The term “in drive” as it is used with dogs means that the dog is accessing its genetic working equipment to the maximum.  Most trainers know when their dog has really tapped into this zone.  It is unmistakable.  It can be frightening and breathtaking.

My friend Lucy’s German Shepherd Calix is a police patrol dog.  He is trained in bite work.  Once dogs are trained in this way you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.  They like it too much.  Watching Calix go after a decoy sleeve is like watching a missile with a set of canine teeth hurtling toward its target.  He looks just about the same going after a tennis ball.  The eyes are locked,  the mouth is lightly closed and every muscle is engaged in propelling him forward.

When a  Pointer is air scenting a  field and suddenly hits upon the scent of a bird he freezes, and then making a slight adjustment, only his head turns and stops,  pinpointing the exact location of the bird.  The dog is motionless other than a slight quivering of the lip and nostril.

When a retriever lies beside a blind waiting to be released after the guns go off he is about as wound up and ready to explode as a dog can possibly be, and yet he is still.

These dogs are doing what they were bred to do.   I look for these moments and I try to mark them in my memory.  Many of the oldest breeds have become diluted and almost worthless as working dogs due to fashion.  Temperaments are subdued to fit suburban lifestyles and the very qualities that made them so valuable in the past are in danger of being lost.

Watching a dog in drive is really”seeing” the dog.  It is what I search for every time I paint one of these dogs, that one magnificent moment.

Thumbnail for painting.

Dogs are incapable of understanding language as we know it.  But they can learn to associate words with certain behaviors that earn them a reward.  When I say “words” I really mean “sounds”.  If your dog has a lot of verbal cues and sometimes gets confused about which behavior you want, go back and think about whether or not some of your cues might sound very similar to your dog.

Dogs seem to hear vowel sounds the best.  If you have a couple cues that have similar sounds try dropping consonants.  For example:

Early on in his training Stroller would get confused by “stay” and “stand” and “down”.  So, I dropped the “st” in “stay” which changed it to a simple “AY”.  I dropped the “d” in “stand” which changed it to “STAN”.  I dropped the “n” in “down” which changed it to “DOW”.  This did the trick.  He clearly understands the difference between those three cues.  Make sure you enunciate the words clearly.

Another thing to remember is that dogs are color blind.  If you are teaching targets make sure the dog can easily see the target.  A bright blue target mat on top of a dark grey floor will look almost identical to a dog.

26″ X 20 Acrylic glaze on panel.  Poodle/Cocker mix. Private Commission.

It is an odd combination.   Dada was a social movement of the nineteen twenties ( 1916 to 1923 to be exact) that was a backlash against the industrial revolution and what was called at the time “modernism”.  It was sort of like the more recent revolution of the nineteen sixties.  The Establishment was the enemy and one wanted to be as unacceptable as possible.

While the original Dadaists were mostly writers and thinkers the movement also produced some interesting and disturbing silent film artists that set out to make everyone as uncomfortable as possible.  I still remember those films.  My favorite was The Cabinet of Dr. Calagari.  It was directed by Hans Janowitz and the screen play was by Robert Wiene.  Together these two psychopaths invented a world that had no straight lines, no right angles and nothing was as it should be.  The plot was horrific and the characters diabolical.  It turned on its head everything that grounds us as humans, everything that is familiar and comfortable.  Their motive was to start a discussion about how cozy and predictable we humans really are and how hard it is for us to adapt to anything different.

I remember the set that they created.  It was all wonky.  All the chairs were to high, the tables too low.  Everything had an exaggerated, extremism about it that made you really squirm.  It was great.

Now gravity.  Think about it.  The earth is a round globe and everything that sits on top of it grows upward to the sun or has to be constructed at right angles because of…gravity.  From the time we are born to the day we die we view the world essentially as horizontals and verticals intersected by everything else.  You see this in practically every painting that has ever been painted.  As humans we want to be grounded.  We want to be oriented in a familiar way.  There has to be a geometric structure in order for this to happen. 

Structure in nature happens through horizon, light and the upward attitude of everything that sits on the surface of the earth.  Light falls onto everything as if someone were sprinkling liquid light onto it from 30 thousand feet.  We know this.  This is what we see every day of our lives.

If I had not studied the Dadaists I probably never would have thought about this in quite the same way.  They succeeded in shaking everyone up profoundly.  I imagine it is about time for the next revolution to begin, given the culture of excess that has caused so much distress recently. 

What happened to Dada?   Dadaism self destructed just as it was becoming acceptable.

When is a behavior considered fluent?  Brenda Alov suggests that it takes 6,000 repetitions for a behavior to become fluent.  If Brenda Alov says that’s how many it takes then it probably does.

The obedience exercises are like puzzles.  Upon a brief inspection they seem forward enough.  What’s the big deal?  The big deal is that you can send a dog through the same exercise one hundred times with a perfect result each time.  Then you change habitats or introduce an interesting and strange object (like a wet towel in a heap) and then, “hello”, the dog behaves as if he has never seen the exercise before in his life.

This is when things get really fun (I love it).  Now the real teaching begins.

