Born to Bark

by Stanley Coren

Fortunately, a well-respected breeder of cavaliers was less than an hour’s drive from my home. After I’d made arrangements, I drove Joannie out to Katie’s home to pick up our new dog. I lifted him out of the pen and placed the little white-and-chestnut-colored pup in Joan’s arms and watched her melt into a smile and a sigh.

  Katie said, “I call him Wizard. His kennel name is Turnworth Winter Wizard. The Winter part is because he has so much white on him.”

  “Wizard will do perfectly well as a name,” I said, glancing across to Joannie who acknowledged the fact that she was paying attention to our conversation by bending over the puppy and whispering, “Hi, little Wizard,” in a soft singsong voice.

  I handed her his collar, and she gently slipped it over his head and murmured, “Don’t you look handsome now.”

  It was a good start. Of course, Joan’s first encounter with Flint had been all love and warmth as well, but this was a different dog with a different temperament. For the 45-minute drive home Joan sat in the car with Wizard on her lap. She said little but smiled a lot. As we rolled up to the front of our house, she suddenly lost her happy look and, with a voice full of anxiety, asked, “What about Flint?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He kills small furry things!”

  “It will be okay,” I reassured her. “Remember the kittens that he saved. All young mammals have a scent, a pheromone, that clings to them and brings out the protective instincts in other animals.”

  Although I was convinced that nothing bad would happen, Joan’s concerns did make me more vigilant as we entered the house and I placed Wizard on the floor. Joan grabbed at my left hand and squeezed it tightly.

  Flint stood about 3 feet away from us and stared at this fuzzy apparition. His tail was high and vibrating, and he approached with a stiff-legged walk. As he drew closer, I could feel Joan’s hand clench harder.

  Wizard stood watching the approach of the gray dog. A few seconds later he assessed the situation and responded as puppies always do when confronted with a threat—he collapsed to the floor and rolled over on his side. Flint arrived next to him and moved his nose over his inert little body. I could imagine his thoughts.

  “What is this? It looks like something that I should chase, but it smells like a dog.”

  “This is Wizard,” I announced. “He is your new brother. Treat him well.”

  Flint seemed to ignore me, but he lowered himself to the floor next to the pup. A minute later Wizard slowly rolled onto his belly. Our new puppy then tentatively sniffed at Flint’s nose, and his tongue came out as if he were licking at the air. Flint stood up, gave a shake as if he had just come out of the water, and turned and started to move toward the kitchen. Without any hesitation, Wizard trotted after him with his tail swinging back and forth. I smiled and dropped his light little leash and let him drag it behind him. Joannie finally let go of my hand and gave an audible sigh of relief.

  A few moments later we found the two dogs licking simultaneously from the water bowl on the floor. “I think that they’ll be fine now,” I said. I looked down at my left hand—the one that Joan had been holding—and noticed that she had been squeezing it with so much pressure that her nails had actually cut into my palm leaving a visible trickle of blood.

  A few hours later Joan went off to do some shopping and I was sitting on the sofa reading some research material. I had placed Wizard beside me, and Flint had also jumped up onto the furniture to lie with his head near my leg. Time passed and both dogs fell asleep. Wizard had dozed off while sucking on the tip of one of Flint’s pointed ears. I couldn’t help smiling. My “great gray hunter” was clearly not going to be a threat to my new puppy.

  As if he heard me thinking, Flint opened one eye and a silly voice said, “This is embarrassing, Hui Shih, the Gray Lion, is now reduced to being a babysitter for a wimpy puppy.”

  “A royal spaniel,” I corrected him.

  Flint moved his head slightly to look at me and his ear slipped out of Wizard’s mouth. The pup did not wake but groped a bit until he found the ear again and continued to mouth it. My terrier sighed, closed his eyes, and returned to sleep without further comment.

