Born to Bark

by Stanley Coren

  The degree of Utility Dog requires dogs to do some fairly complex tasks. In addition to more advanced retrieving and jumping, the dog has to show that he understands hand signals and can identify items by their scent.

  For scent discrimination (my favorite exercise), a number of dumbbell-shaped articles made of wood, metal, or leather are scattered around in a sort of loose circle. The dog’s owner has touched one of these dumbbells to give it his or her scent, and the dog’s task is to find that one and bring it back.

  Training Flint to identify and retrieve items by scent was a bit difficult at first. The most common technique for training involves using a pegboard to which two or three unscented articles are tied down with strings and the board is laid flat on the ground. The article with the scent that the dog is supposed to detect is the only one not tied down, although a piece of string is attached to it so that all of the dumbbells look the same.

  Flint already knew how to fetch dumbbells on command, but now he needed to learn that when several articles were present, the scented article was the correct one—or at least the only one that he could be retrieve since the others were anchored in place. Many dog training theories do not take into account the stubbornness and tenacity of terriers, however.

  The first time that we practiced the exercise there were three items on the pegboard. One had my scent while the other two were unscented and tied down. I let Flint sniff my hand to remind him of my odor. Then I gave a new command “Find it” but used the same hand signal that I use to send him off to retrieve something. As I expected, he gave the excited “Here I go!” bark that he gives when he is retrieving and raced to the closest dumbbell. It happened to be tied down. He grabbed it and when it didn’t move, instead of moving off to investigate the others (the way that retrievers, collies, and dogs with nonterrier brains usually do) he began to worry at it, tugging while snapping his head back and forth to give it short, hard jerks. The flimsy piece of kitchen twine I had used to tie it down was not adequate and broke, allowing Flint to march happily back to me with the dumbbell.

  After a trip to the store to get heavier string, I tried again. This time on the “Find it” command, Flint again dashed out and grabbed the nearest dumbbell. By chance it was the correct one with my scent. He brought it back happily and was rewarded. He gave me that look and body posture that indicated that he thought that he understood this new game. However, the next time out he grabbed one of the tied-down dumbbells. It didn’t move and this time his tugging and worrying actions were not successful in breaking it free. Terriers do not give up easily, though, and he had decided that this was the correct item; the idea of testing the others never entered his head. The piece of pegboard that I had used was a little bit more than 2 feet square, so it turned out that he could keep his jaws locked on the tied-down article and get his hind legs off the board. When he did that, his struggling caused the whole board to move an inch or so. Once he recognized that possibility, the result was predetermined. Using a strange hop-and-bend motion with his hind legs, inch by inch he moved the entire pegboard across the floor until it was in front of me. He then sat beside the dumbbell he had chosen and gave a bark that seemed to say, “After all that work, I would appreciate a quality treat!”

  The next day I purchased a much larger piece of pegboard and put the tied-down articles closer to the center so that he couldn’t stretch enough to get his hind legs off the board and onto the floor. Again, I gave the command to find it and sent him off. He chose one of the wrong, unscented items, tugged and growled at it for a while, but there was no give in it or the board. Obviously frustrated, he came back and barked at me. I could hear him saying, “I’m smart and tough, but a little guidance would be appreciated.” However, following the process that I was led to understand would work, I simply repeated the “Find it” command.

  Flint gave an annoyed growl and dashed back to the same dumbbell that he had been working on trying to lift and tugged at it again. Now he was very exasperated and wound up. He looked back at me and barked and spun around in a circle. In the process he tripped over the scented article and it moved. Although it was obviously a less preferred choice, he grabbed that one and brought it back for his reward. I was hopeful that perhaps we now had the first step toward his solving the problem.

  Once again there were three items, two tied down and only the scented one free to move. As before, Flint grabbed at an item that was tied down. Then he stopped and looked at me. Looking back at that article, he gave it a nudge with his nose. It still didn’t move. Next he proceeded to the next article and nudged it with his nose. When it moved, he grabbed it and brought it back in exchange for a treat. Perhaps this was a breakthrough?—Not for a terrier—Flint quickly learned that all that he had to do was to push each of the articles and the one that moved could be retrieved. Although it looked like he was using his nose to sniff, it was the physical contact that he was paying attention to. He completely ignored the scent information.

  There had to be another way to teach scent discrimination. The obvious technique that occurred to me involved food, one of the few things that really focused Flint’s mind. So I put away the pegboard and the strong string and started again. This time I put two dumbbells out on the floor close together. One was unscented and the other I had handled and then rubbed a bit of pepperoni on the shaft. I also carefully balanced a sliver of pepperoni on the shaft.

  When I sent Flint out to the two dumbbells, he first approached the unscented article, but as he moved toward it, the other, pepperoni-scented article attracted his sensitive nose. He moved toward it and found the bit of sausage that was balanced on the shaft and quickly swallowed it. At that moment I called “Take it” (his usual command to retrieve) and he grabbed the dumbbell and brought it to me. I exchanged it for another bit of pepperoni.

