Born to Bark

by Stanley Coren

  “I know who I am, and who I am with, and that is enough! You should be mortified by that performance. Aren’t you the least bit bothered by what happened?”

  I tried to explain, “Joannie, this was our first real competition. You can’t expect a true novice at the game to start out with a championship performance. Besides that, I don’t think that I did anything particularly wrong, and Flint was just being a terrier and a playful, friendly dog. Nobody was hurt, and the only loss is that I paid a fee to compete and failed to qualify. We’ll do better next time, and if not the next time, then the time after. Flint is still young and has plenty of time to improve his training and get better.”

  “Next time?” There was a note edging toward panic in her voice. “After that disgraceful performance, there is going to be a next time? Doesn’t it bother you to know that your dog is a time bomb? I can’t take this. I will never go to a dog show to watch you compete again!” She crossed her hands over her chest, slumped in her seat. I knew better than to continue the conversation.

  In my pocket was Flint’s score sheet. Out of the possible 200 points representing a perfect score my dog had earned 30. That was for his perfect recall exercise. He had managed to fail every other exercise. Later that evening, when Joan was soaking in the bathtub to calm down, I sat on the sofa sipping a large glass of bourbon. Flint was lying beside me. I unfurled his score sheet, held it up in front of him, and asked, “What do you think of that?”

  He opened his eyes and actually seemed to look at it. Then his silly voice said, “It could have been zero, you know. It was a brilliant recall, you must admit. Anyway, if the student has failed to learn, the teacher has failed to teach! You’re the psychologist and I’m a dog—figure it out!”

  I laughed quietly to myself, making sure that the bathroom door was still closed. I didn’t need Joan worrying about her husband apparently talking to himself.

  I leaned over and tousled Flint’s fur. “Thanks for the guidance,” I said. “I think there is plenty of work ahead for both of us.”

  I just didn’t know how much.

  CHAPTER 15

  KING SOLOMON’S RING

  Earning obedience titles simply gets you ribbons and certificates, no monetary or substantive gain, and although you can hang them on the wall, ribbons and certificates really impress nobody except your children, grandchildren, and perhaps fellow competitors. Millions of people can easily name professional football stars or Olympic medalists in various sports, but I doubt that 1 person in 10,000 can name the top competitors in dog obedience.

  Dog training for dog obedience trials, field trials, agility, or any of the dog sports is not a hobby but an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, or perhaps a fate. People who spend time training their dogs must do it. Those who do not do it consider it a distant cousin of coin collecting or building model airplanes, or perhaps a brother of recreational swimming or skiing. In their eyes it is something that we do to fill time or in lieu of watching television. The reality is different. The dog that you work with is not a thing or an activity, it is a living being with whom you have a relationship. The dog’s very existence in your home compels you to spend time interacting and training it. Working with the dog changes the nature and behavior of that dog and the nature of your relationship with it.

  I wanted to train Flint to do well in competition because I wanted to prove to myself that I was a good enough psychologist to train a difficult breed of dog. Another reason was to prove to Joan that my dog was not “an empty-headed, unresponsive, and uncooperative beast.” Flint was a handful, but he was also a happy, sweet little guy. He loved going to class and loved the busyness of weekend trials, of meeting new dogs and socializing with old friends. As I trained him, he did become more responsive—and of course it strengthened our bond. We both had fun.

  But perhaps the most important reason that I wanted to train Flint could be traced all the way back to why I had become a psychologist in the first place. To successfully train an animal (or a person) you must first figure out what is going on in his mind. At a deep emotional level I wanted to understand what my dog was thinking, feeling, and trying to communicate.

  When I was around 6 years of age, my maternal grandfather Jacob was listening to me babbling on about how I wanted to be able to talk to my beagle Skippy and have him talk back to me in a way I could understand. When I finished, my grandfather responded by lighting a cigar and telling me the story of King Solomon’s ring.

  “Most people don’t know it, but King Solomon didn’t have just one ring—he had three magic rings,” he told me. “One was made of finely crafted gold and guaranteed him victory over all of his nation’s enemies. The second ring was platinum and protected against djinni and evil spirits.

  “As a reward for his early good deeds and his promise to build a temple to God in Jerusalem, the Lord came to Solomon in a dream and offered him a gift of anything that he wanted for himself. Solomon answered that he wanted a ring that allowed him to communicate with animals and understand their thinking. The Lord instructed that it should be made of silver and marked with the king’s seal and the true name of God. To hold its magic, the maker of the ring had to start and complete it on one special night. The work on it couldn’t start before the moon rose in the sky, and it had to be finished before morning. Because it was made so quickly, it wasn’t as perfect as the other two and looked rough and unfinished. Yet this was the ring that Solomon most wanted.

  “When Solomon died, God took back the two fine rings to hold them until another king as wise and devout as Solomon would need them. Because the silver ring had been a personal gift to Solomon, God felt that it wasn’t right to take it back and so he hid the silver ring ‘in a house with many doors.’ They say that it’s still there, and a smart person who loves animals might be able to find it someday.”

