Torque’s a strange little Frenchie

I’ve been hiding a secret. Torque is a weird little dog.
He doesn’t jump up on stuff. Not chairs, or couches. Not even the bed. He doesn’t even follow Teddy’s naughty ways – kitchen chair to kitchen table to kitchen counter. We’ve learned to keep all edibles off the counter, but not because of Torque.
It took Torque a long time to learn to climb stairs. He’ll climb up if the “steps” are small. And he’ll jump down from anywhere – recklessly, if I don’t watch him.
I’ve asked other trainers I know if they had any ideas to teach him to jump up onto things. All suggested trying to gradually increase the height of whatever I was asking him to jump on. And I tried. He’ll jump on two-inch things. And four. And six. And eight. Then he’s done. I put his dinner dish on a platform measuring 10 inches high. He didn’t eat dinner. He sat there, looking at it, and whining. Or put his front paws on it and tried to grab it. But it never occurred to Torque to jump up to get it.
As everyone with more than one dog can attest, dogs do learn from each other. And almost every evening our family room becomes a racecourse, with Booker, Tango, and Teddy racing around, floor to couch, around and around. And Torque follows along – always on the floor.
It’s a bit unsettling for me. I always planned to do all kinds of performance stuff with Torque, including Obedience, Rally, and Agility. All of which include jumping, to some extent.
And he will jump over stuff that’s lower than his eye level. So he’s doing the jumping I need him to do for our activities.
So I’m going to try to stop worrying about it. At this point, the only consequence of Torque not jumping up is that the other dogs in class might laugh at him. I can deal with that.

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