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Click On!October 13, 2010 A funny thing happened when I went to Amazon.com late last night to order a copy of Morgan Spector's Clicker Training for Obedience. Actually that's pretty funny by itself: until this fall I had zero interest in what dog people call "traditional obedience," to distinguish it from Rally obedience, which is what Travvy and I are having such a good time with. Traditional obedience is more exacting and more persnickety. It frowns at comedy, which is what most malamutes excel at. (Like Travvy demonstrating his athletic ability by jumping the ring gate in search of a stuffie.) Obedience people dress better than I do. And so on. In addition, at one of the Cape Cod shows last month, I watched a Dalmatian break a sit-stay during a Novice class (when handlers remain in the ring within sight of their dogs but about a dozen feet away from them) and go after a Weimaraner. Thanks to instantaneous action by a steward, no physical harm was done, but I've heard plenty of stories about similar incidents that ended with a dog injured and/or afraid to go into the ring. At Open and Utility levels, the stays are as long as five minutes, with the handlers out of the dogs' sight. Five minutes sitting or lying still in a ring with three or four other dogs and only the judge for human company? My imagination boggles and shuts down at the prospect. If another dog went after Travvy, he would most likely rise to the challenge. He might go after another dog, which in my book would be worse. Traditional obedience? Not for us, thanks. As we develop our Rally skills, though, and begin to think about moving on to Excellent level -- at which dog and handler do the course off-leash with another dog, leashed, and handler in the ring -- precision and predictability assume an ever larger importance. Techniques from Morgan Spector's book, which came out in the late 1990s, are quoted in two of my favorite books, Pam Dennison's Click Your Way to Rally Success and Jane Killion's When Pigs Fly: Training Success with Impossible Dogs. They've worked for me. The whole book might be just as useful. I went online to buy myself a copy. Clicker Training for Obedience was safely stowed in my virtual cart when it occurred to me that I still hadn't acquired a copy of the brand-new 16th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style. I started using Chicago when it was A Manual of Style, 12th edition, and along with the dictionary and Words into Type it's one of my most-used reference books. I've been putting off buying it, however, because it brings out the worst in many copyeditors: they treat it like the arrival of the Ten Commandments and obsess about rinky-dink changes like whether the possessive of Xerxes should have an s after the apostrophe: Xerxes' or Xerxes's? This is where copyeditors and writers tend to part company, and when the pack of us comes to the crossroads I'll go with the writers 95% of the time. But Amazon.com has a good price ($40 and change for a hardcover that lists for $65), and of course I was going to buy Chicago 16 in time to get it on my Schedule C for 2010, so why not now? Into the cart it went. When shopping online, I barely notice the friendly suggestions that retailers provide: Customers who bought XXX also bought YYY and If you like AAA, you might be interested in BBB. But one of the friendly suggestions was for Carol Saller's The Subversive Copyeditor, which I've heard enthusiastically recommended and was already thinking of buying. (A big attraction was the title. Too many copyeditors are rules-following drones who see no connection between their mindless obedience to Chicago and sundry other authorities and the just-following-orders mentality that is still wreaking terrible havoc in the world. Copyeditordom could use a lot more subversives.) With one click I added it to my cart. My cursor hovered over "Go to Checkout." But what to my wandering eye should appear? Another friendly suggestion, this time for Scott Norton's Developmental Editing. This book, too, had been heartily recommended. I'm working on a developmental edit right now, and there are times when I'm so thoroughly sick of copyediting and copyeditors that I'd apply for work at a McDonald's if only there were one on Martha's Vineyard. Click! Into the cart with you! Who am I to be teaching Travvy about impulse control? My ability to "leave it!" and "on by" does not inspire confidence. But I made it to checkout, where I learned that in the process of buying a $20 book on dog training I had managed to drop an additional $86 on books about editing. The good news was that the total qualified me for free shipping, so I got out of there for $100. Now I'm thinking that what the world really needs is a book called Clicker Training for Copyeditors, and I'm just the one to write it. Trouble is, it'll need illustrations and I can't draw for shit. If you can and you want to play, click here.
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