LAKEWOOD, Ohio — The last time we saw Oscar Wilde McCool we were about to embark on Operation Oscar.
“He’s not giving you a hard time. He’s having a hard time.”
Wise words from Chris Ramsay, trainer and owner of the Shaker Hound Academy in Shaker Heights. Oscar spent two weeks boarding and training with Ramsay last month. To say 3News' Stephanie Haney was having a hard time with one-year-old Oscar, is an understatement. She had a long wish list for Ramsay, hoping her little buddy would return home, not a different dog, but a lot more refined.
“Usually when we have issues with a dog, it’s not solved in two weeks, but we can polish those corners down and give you the tools, as the owner, to start finishing it,” Ramsay explained.
Ramsay certainly did a lot of polishing with 14 full days of “Training Between the Ears,” his style of training that focuses on rewarding good behavior with treats.
“We use a ton of food in the beginning with the full realization that eventually we’re going to wean that out. Right? Because we don’t have to pay him forever,” Ramsay said.
And interrupting, let’s call them, undesirable decisions, Haney hopes.
“You can mold and fix and create new behaviors with food and rewards and people and toys. You could do so many things I never thought possible until I learned this system. It frees the owner from always having to tell them 'Sit down,' 'wait,' 'leave it,' because then you're just like you are the police all the time. I like a little bit more work up front and then a little work later because I'm a little lazy that,” Ramsay explained.
Oscar behaved like a reformed dog. Haney was understandably skeptical about what would happen when Oscar the Wilde Man finally came back home.
“Everybody has different expectations of what they want with their dog. Some people want this level. Some people want them to just not be 'a jerk.' To me it’s baseline stuff: Not jumping on people, not barking at anything that moves,” Ramsay said.
So how did Operation Oscar go?
Haney’s list of biggest complaints included Oscar’s penchant for eating toilet paper, climbing on coffee tables, jumping up on countertops and jumping up on everyone who comes through the front door. There was also the matter of a leashed Oscar not dragging Haney down the street while trying to chase cars.
The results? Oscar was much better behaved, leaving Haney impressed.
But his work is not done yet.
“What is the biggest mistake you see people make when they’re trying to train a dog?” she asked Ramsay.
“Two things: Their timing is off, and their consistency is terrible. If you’re consistent over two to three weeks on any given behavior and you’re consistent with rewarding for all the stuff that you like – and doing other stuff for the things you don’t like, they start to get it. It doesn’t happen in 20 minutes. But in 20 days, you can have a serious impact on the dog as is in shaping the behaviors that you want,” Ramsay said.
Make no mistake, Oscar still has work to do, but Haney says things are looking up.
“What grade would you give him?” she asked Ramsay.
“If I do my job right, he gets an A. When he starts failing and I give him Fs, I’m not giving him Fs, I’m giving myself Fs because I put him in too difficult a situation."
As time goes on, Ramsay says Oscar will learn to make good decisions in harder scenarios.