  This was a new game, and after a while Flint was checking out all the dumbbells that I would place on the floor, knowing that one of them had a treat balanced on it and after he ate that morsel, he knew that he would get another by bringing that article back to me. Once that behavior was well established, I put out a few unscented articles and one that had been rubbed with pepperoni, but no actual bit of the sausage was left on it this time. Flint dashed out, checked the articles, and focused on the scented one. He searched the area for his treat and found none. Then the lightbulb lit up in his mind. I could hear him saying “Well, even if there is no treat here, I can still trade this dumbbell that smells like a treat for an actual piece of food.” He grabbed the scented dumbbell and brought it back to me for the meaty treat that he craved. From then on I did not need to leave a treat on the article. I simply scented the object with the pepperoni and sent him out, and he would carefully check all of the items and bring me back the smelly one.

  Eventually, he would have to find my scent, but I chose to get the idea of scent discrimination into his head first. One day I switched to a smelly cheese target treat. I rubbed it on the article, and then let him sniff my cheese-scented hand. When he returned with the scented article he got a piece of cheese. Now came the more difficult part. I moved our training into the kitchen so that I had a sink nearby. First, I scented one dumbbell with meat and then another with cheese. I then washed my hands in the sink and rubbed a bit of cheese on my hand. Next I gave Flint my hand to sniff and sent him out. There were four articles on the floor and two of them were scented, one smelling of cheese and the other of pepperoni. Terrier luck brought Flint to the pepperoni-scented one first and he brought it back to me. I took it but did not give him a treat. Instead, I let him sniff my cheese-scented hand again and sent him off to “Find it.” He dashed back, picked up the right object, and returned it for his reward.

  Flint quickly learned this new variation of the game. By smelling my hand, he determined which scent I wanted and which reward he would get if he brought back the right item. From there it was easy to go to other scents, like garlic, soap, and of course my own bodily scent. He had learned to sniff the han
d that I offered him and then to go to pick up the article with that scent. Now he knew that I was giving him a target scent and there was some sort of reward waiting for him if he retrieved the article that had a matching odor.

  Scent discrimination really impresses people when they first see it, partly because our human noses are so weak compared to that of the dog. In fact, unless we deliberately tune ourselves to scent, the idea that we can solve problems using our noses seldom occurs to us. This gave me the opportunity to play some “mind games” with my children, and even with highly educated colleagues and friends.

  My kids were still living in Philadelphia with my former wife. Once or twice each year I got to bring them to Vancouver for a visit of a week or two, although Mossy did not make this easy, and sometimes my attorney had to be called on for help. The kids loved to visit and both also loved Joannie. Flint was a major attraction as well, and they always wanted to know what he had learned and what he was doing. Flint also loved all of the extra attention and fondling that he got from them.

  Once Flint had learned scent discrimination, I was able to really impress my kids by telling them that I had taught him how to read. I would set a demonstration that ran like this. First, I asked them to draw something, say, a cat. Then I had them print three words on three separate pieces of paper, say, “cat,” “dog,” and “horse.” I then folded each piece of paper into a sort of tent-shaped Λ, with the words facing toward me and Flint. Next, I showed Flint the piece of paper with the picture of the cat, and in serious tones I explained, “Flint, this is a cat. Go find the word that says ‘cat.’” I would emphasize the sound of the word dramatically by repeating it and sounding it out something like, “That’s the word caaaat.” Followed by a quick “Find it.”

  In response to my instructions, Flint give a little “Got it, Boss!” bark and would dash off and always bring the piece of paper with the correct word written on it back to me. We could repeat this several times, with different pictures and different words. I never reused one of the pieces of paper that he had retrieved, explaining that he had left tooth marks and drool that might be clues or distractions. On the basis of this “test” my children became convinced that that Flint was an extremely intelligent dog that could read.

  The truth of the matter was that I was cheating, using the same kind of misdirection that stage magicians use. A few minutes before I would let Flint perform his “reading demonstration,” I would stop in the bathroom and scrape the nails of my left hand across a bar of scented soap. When the children drew the target picture, I transferred it to my left hand and surreptitiously rubbed a bit of soap on it. I did the same thing with the paper containing the correct word while holding it in my left hand. My right hand, with no soap on it, carried the papers with the wrong words on it. When I was describing the picture to Flint, and saying the word, I held the paper up near his nose, so that he could smell the soap. When he dashed out to “read” the correct word, he was simply seeking another piece of paper that smelled exactly like the one that I placed before him. It was just a variation on the basic scent discrimination exercise, but the illusion that he was reading was very convincing.

  Once I also got to show Flint’s “reading ability” to a group of psychologists at a party to celebrate Flint’s tenth birthday at my home. I had invited some friends and faculty members in the Psychology Department along with their spouses or partners and, given the frivolous nature of the party, had asked everyone to wear something Flint-related. Several came with T-shirts or sweatshirts bearing a dog-related image. One colleague made a necklace of dog biscuits, which she wore. Another eminent psychologist arrived wearing a plastic dog nose, while yet another had a cap with floppy spaniel ears and so forth.

