How My Co-founder's Dog Boosted My Productivity | Hacker News Reader

How My Co-founder's Dog Boosted My Productivity

wadefoster.net

102 pointsWadeF43 comments

You make some great points, but don't forget that Tuna was already trained...if you are to get a dog, or shall I say puppy, the training process will take a lot of dedication--this means time AND effort. Remember, the puppy won't come with a routine...you have to get him/her into a routine--yes, it sounds nice but it's not easy. Having a startup and raising a puppy together seem like a pretty tough combination, especially if this will be your first puppy. Once the pup is trained, though, you'll reap all the benefits as you did with Tuna--you just have to be very very dedicated during that first month.

I don't mean to discourage you at all. I've had 2 dogs, pretty much raised the one by myself, and don't regret it at all but I did want to give that insight so it doesn't go over your head! If you have any specific questions about what goes into raising a puppy, feel free to reply here or email me at aashayk@gmail.com.

You don't have to go through the process of imprinting a routine from scratch with a rescue dog, do you?

That really depends on the rescue dogs' condition.

Generally their condition is decent. Good shelters tend to only re-home dogs that score well in sociability and training.

A rescue dog — unless maybe really, really old — needs to be challenged constantly. And by challenged, I mean — these dogs are/were rescue dogs for a reason. :)

Challenges include games and tasks, and all that. These dogs need "work" to feel alive.

Your talking about police/fire/ems dogs, but they are talking about saved dogs from bad situations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_dog

My bad. Language barrier! :)

I believe you're talking about "search and rescue" dogs. The others were talking about dogs that had been rescued from abusive or neglectful owners.

In any case, you are correct :)

Unless his co-founder helps him a bit by letting Tuna stay with him and his puppy for a while. Puppies learn much faster when they have an older dog around so that they can copy their behavior.

I have an English Cocker Spaniel that once gave birth to three beautiful puppies. What had taken me 1.5 years to teach to their mother took me virtually no time to teach them.

It was incredible. And also, a lot of fun! :)

Excellent points, esp. "Puppies learn much faster when they have an older dog around so that they can copy their behavior."

I am in the midst of this right now. I have a 4 y.o chocolate lab and my wife surprised me with a chocolate puppy for Christmas. The 4 year old is amazing, one of the most calm dogs I've ever had - and the puppy is picking it up fast. Sure, she definitely wants to be up early, rough house more often, and is still learning - but she is unbelievably more calm than other 5 month old puppies I've experienced.

I think you're correct in saying that the training experience will require a high transaction cost and level of dedication.

But I think there is a correlation there with many of the points OP makes in his note. The dog won't train him/herself so you must dedicate yourself to some sort of schedule in order to reap any progress; if you won't, who will? This is well aligned with the first point OP makes.

I found the early period of my dog's training to be, by far, the most rewarding both in intrinsic and extrinsic manifestations. I now have a very well behaved dog and I've seen numerous latent benefits in my health and well-being as well.

Ill concede that the most important change I've seen in myself has been a decrease in selfishness and an overall increase in empathy. I am often doing things for my dog simply because I put myself in his shoes (e.g. making sure to take him out right before he goes to sleep, because I know how uncomfortable it is to try to sleep with a full bladder). This seems juvenile and seems like it should appeal to anyone with common sense, and it probably does, but for me it was an important lesson that translated universally across my current life experience. A lesson I likely wouldn't have learned without my dog to teach me.

I love this, but I was a little disappointed it wasn't a joke article. Read the right (wrong) way that title has the vibe of a sarcastic HN-bait parody. Maybe the immense laughter I got from this a few months ago seeded the thought of HN spoofing rather deep in me! http://us2.campaign-archive1.com/?u=193b767bbb3b0eb0d949d592...

"Things I Learned Writing an HN Parody"... A bit recursive, aren't we?

Pretty much the whole thing was gold IMO :)

Discussion at the time, here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4621731.

I was seriously considering going to pastebin and writing up "How brushing my teeth boosted my productivity". Maybe also add a follow-up article on dental-driven-development.

I will attest to the fact that Tuna is an excellent pomodoro style timer. Every couple hours it's time to go outside, regardless of your mood or state of mind.

I used to worry that I was getting sidetracked at inopportune times, but I've learned busy moments are great times to step away because you know right where to pick up when you return.

YMMV of course.

In regards to getting outside, don't do it regardless of your mood, do it because of it. Getting depression under control seems to be helped with a regular stint of outside. I don't know why, but give me a tool, preferably power driven, and I'm sorted. I might be mentally tired but Im rested and relaxed and will sleep.

My West Highland Terrier is nearly 2 years old. We got him at 8 weeks and the first 6 months he took over our lives. When a pup he needed to go outside every hour, on the hour, 24 hours a day. Once he got past that stage it was time for puppy classes and training and constantly making sure he was behaving etc. We were exhausted for 6 months and this was the first 6 months of founding http://www.radfan.com. Now he is older he still needs lot of walking, playing with and generally looking after BUT I wouldn't have it any other way.

He is awesome, every day is the best day in the world for him. He's great to have around during the day and taking him for a walk and playing with him are the highlights of our day. He makes us laugh, he gives us something else to focus on apart from work and best of all he is free entertainment (if you exclude pet insurance, food and toys).

