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   Jag, the terrier, is an old dog. Nobody is quite sure how old he is but he has lived with us for over ten years and was several years old when we got him. He reminds us of a grouchy old man. He does what he wants when he wants. At times, this can be more than a little annoying. There have been times when I have been afraid his stubborn independent streak would get him into trouble.

   Being a terrier, he knows he is the toughest animal in the world. He is convinced he can win a fight with anything. In his heyday, he could fight a raccoon and win. The last couple of years, he has slowed down physically but not mentally. He still hunts and thinks he can win any fight, but it takes a few days for his sore old muscles and joints to recover.

   In his prime, he was almost exclusively an outside dog. On all but the coldest of days, he preferred to sleep on the porch and guard his domain. In the last year or so, he has chosen to sleep in his bed in the heated and cooled garage at night. This is fine with me as I do not think he would fair well fighting a raccoon or coyote by himself in the middle of the night. The conflict we have is deciding when it is time to go to the garage. I think I should decide when he comes in. He thinks the decision should be entirely up to him. If he is not ready to call it a night when I decide, he will completely ignore me. He may wander off into the nearby timber and go hunting or stand just out of reach and stare at me. He might be old and slow, but so am I. It is impossible to catch him if he does not want to be caught. Since no amount of foul language or threats work, I decided to resort to the positive reinforcement psychology. Perhaps I could teach an old dog a new trick.

   Each night when it was time for Jag to go to bed, I would go to the door and call “Treat.” He is a sucker for treats. I repeated this process for a couple of weeks and Jag got to the point he would come running to go in the garage when I yelled for him. At a point, I decided it was time he could go to bed without being bribed with a treat. The first night I tried without the treat was cold and windy. I knew he was ready to come inside. I opened the garage door and called. He came running as fast as his little old legs would carry him and stopped just short of coming inside. He looked at my hands for a treat and not seeing one, refused to come in. I can be as stubborn as he can. I shut the door, leaving him outside, and went to bed. It took a couple of minutes for him to make it around the house where he sat below the bedroom window and barked. One bark every thirty seconds will assure nobody will fall asleep.

   Positive that he had learned his lesson, I got up, went through the garage, and called Jag. He came running to the garage and stopped just short of coming in when he noticed I had no treat. He would not budge. I shut the door and went back to bed. This time, he was back under our bedroom window in no time. After his second bark, I got up, got a treat, and let the obnoxious little dog in for the night.

   Dog psychology does work, and you can teach an old dog new tricks. He has learned how to get a treat for doing what he wanted to do anyway. He now just automatically gets a treat every night.

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