  Peter and his wife P.J. were also there, with P.J. defiantly wearing a sweatshirt with a cat on it. Peter, however, was dressed in a tweedy sport jacket, a dress shirt, a Western-style neck scarf, a large silver belt buckle, and a Stetson hat. I was puzzled and asked, “Just how is your costume Flint related?”

  Peter smiled and said, “You once told me that Charles Darwin said in The Origin of Species something like ‘it is scarcely possible to doubt that the love of man has become instinctive in the dog.’ Well, the man that Flint loves is obviously you. So the most Flint-related thing that I could think of was you—therefore, I dressed the way that you do!”

  Just for fun, I decided to show Flint’s “reading ability” to a set of psychologists.

  Peter always knows how to make me laugh, and I did.

  Well into the party, somebody asked if I would get Flint to demonstrate some of the things that I had trained him to do. So for fun I tried the “reading” demonstration, using the same technique that I used for my kids. Flint’s performance was impressive despite being circled so closely by so many people.

  Of course, there was a good deal of skepticism as to whether he was actually reading. Some of my colleagues felt that I must be giving some subtle cues to Flint as to which word to pick out (since no one wanted to suggest that I was deliberately misleading them). To test this, they had me instruct Flint as to which word I wanted and then turn my back so that I couldn’t see him sniffing around the cards with the words and thus give him any additional information. Since Flint was operating on the basis of scent, it made no difference, and he always brought the correct card. Then someone suggested that the audience might be giving Flint cues, so I indicated to Flint what the next word was and everybody turned their backs and did not look back until Flint brought me a card—which of course was correct. Now everyone was impressed and puzzled. Their problem was that they were thinking like humans, whose dominant sense is vision and for whom smell is such an unimportant dimension that its part in solving the problem was never even considered.

  I thought about explaining Flint’s behavior to the group, but then I really considered this performance to be more of a magic trick than a real experiment, and magicians never give away their secrets. So instead I offered to open a bottle of champagne, “To help us all think more clearly and to toast Flint on his tenth birthday.” Since this was a party and not a scientific lab, the idea of fine-tasting alcohol seemed more alluring at that moment than the search for truth, and so Flint’s ability to read simply entered into the folklore of his life. This was certainly one time when training for obedience competition did have a nearly magic outcome.

  In obedience trials Flint had become a reasonable, if not always predictable, working dog, and he was much loved by many of the other competitors who would gather at ringside to see him compete and to see what kind of mischief he might get into. Nonetheless, I was still surprised to receive a certificate from Dogs in Canada, indicating that Flint was the highest-scoring Cairn terrier in obedience competition that year—and this time his name was even spelled correctly. Tucked into the envelope with the certificate was a handwritten note, signed with only a single initial. It said, “Congratulations. I was curious and checked our records and your dog has the highest annual point count ever obtained by a Cairn terrier in Canada!”

  I proudly showed the two pieces of paper to Joannie, who shook her head and asked, “He may be the number one Cairn ever in obedience competition, but where does he rank when compared to real dogs?”

  She had asked a good question, so I checked out the other high-scoring obedience dogs for that year. Flint’s record-breaking score was a meager 39 points, while the number one dog in Canada that year was a Border collie with a total of 1,960. I decided not to mention these facts to Joan.

  CHAPTER 24

  GRAY ON GRAY

  On most dogs you can see the signs of age when the hair on their face and muzzle begins to turn gray. Because Flint was a gray dog, I didn’t see the age-related gray hair that should have reminded me that he was growing old, and so I treated him as if he were still young and vigorous, with the expectation that he would continue to perform the way that he always had. However, much like an aging human, you can push a dog’s body only so far. />
  Flint’s first physical crisis came one evening when we were at the dog club practicing directed jumping, where a dog is sent out across a ring with two high jumps and must leap over the one selected by his handler. Flint liked this exercise and launched himself toward the jump I indicated with his usual happy bark. But as he went over it, he landed awkwardly. When he arrived in front of me he was limping and not putting any weight on one of his hind legs. I thought that he simply had developed a strain or sprain, so I stopped exercising him that night, and assumed that in a day or two the leg would be normal again. I was wrong.

  After 2 days, Flint was still not putting any weight on his hind leg so I took him to our veterinarian, Dr. Moore, who indicated that Flint had damaged his cruciate ligament. “Although this can happen to any dog at any age, it is more likely in older dogs who are still engaged in rigorous activities that involve a lot of running or jumping. He will require an operation if he is going to regain use of that leg again.”

  The operation was expensive, and after the operation and some time for recuperation, the vet said that Flint’s full recovery would require that he start to put his weight on the leg again. Flint was still favoring it and moving around on three legs as if the repaired leg could not bear his weight. I was becoming a bit frustrated trying to figure out ways to get him to exercise the leg properly and to let it carry its normal load again.

  The solution came one sunshine-filled afternoon when I decided to take the dogs for a walk along the shore of the bay. The route down to the water’s edge took us across a sandy beach and my feet sank into the loose sand on each step. I looked back at Flint and noticed that under these conditions he had no alternative but to put some weight on his hind leg as he plodded through the soft sand that let each leg sink down a bit. This was obviously the therapeutic conditions that we needed.