  CHAPTER 19

  TERRIER AND TEACHER

  The easiest way to turn a puppy into a civilized dog is to bring it into a home where there is already a dog who knows the routines. This cuts the effort required to housebreak and train by more than half. As a puppy, Wizard watched Flint’s every movement and imitated his behavior. When I put Flint out the back door to relieve himself, Wizard galumphed along behind him, watched him, and then emptied himself just a few feet away. When I called the dogs to give them a treat and commanded them to sit, Wizard watched and imitated Flint’s responses. I never really had to teach the puppy the meaning of the words “come,” “sit,” “down,” “let’s go,” and “stay.” Wiz understood the basic commands, responded perfectly when Flint was next to him, and more slowly and hesitantly when he was not. A few rewards for giving the correct response to each of these commands when his gray teacher was not around were all it took to for him to add a bit more precision to his performance.

  There was, however, an unexpected problem. Whenever I called Flint, Wizard would respond as well. At first I thought that Wiz was simply learning the meaning of the word “come,” but I began to worry that he was beginning to respond as though he believed that his name was Flint. I believe that a dog’s name is the single most important word that he will ever learn. A dog lives in an ocean of human sounds and, with only the language ability of a human two-year-old, he has to decide which words are directed at him and which are not. Suppose I had said to Joannie, “Why don’t you come over and sit down?” when one of my dogs was in the room. How is my dog supposed to know whether or not the words “come,” “sit,” and “down” in my request to Joan were really meant for him?

  Dogs are masters at interpreting body language, so mine can often figure out who I am speaking to based on what I am doing as I speak. Obviously, if am looking directly into a dog’s eyes and have his full attention, he knows that I mean for him to respond to “sit” or “down.” In the absence of that sort of body language, however, the dog’s name becomes the key to his understanding, in effect, a signal that tells him “This next message is for you.”

  All of my dogs have several names. The least important of them is their official name that is registered with the kennel club and appears on their pedigree certificate, since it is never used in everyday interactions and is usually long and pompous, for instance, Remasia’s Our Man Flint. Instead, I use a short, familiar name as the dog’s “call name.” I don’t like to use human names for my dogs because it can be confusing when you call for or give instructions to Fred the dog and one of your visitors or family is also named Fred.

  Since there are many times when I want to communicate with both dogs simultaneously, I also need a group name for my dogs. For example, a friend who only has male dogs uses “Gentlemen” when signaling his all-boy collection, while Emma from our club had only female dogs and referred to them as “Ladies.” Another friend, a retired army tank corps officer, uses the group name “Troops,” while one of Joan’s former teacher friends uses “Class” as the group name for her three little lap dogs. I decided to use the word “Puppies” as an alternate name for my dogs, so that when I call, “Puppies, come,” all of my dogs should run to me.

  Flint was already used to name changes and additions, since I often spoke to him using casual labels as names, like “Scamp,” “Gray Warrior,” and “Gray Person,” when I was talking to him. Ultimately Wizard would respond to “Wizard,” “Wizzy,” “Wizzer,” “Wiz,” and “Snarf.”

  To help Wiz learn his name better, every time that I touched him or petted him I would repeat his name. I also added a little ritual to my life. First thing in the morning, I would get down on the floor and sing a song to my dogs. It was a bad variation of a few lines of the old standard “You Are My Sunshine.” Starting with Wizard I
would focus my attention solely on him and sing

  You are my Wizard, my only Wizard

  You make me happy when skies are gray.

  You’ll never know, Wiz, how much I love you

  So please don’t take my Wizard away.

  I would then turn to Flint and substitute his name, for all of the occurrences of Wizard giving him my full attention. These efforts seemed to do the job. After a while I simply had to say his name and Wizard would look directly at me, and if I told him to stay and then called Flint to me, Wiz would remain in place.

  I know that my sitting on the floor singing to my dogs to teach the puppy his name sounds weird, but an online survey (where people could answer anonymously) found that 41 percent of responders admitted that they sometimes sang to their dogs. Of those who did sing to their dogs, 92 percent said that they never mentioned it to anyone in their family nor allowed anyone to hear them. Joan had already overheard me sometimes speaking to, and answering for, Flint, so I doubted that her overhearing me singing to my dogs would further weaken her impression of my sanity. On the other hand, given the nature of my own singing voice and my inability to carry a tune, I felt that it would be a kindness to keep Joan from being subjected to my “musical” performance. Nonetheless, one morning when she had awakened and gone downstairs before me, I was sitting on the bedroom floor singing my little “name song” to the dogs when I was interrupted by Joan’s voice coming from the base of the stairs.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, with concern in her voice.

