Saturday, May 30, 2009

Barking with Elly and Farley

Naturally the first thing I do when I see Elly Patterson trying to discipline a dog, is to see how long it takes me to find the correct way to do it on the internet. As it turns out, there are many, many websites that tell how to deal with a barking dog. This is one I found particularly amusing as it matches the joke with today’s new-run in For Better or For Worse perfectly:

Use a command such as NO BARK or ENOUGH and reinforce it with praise as soon as the dog quiets down. Use a firm but not yelling voice and again, yelling can sound like barking and make the situation worse as you are barking as well! Show the dog that you really like it when he is quiet. Just shouting NO can sound like a bark and get your dog even more exited and barky!

In fact this matches it so perfectly, I could easily see this strip being used in a dog training class as an example of how not to train a dog to stop barking.

“Look at this comic strip, class. What is Elly doing right? What is Elly doing wrong?”

The wrong is pretty obvious – no consistent command, grabbing his mouth, no reward when Farley finally stops barking and of course the shouting. On the right side though, Elly does not play her usual passive role of letting the dog bark for a long time and growling thought balloons at him, before finally getting up to try and stop him. She gets right over there to deal with the problem, and after the whole thing is over, she realizes one of things she did wrong in trying to train Farley.

This shockingly good behaviour for Elly Patterson. Farley is actually acting like a dog and Elly is acting like a human, albeit a human who doesn't know how to properly stop a dog from barking. Training a dog involves repetition and if Farley is inclined to bark, it will take several iterations before he finally gets it. The single most astonishing thing about the strip for me however is that for once, the wordplay in the final panel of the strip actually works.

2 Comments:

Blogger DreadedCandiru2 said...

I may be off base here but I think that Beth had a hand in the creation of this one; she, as a veterinarian, knows how it is that well-meaning dumb people like the Pattersons fail their pets. It was probably very easy to get Lynn to see how plausible this was so we should hope that she tries this more often. It's almost as if she's auditioning for the part of writer for that scenario you suggested.

10:21 PM  
Blogger howard said...

dreadedcandiru2,

You could very well be right. The strip has the feel of being written by someone who has actual experience taking care of a dog. So many of the Farley strips in the last year did not have that feeling. If this is the influence of Beth on the strip, then I hope she continues that influence, at least for the ones involving Farley.

4:17 AM  

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