"We were happy," she said, "but, like a lot of couples, we had a lot of little snags in our relationship."
Scott tended to run red lights (he called them "long yellows"), eat the last cookies ("I thought you were done"), race around searching for his wallet and keys and leave stinky bike clothes on the bathroom floor.
Adopting the mindset of a trainer, Sutherland decided to stop taking his behavior personally, as if it were a swipe at their relationship.
Since it's important for trainers to know their species, she looked at him dispassionately and saw that many of his annoying habits grew from fundamental traits. His dreaminess is what made him a good writer. His diminished sense of smell well, that contributed to his heedless attitude toward his bike clothes. She'd have to work on that.
Hold the sarcasm. Opportunity knocked the day Sutherland noticed that the sweaty reek was gone from the bathroom - and so were Scott's bike clothes. Jeez, did he actually put them in the washing machine?
As he bounded past her down the stairs, she reinforced his good behavior - "Thank you," she called - and ignored the musty, wet spot on the carpet where he'd dumped his clothes in the first place. No sarcasm, no cracks.
Soon Sutherland turned her positive techniques on her mother, her neighbors, her dogs and even imperfect strangers.
When a postal clerk snapped at her for labeling a package incorrectly, Sutherland didn't snap back, apologize or flash an ingratiating smile - all of which would have reinforced the clerk's undesirable behavior.
Instead, she blankly, quietly, fixed the label. Her lack of response, known as a "least reinforcing scenario," was designed to signal wrong behavior without reinforcing it. In fact, Sutherland said, her lack of response seemed to throw the clerk, who ended by wishing Sutherland a good day. Only then did Sutherland look her in the eye and say, "You, too."
"It's the fundamental idea that any kind of response could fuel a behavior," Sutherland said.
Yelling is a case in point. Though it's designed to punish bad behavior, it may do just the opposite.
"In the human world," Sutherland said, "some people don't mind being yelled at. I know people who seem to relish it."
Though Sutherland doesn't recommend you flaunt your clever training methods, it turns out Scott is a highly perceptive animal.
"Are you shamuing me?" he'd ask when Sutherland failed to react to one of his surefire annoying behaviors.
It became a family joke, and "in pretty short order," Sutherland said, "he was doing it with me."
Now when she whines he ignores her, instead of trying to offer solutions that just irritate her because they interfere with what she really wants to do - whine.
In the end, you have to wonder who's being trained here. To Sutherland it's no contest.
"I'm the one who changed," she said. "I changed my behavior. He's still an individual with free will, and how he responds is up to him."
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