  “Yes, I’m fine.”

  “I was worried,” she replied. “I thought that I heard you moaning in pain.”

  When she moved away, Flint’s voice added, “I’ll bet that being forced to listen to your singing could be classified as animal abuse.”

  Wizard modeled many of his behaviors after Flint. When Flint would scratch at the door to be let back into the house, Wiz soon followed suit. When his water bowl was empty, Flint would noisily push it across the floor to attract my attention so that I would fill it. Wiz didn’t quite understand the rationale behind this behavior, but dutifully imitated it, nonetheless. He would push the water bowl over a distance of around 3 feet from its normal place so that it would end up directly in front of the stove or the refrigerator—and then he would carefully push it back to its original spot. Since he was imitating Flint rather than thinking for himself, it made no difference to him whether the bowl was empty or full, and the wet trails of puddles and splashes on the floor were beginning to annoy Joan. So, using my favorite dictum—that technological solutions are often better and faster than behavioral solutions—I simply replaced the metal water bowl with a heavy plastic one with a rubber ring at the bottom that a small puppy could not slide across the floor.

  Flint seemed to like having the puppy follow him around, and ultimately became quite protective of him. One weekend day, when we were out at the farm, Joan had gone to town to pick up something that would help her plan the new house. I was sitting on the rickety deck that the back door of the “shack” opened out onto. The dogs were wandering around outside, which I allowed since the area was fenced with an orange plastic mesh that was quite adequate to contain two small dogs who never seemed to be that interested in escaping.

  The dogs liked to sniff around the outside of the little house, and Flint had shown Wizard where Joanie planted several varieties of mint and some herbs, including lemon thyme, that were quite tasty and that they would gently nibble at. Joannie did not like it when the dogs browsed through her herb garden, but they didn’t eat all that much, and the herbs gave their breath a refreshing scent.

  I was not paying much attention to the dogs, since I was reading a technical journal and was quite engrossed in some new data. But when I heard Flint give a small growl, I looked up just in time to see a raccoon drop into the yard from a low branch of the willow tree at the far end of the garden. This masked intruder lightly hit the ground, lowered himself slightly, and in a catlike manner appeared to stalk Wizard. The puppy, who had been lying down, simply turned his head and stared at him, apparently frozen. Flint was several feet away and made a mad dash that placed him directly between the raccoon and Wizard. Now Flint’s growl had dropped in pitch and become low, sustained, and guttural.

  It took several moments for what was happening to register in my brain. Raccoons are omnivorous and eat nuts, berries, insects, and grubs, but nearly one-third of their diet is obtained by hunting birds and mammals. Raccoons regularly kill squirrels, rats, and rabbits. To a raccoon, a 5- or 6-pound puppy could be a target much like a rabbit. This large raccoon, perhaps 20 pounds or more, was clearly equal in weight to Flint and with his fur fluffed out looked larger than my dog. Nonetheless, Flint stood his ground between the predator and the cringing puppy. His growl continued to rumble deeply, broken by bursts of two or three barks, which was his alarm call. “Call the pack! There is trouble here! The barbarians are at the gate!”

  When I realized what was happening, I jumped up and grabbed a broom that was leaning against the wall. The word “rabies,” popped into my mind, and I was worried that this raccoon was out in the afternoon rather than his usual dawn or twilight because he was crazed due to rabies. The broom no longer seemed like much of weapon against a potentially infected predator, so I looked around for something else. The raccoon made a noise that sounded much like the hiss of a cat, even above Flint’s barrage of barks and growls. The rifle in the house was too far away to be of any value, so I grabbed an empty bucket and began to beat it with the handle of the broom. It made a great ringing clamor to which I added by yelling “Back! Back! Back!” in the deepest voice that I could muster.