The utility “go-out” is probably the most interesting exercise of all the utility exercises (scent articles coming in an aggravating second).  With a three-part behavior chain ( not including fronts and finishes) each part of the chain has to be trained and proofed separately, and then proofed as a unit.  Let’s just look at the send part.  For our purposes here it really doesn’t matter which method you are using to get him out there.

Remember how you learned to proof a sit stay?  You threw everything you had at the dog trying to get him to break the stay, and rewarded him richly when he did.  Stroller loves this.  Think of it as a game.  Once Stroller figures out the game he will defiantly ignore any attempt I make to throw him off.

 I think most trainers will agree that dogs are not able to understand the concept of a straight line.  But they can certainly learn what I call “a reward path”.  There is one path and one path only that will get me the cookie.  That’s the reward path.  It has nothing to do with targets or food on the gates.  Instead of thinking about the line that the dogs has to take to get to the gate as a “straight line” think of it as the reward path.

So, once the dog knows the reward path pretty consistently in very predictable and familiar circumstances…change the environment.  Change how things look.  Start by putting a couple of objects behind the gates.  Chances are the dog will target one of them (you want this because this is how he will learn).  As soon as you can tell the dog is not going down the reward path call him back.  Have a  benign sound that tells the dog “Come on in Rover and let’s try again”.  Don’t let him go all the way and definitely don’t let him look about if he does get there.

Set him up again.  He’ll probably do exactly the same thing.  On the third or fourth try (be patient) he will probably try something else.  Hold fast!  If you help him too soon you will be setting the learning back…a lot.  You want the dog to figure it out himself.  If he has a really hard time doing this just walk out and tap the center stantion. showing him where you want him to go.  Once he does give you the right behavior have something really good for him (like steak).  Set it up and do it again, and again …and again.

Once Stroller got the hang of this I put every of piece of junk I could find out there, in front of the gates, behind the gates.  I sprinkle his gloves in the path , and his frisbee,  He just trots right on through as if to say,  “Can’t make me look!”  Is this fluency?  I’m not sure but I think we’re getting closer.

I had a comment the other day about my paintings. “You don’t just paint dogs, you build entire worlds.”

Well, I guess I do.  My particular type of mind is almost more suited to science than to art but I get distracted by beauty…and I can’t help it.  I’ve been scratching and scribbling on paper from my earliest memories.  My father kept a pile of newsprint in my closet so I would draw on that and not on everything else.

I build worlds for the dogs but the worlds are bits and pieces that I collect, images and shapes that are gathered, separated, taken apart and then reconstructed into my paintings.

I often stop on my daily walks in the woods and wonder at a small patch of forest that is perfect.  And I realize that everything in the forest is perfect, exactly as it is, as it has fallen there or grown over the season and as an artist I  can take any little piece and make a painting out of its parts.

Every dog has its world.  Each dog exists in nature perfectly as long as we allow them to.  That’s my job, to put the dog exactly in the world its supposed to be in, a world that only exists in my mind.  I often see the paintings in my mind completely finished just as I want them.  My task  is to bring them into the physical world.  Not that easy.

I am often asked about my painting technique.  I have given it the name “acrylic glaze” because this is the closest thing that I can think of to describe it.

Artists chose a specific medium because it feels right.  Chosing a medium and developing a technique is kind of like inventing your very own signature.  There are endless ways to use the same materials.  Artists are often identified by their technique.

Acrylic is a fascinating material because of its versatility.  You have tube acrylics, fluid acrylics, acrylic tints and dyes, acrylic mediums and grounds…and on and on and on.  All these different forms of the medium can be combined.  And you can apply them in any way you want…no rules here.  You just have to remember the same “fat over lean ” law that applies to oils.

I use acrylic more like water-color, building up thin layers.  The bottom layers can be vibrant and translucent.  By layering up I can leave areas open that let that early color come up from the bottom.  It can give a great feeling of depth to a surface.

When using oils, the artist corrects by ragging off or scraping off paint.  With acrylic the artist corrects by over painting.  Each method has its good points and more difficult points.  Which medium an artist choses depends upon their particular personality, feel of hand and ultimate goal.

Having spent many years wandering around the woods with dogs, training dogs and living with dogs I’ve developed a visual sense of “dog character”.  Dogs show mood and intention by body posture and eye.  Actually humans do too but they often give it away verbally so we tend to pay less attention to it..  We call it body language.

"Ponder" All my paintings start with these tiny idea sketches.

I’ve never painted a portrait of just the head of the dog.  There is certainly nothing wrong with this and it has been done throughout the history of the genre, but I have always believed that the whole dog shows ….the whole dog.

Dogs age pretty much the same way that we do.  Their chins sag and their teeth become stained.  Their waists thicken and the gums maybe aren’t so attractive anymore. 

What becomes difficult when I am asked to paint an elderly dog is that the owners still see the young dog in the old dog.  This was a challenging  job because Jeb was sixteen when I met him.  My task wa to paint Jeb but try to recapture some of his youth.  I hope I succeeded.

If you are thinking about having a portrait done of your dog, don’t wait too long.

I’m not usually a Spaniel fan but these two dogs were something else.

Acrylic glaze on panel.  24″ X 20″  Private commission.