Pets And Training

A lot of things happen to me on our stairwell. Richard has grabbed me and fucked me there a few times, and photographed me (including I think the first pic of me posted on this blog, right before a spanking, and one in my “wiggle dress”). A couple of days ago we were walking down it, having a discussion about my collar, and I got in trouble right there on the stairs (Richard is planning to write about this, so I won’t say anything else about it.)

Anyway. I was walking down the stairs yesterday morning, to make coffee and get the newspaper for Richard. The dogs were tumbling around me, and I thought about how I have trained them. And I realized that Richard has trained me in exactly the same way.

The dog I had before these dogs was hell on wheels. It wasn’t Trixie’s fault; she was a breed that is specialized for specific tasks and is very high energy. I “clicker trained” her and trained her to both voice command and hand signals. Which required a lot of reading and a lot of practice and a lot of frustration. At the end, I had a dog who behaved well on a lead when there were no other stimuli around. Otherwise all bets were off. I never felt connected to her. I would look in her eyes and there was crazy there. She did exactly what she was told to do when she was told to do it, but that was it.

When I got the first of the dogs we have now, I was too busy to train her right away (except to a lead, “come” and “sit”, of course). I’m so glad now that I didn’t. Five years later, she responds immediately to any command I give, on leash or off, other stimuli or no. (This isn’t completely true; if Richard has his camera out she will not leave his side because she loves the reflection from the lens.)

The other dogs, who I have not had for as long, are exactly the same. I don’t know if they learned from her or if it’s because we are almost inseparable. The latter is what I want to talk about in re Richard’s training of me.

Richard isn’t into protocols and training regimes and lots of rules. Sometimes I think it would be fun to have more of that kind of dynamic (it’s sexy!) but mostly I’m glad. We’re both busy people and clearly don’t need all that for me to feel submissive to him, and him to feel ownership of me. However, we have both noticed that I obey him instinctively and often even anticipate his needs and wishes. And my obedience and anticipation are getting stronger and more pronounced with time.

What I realized on the stairs (I finally get to this – jeez) is that: the dogs obey me immediately and completely at a level that I never expected, especially without explicit training. They know me and what I want and need because they are with me constantly and pay close attention to me at all times. I know them for the same reasons. And I let them know what I want while at the same time trusting them not to need the uber-control of clickers and hand signals and all that. I respect their dog nature, if you will.

Similarly, I am able to obey and serve Richard at a level that (he tells me) he never experienced before, even though he has been involved with someone who saw herself as a high protocol slave (I realized as I wrote this that you could compare her quite aptly with Trixie). I think that’s because we are always together and I am always paying close attention to him (as he does me). He doesn’t choose to micro-manage me. He tells me what he wants, and then trusts me to get it right (Richard says that I should add “and he gets cranky when I don’t” lol).  He respects my slave nature (grin).

This post was a lot trickier to write than I expected! We have a big day ahead of us, so I’ll stop now. I’m keen to see what others’ experiences have been with this. How do you trade off explicit training/ control with simply knowing your Master/Owner/Daddy or partner?

xoAmy