  The noise, my approach, and Flint’s threats convinced the raccoon that there must be safer ways to find dinner. He turned and scampered back to the tree, where he crouched on a low branch, staring at us. I continued to approach, beating on the bucket and shouting, while Flint raced forward to stand beside me, adding a cascade of barks to the din. The raccoon looked down from the branch, and with what looked like an attempt at a dignified retreat crossed to the other side of the tree and jumped off well outside the fenced area. He then trotted off at less than a gallop.

  I turned to Flint, “Good job, my gray warrior!”

  I bent down to pat my heroic dog, and he was quivering. He looked up at me for a moment, and said, in a bad imitation of Humphrey Bogart, “Well, the kid seemed to need some help. He really doesn’t know the ropes yet. He didn’t even bark! I’ve got to work on that. A dog who doesn’t bark can’t defend himself or anybody else.” Then he gave a brief wag of his tail and trotted over to Wizard, who was still huddling down and had not moved an inch during the entire episode. Flint licked the puppy’s face and moved to his side to give him a poke with his nose. Wiz slowly rose to his feet, and his tongue darted out once or twice to lick the air in front of Flint’s face.

  Wiz was so young, yet he clearly had to say something. I was surprised to hear how soft, gentle, and composed his voice turned out to be as he first spoke to Flint, “Thanks. I owe you one—Boss!” He then turned to look at me and gave a hesitant wag of the tail, “You too—Sir!”

  Wiz would eventually “talk to me” as much as Flint did, but always in that same soft, composed voice, whereas Flint’s voices changed with the mood of the conversation and the nature of the events happening around us. Conversations with Wiz would seldom contain the level of satire, irony, or argumentation that conversations with Flint did. Wizard acted as if he had only one gear in his transmission: he always worked at the same speed, always had a calm disposition, and always talked in my mind with that same gentle and respectful tone that was born the day the raccoon attempted to invade and the heroic Gray Knight, Sir Flint, stood at the battlements to protect his endangered charge.

  “Puppies, let’s go get a treat,” I offered, and we all entered the safety of the little shack. I never did like being outdoors in the country. Give me the comfort of the city and God’
s good concrete.

  Fortunately, for the peacefulness of my house and marriage, Flint never did teach Wizard to bark. Over his entire lifespan, I heard Wiz bark fewer than a dozen times. It is not that he failed to pay attention to situations that Flint felt warranted barking. When Flint would race to the door to bark at some sound, Wizard would follow along staring in the direction that Flint was looking. If Flint would jump up on the window seat to bark at something he saw through the glass, Wizard would look over his shoulder to check out what had caused his housemate to sound the alarm, but he would never join in.

  The surprise was that Joan was sitting on the rocking chair, with Wizard on her lap.

  Occasionally, Flint would look behind to where Wizard was standing. He seemed to be saying, “Come on, Pup. I’m showing you how it’s done and when it needs to be done, so bark already!”

  Apparently, the message just passed over Wizard’s head, since when Flint turned to look back, Wizard would also turn to look back to see what Flint was now looking at. The idea of barking never seemed to occur to him.

  Wiz, however, did accomplish something without either Flint’s or my instruction. One evening I returned home to find Joan lying on the sofa, asleep. Resting on the crook of her arm was Wizard. I smiled and quietly went into the kitchen to begin to cook dinner without waking her.

  Later on, when we were sitting and eating, I said to her, “I thought that dogs weren’t allowed on the furniture when you were using it.”

  “They certainly are not,” she insisted.

  “When I came in tonight, Wiz was sleeping next to you on the sofa.”

  She looked down somewhat sheepishly and explained it away saying, “He must have sneaked up there after I was already asleep.”

  A month or so later I came home to find Karen, Joan’s daughter, sitting on the sofa petting Flint, who was resting his head in her lap. Joan and Kari were engaged in some kind of mother-daughter conversation that seemed to involve knitting or sewing. The surprise was that Joan was sitting on the rocking chair with Wizard on her lap.