Teaching an old dog new technology

By SHEILA STOLL

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 27, 2000

It's a beautiful day, but I'm sitting inside. I'm in obedience school. It's where old dogs learn new tricks. I've just been dragged, kicking and screaming, onto the information highway. (My Mommy always told me not to play in traffic, so what am I doing here?)

Sometimes old dogs have to lose bad habits. I've spent years beside this particular highway, barking at those who whiz by, including my children and grandchildren. I've been known to try vainly to chase down the technology and nip at it, but that's not good enough.

So today I'm sitting here, being taught how to behave so I can survive in traffic.

I have two trainers: my in-house genius of a husband and this machine that is clearly much smarter, more agile and sarcastic than I. I'm grasping an erratic mouse, hoping for electronic results. My fondness for rodents decreases with every moment.

My husband has set up the electronic equivalent of papers on the floor for my training. He has put only a few options on my menus so he can clean up "oopses." If he's in the other room doing something else and I have an "oops," soon a soothing, deceptively calm female voice tells me of my impending doom if I don't get my mouse under control NOW!

The equipment I'm being trained on is expensive and intimidatingly large. It has symbols and initials on the keys and screen that are as baffling as cuneiform to me. I dare not touch those, and God help me if my wild mouse gets near one and my trembling finger clicks it.

There is a "help" place where I'm permitted, even encouraged, to go when things get dicey, such as when bewildering things begin to happen on the screen, and I can't find the screen door or window or whatever.

I once had a problem with a young dog who enjoyed pawing on and leaping through screen doors. I know how she felt.

There are icons. I always thought that icons were larger-than-life figures, people or symbols universally understood, despised or adored, that conveyed meaning by their very existence. I have zero adoration for or even recognition of most of the icons before me. One clearly is a trash can. All dogs are intrigued by trash cans, and I like that one. I'm becoming an iconoclast.

I would love to go out and play, take a nice walk along the canal or go to the park with the other dogs and their people. My husband/trainer did bring me a treat: A glass of wine has a positive effect.

Every now and then, my other trainer, the one with the large, unwinking eye and the deceptively calm female voice, jerks my chain and tells me to heel. Why doesn't it ask me to play dead? I know how to do that.

I remember believing, as a young bride, that the most complex problem in the world was getting dinner on the table with all its elements hot and neither overdone nor underdone. With experience, I was able to overcome the soggy pasta problem and defeat the crispy pork chops dilemma. I am now confronted with a level of complexity that dwarfs pork chops.

I am trying to learn these new tricks, but the look on my husband/trainer's face registers his understanding that I am an old dog. All I can do is look apologetic, whimper and scratch on the screen door.

Write to Sheila Stoll at PMB #309, 7404 E Chaparral Road, Scottsdale, AZ 85250.

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