Janet Lewis - Smart Trainers: Brilliant Dogs

Janet Lewis has been training dogs for over 20 years. She has obtained numerous obedience and tracking titles, including three Obedience Trial Championships. Janet is in great demand for seminars because of her sense of humor and talent for teaching. Her monthly column in Front and Finish, Gremlins, has provided fresh training ideas to readers for over 10 years.

In her other life, Janet is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, where she has taught philosophy and writing for the past twenty-six years. Learning how to be an effective dog trainer how to communicate and motivate has improved my skill a thousandfold as a people teacher, Janet says. Training dogs and educating humans both require an understanding of the principles of learning and a respect for the individual needs and talents of the student. Teaching and learning are the twin foundations for a partnership based on mutual trust and respect.

Writing has always been fun for me so it came as somewhat of a shock that writing a whole book was not nearly as enjoyable as I had thought it would be. One reason is because with length comes disorganization. I hadnt known that. Also, with commitment comes defensiveness. This book was my baby. No way could I believe it was less than perfect! Were it not for three special people: Ruth Ginzberg, Chris Zink, and Vicky Dale, I would have thrown in the towel er, keyboard long ago.

Ruth prodded me into taking my ideas and putting them into book form. She endured my less-than-grateful reactions to her relentless demands for organization and simplicity. And she kept my spirits up with her praise and encouragement. (Motivational training works on people too!) Without her, this book would not exist. If you like the book and learn from it, you her as much to her as you do to me.

Chris Zink, a professional author, editor, and fellow seminar presenter, gave me what every writer wants most acceptance. She agreed to publish the book almost before it was written. She devoted many hours to making it reader-ready. In addition she has been a good friend and loyal defender.

Vicky Dale added a unique dimension to the book. She is not only a talented artist, she is a friend who can translate life into pen and ink. All the dogs in her sketches have personality. She used her great artistic talent and her knowledge of me and the dogs who grace these pages to transform sometimes pedantic text into pictures that both teach and entertain.

I am lucky to have three such good friends!

Thanks also go to four talented, hard-working readers Terri Clingerman, Jane Jackson, Debbie Spence, and Gerianne Darnell who made many suggestions on how to make the manuscript more reader-friendly, and who combed the manuscript for typos and grammatical errors.

I also owe special thanks to those who contributed photographs to the book and those posed for them. In particular, I am grateful to Sandy Roth who filled in for Vicky as backup photographer and who dressed and posed and posed again for us to get all our pictures just right. Sandy was always sure that if we just tried it one more time we could produce the perfect picture. Thanks to her, we often did. I thank Kathy Povey, an Internet pal, who sent me many wonderful photos. The Internet can yield up amazing treasures indeed.

Finally, I would like to thank the dogs and their trainers who posed for our photos. Without them the book would not be nearly so interesting. They are: Lois Albright and her Keeshond, U-CO, U-Ch, Am/Can Ch Kee-Motion Morning Mist, Am/Can CO, Carol Crouch and her Border Collie, U-UO Tory Lanes Brandy Alexander, UOX, Can COX, Vicky Dale and her Border Collie, U-COX MacLeods Star, Am/Can COX, TO, Betsy Geertson and her Soft Coated Wheaten Terriers, U-Ch Lontrees All That Glitters Is, Am/Can CO and U-Ch Lonestar Irish Krystal OOrion and Sandy Roth and her Welsh Springer Spaniel, Ch Auroras Gone Wythe Wynd, CGC.

This part of the book is especially fun to write, especially because I write it after having finished Smart Trainers: Brilliant Dogs. While I have no particular desire to be famous, I relish the opportunity to give the dogs whose stories grace these pages a kind of canine immortality. It gives me comfort to know that even after I die, Lark, Amber, Kate, Coe, Mikey and the others will go on, even if their existence is hidden in some dusty and dog hair-covered corner of a dog owners library.

Let me start at the beginning, with the most important contributors to this book, without whom it would not have been written, and with whom I have gained a share of wisdom and a measure of love I might otherwise never have had. Chronologically, this is a brief description of my most cherished companions. I will be forever grateful for the lessons they have taught me. And my love for each of them will remain undimmed forever.

Peter - My very first dog the one who set me on my dog directed course. My goodness what he taught me! He was a puppy from the first litter I whelped (my best friends mother had allowed us to experience the wonders of birth very liberal for the 50s). Peter was a mutt and he was, to me, the best dog in the world. He got distemper when he was a baby and I nursed him through it. Fortunately no one bothered to tell me the odds we battled through those long nights. He repaid me by being smart and loving and 100% trustworthy. Kids would come to the door and ask if Peter could come out to play. And he did, sledding down the alley behind our house, following the kids into their kitchens to share their midmorning snacks. He never met a person or a dog he didnt like and by virtue of his marriage with Gina (another mutt down the street) soon invented his own little mini-breed. His efforts gave each of his early human buddies a little Peter of their own. Probably his chief claim to fame was that he survived for 16 years as a street dog in those years runs and fenced in yards were for the rich and ostentatious. Little did we know how lucky we were.

Amber - The first dog I had as an adult. Although she was a Rough Collie she was no Lassie (nor did she much resemble Albert Payson Terhunes Lad, or Wolf, or Lady for that matter). Nonetheless I learned on her, and she is the smartest dog I have owned. Amber hated obedience (no wonder I didnt know enough to give her a reason to like it!), but she did it anyway. She gave me my first UD, complete with my knee-shaking experience of her third leg Stand-Stay. I was so proud I put her CD right up there on my office wall next to all my school diplomas. When we went to the lake in the summer Amber ate fish, whole and raw, and one day a whole bar of Irish Spring soap. She bubbled for days.

Petey - Another Rough Collie. Perhaps because he came right after Amber, and because I was not the most knowledgable of trainers, I mistakenly considered him dumb. One night, after a week of inserting the dumbbell in his mouth (including 30 or so efforts that very night), I told him, Take it. He refused (yet again), and I clunked him over the head with it. After that Petey would never again stay in the same room with a dumbbell and his obedience career ended with a CD. Guess he taught me some stuff too!