.

Together you can make this happen, hopefully creating an employable animal that could one day bring home the bacon. Cats will expect real bacon. If it’s not, the cat will call the dog a “dumb mutt,” and go back to sleep. It’s discouraging, sure, but dogs don’t mind as long as they’re employed.

They can say “Another day, another dollar.” All a cat can say is “I’ve got a fur ball, and you’re all idiots for working.” Cats may be smarter than dogs, but they still have a fur ball. Dogs have a pay check.

Six of one, half dozen of another.

Robert Cormack is a novelist, journalist and blogger. His first novel “You Can Lead a Horse to Water (But You Can’t Make It Scuba Dive)” is available online and at most major bookstores. Check out Skyhorse Press or Simon and Schuster for more details.