How to Raise a Jewish Dog (3 page)

The preceding table shows only a few of the dozens of designer dogs now available. The column on the left lists the breeds
of the hybrid’s parents; in the center, the “portmanteau” name of the new offspring; and on the right, the hybrid’s chief
characteristics.

This “hybrid” trend has inspired certain graduates of our Program to experiment with the crossbreeding of three, four, or
even more breeds, in the pursuit of a dog particularly suited to being raised Jewish. Bear in mind that the BRTS has no affiliation,
either legal or financial, with these individuals. We do find their efforts to be of interest to the dog training community,
however, and so their results appear in the following table. Again, the parent breeds are in the left-hand column, the name
for the newly developed hybrid is in the center, and the hybrid’s unique advantages for being raised Jewish are on the right.

New Crossbreeds Created Specifically to Be Raised Jewish

We can’t claim to have worked with all (or, indeed, any) of these fantastic new crossbreeds as of yet. We invite readers who
own or know any of them personally to write to us here, at the Seminary, about their experiences with these extraordinary
animals.

Now that you understand the basic goal of our system, and that virtually any dog will benefit from the training, it’s time
to talk about what we have come to discover is the most important part of the entire Program: the relationship between you
and your dog.

T
he most important aspect of raising a Jewish dog is the
relationship between the owner and the dog.
We cannot stress this enough. Everything else—commands, obedience, rewards, and punishments—follows from this.

It is up to you, of course, to create and sustain that relationship. The dog, because it will want to please you unless it
is one of those selfish good-for-nothings, will willingly collaborate with you. How, then, should you proceed?

Every dog, like every human being, has a stream of consciousness running in his head during his every waking moment. We’re
not saying the dog is aware of it. But it’s there nonetheless. It provides a sort of ongoing commentary on the animal’s experience.
We call it the Inner Monologue, and it changes as the dog’s level of training changes.

By observing countless dogs, both in informal settings (at play, while eating, and in other situations when they do not know
they are being studied) and in formal sessions (when they are asked an evolving series of weighted questions), we have been
able to construct representative scripts of the Inner Monologues of various trained and untrained animals.

The first script represents the Inner Monologue of the untrained dog. We call this the Baseline Inner Monologue because it
represents the mental life of every dog, regardless of breed. For the feral animal in the wild, it is the mental voice he
will hear throughout his entire life. The more domesticated and trained a dog becomes, the more this baseline monologue will
serve as a foundation upon which more elaborate monologues will be built.

As you can see, the mental life of the untrained dog doesn’t exactly provide much to “write home about.” It is crude, impulsive,
and unreflective. It displays only the most rudimentary sense of self and is concerned almost entirely with the most basic
bodily functions and, sometimes, rolling around in dead things. This, then, is the given. It’s the basic internal noise that
must be disrupted—in a nice way, of course—if training is to be successful.

Typical behavior of untrained dog. Owner understandably becomes anxious about where guests will sit, among other things.

Of course, each owner has his or her own Inner Monologue, too. The Inner Monologue of a typical (i.e., non-Jewish-raising)
dog owner goes something like this:

This is the mind-set of most owners when contemplating their new dog, more or less. Notice how its great sophistication and
highly abstract quality differs sharply from the simple emotional directness of the untrained dog’s Inner Monologue.

And that’s the problem. Raising a Jewish dog (i.e., making use of our Program) requires creating a relationship between the
owner and the dog
in which the owner and the dog learn to need each other so much that their Internal Monologues complement and reinforce each
other.

Of course, no one is talking about trying to get the mental life of the dog to be exactly like that of a human, or that the
owner should try and turn into a dog. We simply mean that their two Internal Monologues should form an organic whole.

And, really, this is not such a strange idea, since the goal of even conventional dog training is the altering of the dog’s
Inner Monologue. Unfortunately, with conventional training, we end up with a blandly obedient robotlike creature without any
snap or vim or verve. We get something like this:

Conventionally trained dog. Note complete absence of personality.

Frankly, about this kind of “training,” the less said, the better.

So much for how we
don’t
want the dog—or the owner—to be. What do we propose instead?

As previously mentioned, our system focuses on raising dogs the way we ourselves were raised as Jewish children and on the
ways in which we reacted to that. First, then, the goal is to instill in the dog the assumptions and values our parents instilled
in us. They include the following:

•
The knowledge that we have to be perfect, or we’ll be very disappointing to those who love us.

•
The knowledge that we must be very careful whenever we leave home because the world is full of lunatics.

•
The knowledge that most people are out to take advantage of us, so the only people we can really trust are our family.

•
The knowledge that, no matter how smart we think we are, we are wrong about certain things, and the sooner we accept that
fact, the better.

•
The knowledge that we can be really very selfish and hurtful, so thank goodness there are people who are willing to put up
with us, although God knows why.

•
The knowledge that our hair will always look bad.

Obviously, some of these principles are too sophisticated to be adequately grasped by the dog. That’s why we devoted several
years to boiling them down into a small number of essential principles that can be efficiently conveyed to, and understood
by, the canine mind. We call them the Four Essential Messages.

For our training program to be successful, the dog must learn, and integrate into his view of you, himself, and the whole
universe, the Four Essential Messages. They are:

Teaching the dog the Four Essential Messages. Note how Jax’s expression shows his dawning comprehension.