When you buy a puppy you are buying the potential of what that dog could be, it is down to you to train and instil the correct behaviours in him. I think dog training (done correctly, clicker training with treats and positive renforcement) aligns very well with a technical/science mindset as I have found it really fun trying to debug why my dog does X when he should do Y and how to modify that in some way.

If you can, adopt a dog though. It's rubbish that old dogs can't learn new tricks and so many dogs need new homes and more often than not, even with the most disobedient dog you can still skip the house training bit as that tends to be sorted unless they have had a horrific start in life.

Just a generic #meto on this. We've got a couple of dogs (in fact - three ATM since we're caring for my partner's parents dog too currently).

Nothing unsticks the brain better than a three or four mile walk. And pooches force you to have 'em. So you don't even have to figure out that your brain is stuck.

I've lost count of the number of occasions that I've been going "yeah, yeah okay - I'll take you out" frustrated that it's taking me away from work - only to realise 10m later while outside that what I was doing was dumb and there was a vastly better approach.

I work at home a fair amount and don't have a dog, but I do have a needy cat. He's indoor/outdoor (I have an office in my detached garage) and has the inate ability to realize I need to step away and take a break.

When a hard problem comes up or I am super annoyed about a problem, he's there to encourage me to play with him. Timely breaks that reset your sense of well being can help a lot.

The one thing about dogs vs cats in the work place, many people seem more allergic to cats than dogs (and cats generally don't travel as well).

My experience has been similar, having a dog gets me up on a saturday when I might have blown it off and slept in, and forces me to take periodic breaks which keeps the blood flowing.

Our cats are pretty effective at waking me up - almost exactly as in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0ffwDYo00Q

[They leave other people alone as they know I am the Keeper of the Catfood].

> How My Co-founder's Dog Boosted My Productivity

Well, this is some straight up @shit_hn_says material right there.

That's because you got a 10x dog, however. You should only bring on Alpha dogs with lots of Xs, or you might kill your company.

I'm guessing you don't have kids!

Taking care of another living thing can be wondrous for the self in so many ways!

Kids take up a lot more time than dogs. They prob don't increase productivity either :)

This is a great article & I'm a firm believer. But as some have commented, understand that this puppy will not come with a routine - you'll have to program it. He/she will be predisposed to certain times & activities, and you'll have to compromise on some & break others. I mentioned elsewhere in the comments that I have a new 5 month old chocolate lab... for the first 60 days, I rarely had quality sleep more than 3 hours, was constantly cleaning up messes, and was generally highly stressed/ borderline depressed due to my startup stress + the new puppy stress.

Be aware - I believe in all of the benefits & more, but they do come with some hefty initial costs.

I love the energy that dogs bring to the office - we have anywhere from 2 to 5 in the office at a time, and sometimes it can be a bit hectic - but the positive vibe that a little dog coming by you for a quick pet keeps me going through the day.

I miss having a dog.. I've been considering volunteering to take my elderly neighbour's dog for walks every evening.

Another data point. A dog in the office destroyed my productivity and shot my stress up through the roof for the best part of a year. Loud animal, barking all the time.

Dogs in the office aren't always a good thing and are about as far from a professional working environment as you can get.

We've got two dogs at turntable.fm: my chihuahua, Miss Cleo, and a corgi puppy named Newton. Having them around is probably one of the best things about working in our office. They're both well-behaved (although Miss Cleo does bark at the food delivery people to let them know she's in charge), and they add a lot to the fun atmosphere of the office. I also am extremely grateful that I can bring her to work with me each day, because I always felt bad about leaving her at home at past jobs, especially since startup employees tend to work long hours. The relief of not having to worry about leaving her at home actually adds substantially to my own productivity.

Pretty cool. If a pet can help become more productive, every startup should get one ;)

I have a blind dog that we rescued. Some days he decides he's going to be great. On those days it's wonderful walking. Frank Lyod Right once said that he doesn't design in the studio, he just draws there. I feel something similar when I'm on a walk with my dog on a good day. Of course good days are rare. You can take the dog out of the street but you can't take the street out of the dog. He's extremely stubborn, which leads to frustrating walks. It can be hard to think about code when you're fighting with your dog.

Have you tried clicker training him? I highly recommend it. It's been super useful to me so far in just the past few days I've been using it.

I like to think of dog training as programming an emotional computer. There are lots of similarities (breaking up problems into smal steps for one) and the payoff feels just as great.

I was extremely sceptical about dogs, having owned cats most of my life. 6 years ago we got a dog (Working line Cocker). Initial 6 months were hard, well she did eat the kitchen floor, but have to say she really is a positive influence for the family as a whole.

If you work from home then I would strongly recommend you get one.

If you work from home that is. Most people work in an office in the city, where dogs arent allowed, or if they are allowed, going for a walk with the dog in the middle of the city isnt exactly fun unless you count collecting poop as fun and relaxing.

as one who is owned by a dog ... I will categorize this post under the 'bleeding obvious' epiphany ... cue 3 mths from now a new startup whose main product is 'puppies for productivity'.

really folks, I mean this in the best possible way ... get a life (and a dog).

Yeah I actually had the same exact experience.

I guess you'd have to weigh the costs of a dog vs your productivity gains in dollars.

Dogs certainly bring a lot more intangible benefits other than productivity gains. If you're getting a dog purely for productivity it'd probably be best if you didn't.

That's really not what you should be thinking about when considering bying a pet.

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