Be afraid. Be very afraid

As I wash dishes at the kitchen sink, my husband paces behind me, irritated. "Have you seen my keys?" he snarls, then huffs out a loud sigh and stomps from the room with our dog, Dixie, at his heels, anxious over her favourite human's upset.

In the past I would have been right behind Dixie. I would have turned off the tap and joined the hunt while trying to soothe my husband with bromides such as, "Don't worry, they'll turn up." But that only made him angrier, and a simple case of missing keys soon would become a full-blown, angst-ridden drama starring the two of us and our poor nervous dog. Now, I focus on the wet dish in my hands. I do not turn around. I do not say a word. I am using a technique I learned from a dolphin trainer.

I love my husband. He is well read, adventurous and does a hysterical rendition of a northern Vermont accent that still cracks me up after 12 years of marriage.

But he also tends to be forgetful, and is often tardy and mercurial. He hovers around me in the kitchen asking if I read this or that piece in the New Yorker when I am trying to concentrate on the simmering pans. He leaves wadded tissues in his wake. He suffers from serious bouts of spousal deafness but never fails to hear me when I mutter to myself on the other side of the house. "What did you say?" he will shout.

These minor annoyances are not the stuff of separation and divorce, but in sum they began to dull my love for Scott. I wanted - needed - to nudge him a little closer to perfect, to make him into a mate who might annoy me a little less, who would not keep me waiting at restaurants, a mate who would be easier to love.

So, like many wives before me, I ignored a library of advice books and set about improving him. By nagging, of course, which only made his behaviour worse: he would drive faster instead of slower; shave less frequently, not more; and leave his reeking bike garb on the bedroom floor longer than ever.

We went to a counsellor to smooth the edges off our marriage. She did not understand what we were doing there and complimented us repeatedly on how well we communicated. I gave up. I guessed she was right - our union was better than most - and resigned myself to stretches of slow-boil resentment and occasional sarcasm.

Then something magical happened. For a book I was writing about a school for exotic animal trainers, I started commuting from Maine on the east coast of America to California on the west, where I spent my days watching students do the seemingly impossible: teaching hyenas to pirouette on command, cougars to offer their paws for a nail clipping, and baboons to skateboard. I listened, rapt, as professional trainers explained how they taught dolphins to flip and elephants to paint. Eventually it hit me that the same techniques might work on that stubborn but lovable species, the husband.

The central lesson I learned from exotic animal trainers is that I should reward behaviour I like and ignore behaviour I don't. After all, you don't get a sea lion to balance a ball on the end of its nose by nagging. The same goes for the husband. Back at home, I began thanking Scott if he threw one dirty shirt into the hamper. If he threw in two, I would kiss him. Meanwhile, I would step over any soiled clothes on the floor without one sharp word, though I did sometimes kick them under the bed. But as he basked in my appreciation, the piles became smaller.

I was using what trainers call "approximations", rewarding the small steps toward learning a whole new behaviour. You cannot expect a baboon to learn to flip on command in one session, just as you cannot expect a husband to begin regularly picking up his dirty socks by praising him once for picking up a single sock. With the baboon, you first reward a hop, then a bigger hop, then an even bigger hop. With Scott the husband, I began to praise every small act every time - if he drove just 1mph slower, tossed one pair of boxers into the laundry basket, or was on time for anything.

I also began to analyse my husband the way a trainer considers an exotic animal. Enlightened trainers learn all they can about a species, from anatomy to social structure, to understanding how it thinks, what it likes and dislikes, what comes easily to it and what does not. For example, an elephant is a herd animal, so it responds to hierarchy. It cannot jump, but it can stand on its head. It is a vegetarian.

The exotic animal known as Scott is a loner, but an alpha male. So hierarchy matters, but being in a group doesn't so much. He has the balance of a gymnast, but moves slowly, especially when getting dressed. Skiing comes naturally, but being on time does not. He is an omnivore, and what a trainer would call food-driven.

Once I started thinking this way, I could not stop. At the school in California, I would be scribbling notes on how to walk an emu or have a wolf accept you as a pack member, but I would be thinking, "I can't wait to try this on Scott."

On a field trip with the students, I listened to a trainer describe how he had taught African crested cranes to stop landing on his head and shoulders. He did this by training the leggy birds to land on mats on the ground. This, he said, is what is called an "incompatible behaviour", a simple but brilliant concept. Rather than teach the cranes to stop landing on him, the trainer taught the birds something else, a behaviour that would make the undesirable behaviour impossible. The birds could not alight on the mats and his head simultaneously.

At home, I came up with incompatible behaviours for Scott to keep him from crowding me while I cooked. To lure him away from the stove, I piled up parsley for him to chop or cheese for him to grate at the other end of the kitchen island. Or I would set out a bowl of crisps and salsa across the room. Soon I had done it: no more Scott hovering around me while I cooked.

I followed the students to SeaWorld San Diego, where a dolphin trainer introduced me to least reinforcing syndrome (LRS). When a dolphin does something wrong, the trainer does not respond in any way. He stands still for a few beats, careful not to look at the dolphin, and then returns to work. The idea is that any response, positive or negative, fuels a behaviour. If a behaviour provokes no response, it typically dies away. In the margins of my notes I wrote, "Try on Scott!"

It was only a matter of time before he was again tearing around the house searching for his keys, at which point I said nothing and continued with what I was doing. It took a lot of discipline to maintain my calm, but results were immediate and stunning. His temper fell far shy of its usual pitch and then waned like a fast-moving storm. I felt as if I should throw him a mackerel. At the sink, I held steady. Then, sure enough, all went quiet. A moment later, he walked into the kitchen, keys in hand, and said calmly, "Found them." Without turning, I replied, "Great, see you later." Off he went with our much-calmed pup.

After two years of exotic animal training, my marriage is far smoother, my husband much easier to love. I used to take his faults personally; his dirty clothes on the floor were an affront, a symbol of how he did not care enough about me. But thinking of my husband as an exotic species gave me the distance I needed to consider our differences more objectively.

I adopted the trainers' motto, "It's never the animal's fault". When my training attempts failed, I did not blame Scott. Rather, I brainstormed new strategies, thought up more incompatible behaviours and used smaller approximations. I dissected my own behaviour, considered how my actions might inadvertently fuel his. I also accepted that some behaviours were too entrenched, too instinctive to train away. You cannot stop a badger from digging, and you cannot stop my husband from losing his wallet and keys.

Professionals talk of animals that understand training so well they eventually use it back on the trainer. My animal did the same. When the training techniques worked so beautifully, I could not resist telling my husband what I was up to. He was not offended, just amused. As I explained the techniques and terminology, he soaked it up - far more than I realised.

Last autumn, firmly in middle age, I learned that I needed braces. They were not only humiliating, but also excruciating. For weeks my gums, teeth, jaw and sinuses throbbed. I complained frequently and loudly. Scott assured me that I would become used to all the metal in my mouth. I did not.

One morning, as I launched into yet another tirade about how uncomfortable I was, Scott just looked at me blankly. He did not say a word or acknowledge my rant in any way, not even with a nod. I quickly ran out of steam and started to walk away. Then I realised what was happening, and I turned and asked, "Are you giving me an LRS?"

Silence.

"You are, aren't you?"

He finally smiled, but his LRS had already done the trick. He had begun to train me.

[Just a side-comment, one doesn't f***ing "commute from Maine to California on the west"]