I’m not the type to give my dogs free rein over everything. They have rules, they have boundaries, certain privileges need to be earned – and can easily be revoked! I call myself a benevolent dictator around the house.

Despite that, the idea of choice for dogs is a fascinating one for me. I think it goes hand in hand with good training. You train, build habits, create emotional responses, build value and eventually give more freedom and choice. My end goal is a dog who is a willing, thinking, almost equal partner. I mean, they’re still a dog and I still have the final say. But in choosing a dog for a partner, I am choosing them because they’re able to bring something to the table that I cannot. In search work, it’s the nose. And I need to trust them to make the right choice with their nose and alert me accordingly. Look for human scent, not rabbits. Ignore where the coyotes have peed, don’t investigate it.

In order to do the job, I need a partner who can actively choose to ignore the millions of scents out there that I cannot see and focus on the one that I have built value for.

I usually don’t see my dogs ignoring scent because it’s not often something that I can visualize. But the other day I saw it. I was working a search problem with Kolt at training. He was about 100 yards away when a small bird took off right in front of him a flew low to the ground. His prey drive kicked in automatically and took off toward the bid. And two seconds later, while I was still processing what he was doing and hadn’t yet told him to get back to work, he abruptly stopped and went right back to searching. He redirected himself and made a choice to do his job over the instant gratification of chasing a bird.

Let that sink in a minute. A dog, on his own, actively choosing delayed gratification and it’s job over something else that they would enjoy (while it’s something I don’t encourage, he occasionally chases birds in our off leash hikes around home).

These dogs amaze me every day. And I’m working to allow for more choice in other areas of life.

Now, if I could only get them to choose to stop rolling in poop…