How do you get paid? 

Does your boss stagger into your office groaning under the weight of fourteen cabbages, a lemon, six rolls of toilet paper, a jar of coffee, a few cans of petrol and twenty kilos of dog food? 

Probably not.

When you pay your bond, do you deliver three chickens, a pair of shoes and ten metres of fencing to the bank manager?

I doubt it.

I would love to deliver a cow, four goats, six snoek and a ton of good-quality, well-rotted manure to the Receiver of Revenue to pay my taxes.

But somehow I don’t think it would work.

So how do you get paid?

You probably get given a piece of paper.  Or possibly a lot of pieces of paper.  You work your butt off for an entire month, and you get a piece of paper in exchange.  And you keep on doing it!  Are you nuts?

Possibly not.

(Note: this article was written for a magazine called Dobe Capers during a period when I was the consulting behaviourist for the Dobermann Club of the Cape, so it refers a lot to problems training Dobermanns.  The theory which it attempts to explain is, however, completely relevant to other breeds, and in fact other species!)

If you are reading this article, you have probably trained (or tried to train) a Dobermann at some stage in your life.  Perhaps it was easy and enjoyable.  On the other hand, perhaps it was a constant battle of wills, a battle between you and a powerful, intelligent, strong-willed animal who loved you, but did not particularly want to do what you wanted him to, and resisted all (or most) of your efforts to make him.  Anyone who has been towed along by a Dobe supposedly obeying the command to “heel” will, I think, recognise himself or herself in this description.