  I desperately wanted Solomon’s silver ring, but the story suggested that Solomon’s ring was hidden and might be lost forever. Then one evening, not long after my grandfather told me the story, my parents were listening to a radio program on which Albert Einstein, then a professor at Princeton University, was being interviewed. I no longer recall the main substance of that interview, but I remember Einstein saying that “Science is a house with many doors.” Suddenly it was all clear to me. The folktale contained a secret code, and now I knew where King Solomon’s silver ring was hidden. I formulated my future plans then and there: I was going to be a scientist so that I could search the house with many doors and find the ring that allowed me to understand animals. I was not searching for a physical ring, but rather a ring of facts and principles that could be held in my mind that would help me to communicate and interpret the behavior of dogs.

  Whenever I am training a dog, I think about the tale of King Solomon’s ring and its effect on my life choices. Training often requires me to study my dog’s behavior closely and to try to interpret what he is thinking. Often these observations lead me to insights about canine behavior that had eluded me before. Of course, the mind-set of trying to understand is different from the mind-set of trying to control. Rather than a “dog trainer”—or as some have called me in the new vernacular, a “dog whisperer”—I view myself as merely a “dog watcher.”

  As I trained Flint seriously for competition, my observations of the feisty dog that I loved became another means of searching for the ring of understanding, much like the many animal behavior courses that I had taken and research that I had done in the library and in my own laboratory. Of course, there were also days when I felt that my little terrier was evidence that the pathway to King Solomon’s ring was not only lost but forever blocked and barricaded.

  Training for competition takes time, but except for the one evening each week that I spent in classes at the club, and weekends, when I would set aside a 20- or 30-minute session to work with Flint, we never had formal training sessions. Maybe I actually did, because training is not defined only by formal tim
e set aside to work with a dog. Sometimes when I was taking a break from writing or research, I might spend a few minutes working with him on an exercise, or perhaps, if we were watching TV and I was not completely involved in the program, I might get up and do a bit of training off to the side of the room so that we did not annoy Joan.

  Because my training sessions were brief and spontaneous, and because Flint was very motivated by food, I always had treats in my pocket, bits of dog kibble or broken dog biscuits. Who would have expected that these dog treats could have become a human relationship problem? Joan’s major household chore was taking care of our clothes, but, because she was also working, she was often in a hurry and would sometimes forget to check the pockets of my pants before throwing them into the washer. During washing the dog treats turned into a soggy pulp in my pockets, which the clothes dryer then baked into a concretelike substance that effectively sealed closed the pockets.

  When I tried to ask Joan to check the pockets in case I’d forgotten before putting them in the washer, it happened that she was having a bad day with Flint and was not in the mood to listen. Flint had extracted a ball of yarn from her knitting bag and, when she had tried to retrieve it (by running after him rather than calling him to her), he had decided that this was a great game and had run around the house until the ball of yarn had unraveled. Her response to me was, “I teach two dozen first-grade kids and I don’t need to give them treats or rewards every time they do something right.”

  I could have reminded her about the principles of reward-based learning, or noted that she was teaching school in order to earn a salary and would be quite offended if the Board of Education said they were no longer going to pay her for her services. But I wasn’t in the mood for an argument and it wouldn’t have changed her mind about my dog. So I gently flexed the pockets of my pants to reopen them, and then cleared out the debris while making a mental note to check my pockets more carefully before putting them in the laundry bin. I try to train my dogs in a nonconfrontational way, and I should at least try to interact with the woman I love in the same mild, calm manner.

  Training Flint to do things was not difficult as long as I did not require robotlike precision and reliability. Training Flint not to do things was another matter. He simply had too much energy and curiosity to stay in one place and not engage in random exciting activities. At obedience competitions, the difficult tasks for him were the group sit-stay and down-stay exercises. When he was a long distance from me Flint tended to fidget and eventually stand up and move across the room to me or try to socialize with other dogs.

  Standard training practices for these stationary exercises are based on the idea that the dog must become aware that any body movement is inappropriate after he gets the “Stay” command. I was taught to watch Flint’s behavior closely and anticipate his breaking from position. If I left him in a down position and he started to move his legs in or raise his rear end, I was to repeat the stay command (“using a firm but not threatening voice”). Or if he actually broke from his position, I would rush forward, return him to his position, and give the command to stay again.

  During the early stages of his training, in a typical 3-minute down-stay exercise, I would end up repeating the “Down! Stay!” commands three or four times as he made small twitches and movements. After a good deal of practice, we reached a point where Flint would remain in place for the whole time (although this was sometimes supported by sharp glares from me when he moved a paw or shifted position). The confidence of everyone in the club was buoyed by our progress, and they encouraged me to put Flint in another obedience trial.

  Never underestimate the ability of a clever dog to find a way to embarrass you in public and to make it look as if you had never spent more than a total of 5 seconds training him. At our next competition Flint had been doing remarkably well. His heeling on and off leash was fine and his recall exercise was spectacular. He did move his front legs a little bit when the judge came over to touch him on the stand exercise, but that would simply be some points lost, not a failure. Only the long sit and down remained.

  Wonder of wonders, Flint sat rock still for the full minute during the group sit test. Now only the long down for 3 minutes remained, and we would be one-third of the way toward earning him his first obedience title.

  I stood beside him and commanded, “Flint, down!” and he obediently dropped to the ground, assuming the lying position popular with statues of lions who grace entrances to many public buildings. “Stay!” I told him and then walked the 40 feet to the other side of the ring. I turned and he was still in position. I took a breath, thinking to myself, “This might really work.”

  Flint and I made eye contact and, to my dismay, he made a few movements with his front end. A judge might view them as a dog simply adjusting his position to make himself more comfortable, but these were almost always the precursors to Flint moving out of position. Had we been in the hall where my dog club trains, I would have immediately repeated the stay command to hold him in position, but in an actual obedience trial that would result in our failing immediately. So instead, I held my tongue and hoped that this really was merely an adjustment.

  Flint looked at me in a manner that caused me to hear his voice in my mind saying, “Hey, there! Aren’t you paying attention? Didn’t you see me move? Aren’t you supposed to say something?” So, to see whether he could get me to respond, Flint squiggled his body forward another inch or two. I held my breath and glanced at my wristwatch—still more than 2 minutes to go. I looked back across the ring; while my attention had been on reading the time, Flint had moved another few inches toward me and was looking inquiringly at me, waiting for me to do something. Now the pattern was set. Every 10 seconds or so, Flint would make that little swimming movement—never lifting his belly off the ground, but nonetheless inching ever closer to me. He would then pause to look at my face to see my response. Since I said nothing, he assumed that all was well and crept a few more inches toward me. Some of the ringside spectators giggled as they watched my dog swim along the ground.

  By the time the judge ordered, “Back to your dogs!” Flint was halfway across the ring. I stopped and stood beside him, effectively right in the middle of the ring, while all of the other handlers continued on to the far side. My little gray dog looked up and wagged his tail, and I could hear him saying, “Because you have such a clever dog, you don’t have to walk all the way across the ring like those other dog owners do!”

  Flint had swum halfway across the ring.

  Once we were outside the ring again, Shirley walked over and put her arm around me, “Well, look at it this way: he never actually got up.”

  In the remaining two trials that weekend, Flint repeated his land-swimming performance during the down-stay exercise. On the last trial a large knot of people had gathered in anticipation of a chuckle as they watched him fail. Perhaps Flint simply felt that his mission in life was to bring some additional laughter into the world.

  On a more sober note, Barbara Baker told me, “He’s too smart. He has become ‘ring-wise’ and he knows that in the actual show ring you won’t correct him. This may be a problem.” Her expression was serious, and she offered no immediate solution at that moment, which worried me a bit more.

  Solving Flint’s tendency to move in the sit and down-stay tests turned out to be an exercise in thinking like a dog. Flint did not hold his position in the ring because I did not correct him when he started to move as I did when we were practicing at home or in the club. So I needed some way to correct him without my direct intervention.

  The moment of insight came when I was in a store that sold sporting equipment and saw a spool of “shark line.” This is a heavy monofilament fishing line used to catch sharks or other heavy fish. It is transparent but can withstand being pulled by more than 100 pounds of tension. I purchased the shark line and cut a length of about 3 or 4 feet. I then attached a clip to each end. Afterward, before I placed Flint in a sit or a down and told him
to stay, I removed his leash, as usual, but now clipped the shark line onto his collar. The other end of the line had already been attached to a stationary object or, when we were outdoors, to a small stake that I drove into the ground. Now when Flint would break his position to move toward me, the tug of the line would correct him. I did not need to respond to every twitch that he made and only had to repeat the sit or down and stay command when he had moved far enough that the fishing line was tugging on his collar.

  This worked beautifully. Flint would start to move, get corrected automatically by the tug on the shark line, then look at me in confusion. I would repeat “Down and stay!” and he would settle back into position for the remaining time. Soon he came to expect that corrective tug and simply stopped testing and remained in place. I felt that the problem was solved well enough that we could return to competition.

  I had fallen into a very common trap that catches psychologists and other behavioral scientists—the assumption that what works in one situation is apt to work in a completely different situation. So there I was, back in an obedience competition ring with Flint. We were not doing spectacularly well, but our performance up to the group sits and downs was passing. Just two more exercises to go.

  I stood and watched from the far side of the ring while Flint held his sit position for the full minute. I was almost giddy when I placed him in the down position and told him to stay. Just 3 more minutes and we would have our first qualifying score. I stood across the ring looking benignly at my dog. Suddenly he looked around, as if noticing that this was a new and different place where the rules might be different. Then, with his belly still on the ground, he made a swimming movement. I could imagine what was going on in his mind. Something like, “What? No correction? I’m free again!”