For the next several weeks, Flint, Wiz, and I had hour-long walks on the soft, sandy shore. Flint’s leg gradually strengthened as he was forced to exercise it, while Wizard just seemed to collect sand in the fine hair that made up his coat. When we arrived home after each walk, Flint would flop down as if he were exhausted and watch patiently while I carefully brushed the sand from Wizard’s coat.
When we returned to Dr. Moore for a checkup at the end of the month, he was very impressed at how well Flint had healed and how much strength he had recovered in his leg. Flint was now moving normally and the vet announced that if I wanted to have him return to obedience competition, he thought that it would be all right for him to go over the jumps again. I considered this recommendation for a while and decided against it. I had an image in my head of Flint going over a jump and coming up lame again because he had reinjured that ligament, or perhaps damaged another, which was more than likely now that Flint was getting older. A piece of blue-colored ribbon for a qualifying score or even the prospect of him becoming an Obedience Training Champion was not worth the risk.
On our car ride back home, I looked at Flint sitting beside me and told him, “Well, old man, it looks like I’m retiring you from obedience competition. I don’t want to risk having you jump anymore.”
He answered in a rather philosophical tone, “As long as I can still jump up onto your bed to sleep, and can still jump up on the window seat to protect the house with my barking, I can survive. And, by the way, I’m not so old. I still have all of my hair—what about you?”
Other things made me acutely aware that my terrier was showing signs of aging. A slight haze was forming on his eyes, although this didn’t seem to affect his vision much at first, and his hearing was clearly going downhill.
The first sign of Flint’s fading hearing was that he failed to show up instantaneously at the sound of the refrigerator opening or closing, or in response to the crinkling sound of cellophane as I opened packages of crackers or other food. If Wizard sashayed into the kitchen upon hearing those sound signals that often predicted that some extra food might be available, Flint would sometimes follow him, but more and more often he would not even awaken in response to that activity. Flint had always responded reliably to spoken commands, but now often seemed to ignore my call, especially if he was looking away from me. Outdoors he seemed oblivious of the sound of approaching cars or the noise of kids on skateboards approaching from behind, which before had always caused him to turn and watch them alertly.
I mentioned Flint’s diminishing hearing sensitivity to Joannie, who merely said, “Maybe things will be a bit quieter around here since he won’t be barking at the sound of every leaf that falls near the house.”
Unfortunately for her, that was not to be, since at last Wizard became the accomplice that Flint had always wanted. Flint was sleeping more soundly than he used to, not bolting awake at every noise to sound the alarm with a cascade of barking, but Wizard now seemed bothered that Flint was no longer going to the door or window to bark. Previously, when Flint would bark to alert us to sounds in the street Wiz would always tag along behind him and studiously look over his shoulder in the direction the noises were coming from. Wiz never joined in the barking but wagged his tail merrily as though he recognized that his housemate was doing a good job and one that clearly needed to be done. Now that Flint was not responding to these sounds Wiz began to look uncomfortably in the direction that any noises were coming from and then he would look back at Flint, who was usually napping on the sofa. Rather than take up the job of barking himself, however, Wiz hit upon another strategy. He walked over to where Flint was resting and sounded a single loud high-pitched yip, close enough and loud enough to affect even Flint’s diminished hearing. When Wizard’s call registered in his consciousness, Flint would open his eyes and raise his head. Wiz would then run to the window or door where he’d heard the sound. This activity stirred Flint into action and he would excitedly race to where Wiz was standing and immediately start barking in response to a sound that he had not actually heard. His own barking apparently sounded lower in intensity to him, and so he seemed to be barking louder and longer now. Wiz stood contentedly but silently beside him, gently wagging his tail in recognition that he had ensured that a needed service for the family was still being provided without requiring a royal spaniel to engage in common canine work such as barking.
Dogs with reduced hearing can undergo personality changes. Some may become more fearful or dependent, and some more snappish and apparently aggressive. They startle more easily as things suddenly spring into view or make physical contact without any prior warning. Normally dogs sleep fairly lightly, which means that they are still, at some level, monitoring the sounds around them, which lets them anticipate some events that are about to happen, but a deaf dog may awaken with a growl or a snap if touched while sleeping simply because he did not expect it. In Flint’s case this state of affairs resulted in a major crisis.
I was in my home office writing one afternoon when my attention was caught by a huge commotion in the living room. I stood up and was met by Joan who was holding her hand up to show a trickle of blood dripping down.
“Your miserable old dog bit me,” she shrieked.
I walked her into the bathroom and washed the blood away from her hand to reveal a small puncture wound on her thumb, which I covered with some antiseptic ointment and a small adhesive bandage. Then I asked her to tell me what had happened.
“He was asleep on the sofa—on my side of the sofa—and I went to wake him up to get him off it and he turned around and bit me!”
“Please, Joannie,” I said, “remember that his hearing is going downhill. He probably didn’t hear you and was startled awake when you poked at him. He might have awakened in a fright, and of course he would snap at what was touching him.”
“He bit me because he never liked me,” she insisted.
I tried to explain what she could do to prevent this from happening again. “If you walked more heavily when you approached him, he would probably feel the vibrations from the wood floor and awaken on his own. Another way is to just hold your hand near his nose and your smell should alert him. He’s not totally deaf, so he might even awaken if you clapped you hands a couple of times.”
Joan looked at me in disbelief. “You want me to clomp around my own house, stamping my feet, just for the benefit of your dog? You want me to applaud the beast that just bit me so that he can wake up more gracefully? This is my home and I expect to be treated with some respect and not to be bitten by your dog. You are a psychologist. Fix his attitude!”
Although Flint had always been a trial for Joan, this physical assault crossed some critical line in her mind. Joan would not change her behavior to accommodate my dog, Flint was of course too old to change, and his hearing was certainly not going to get better. I feared that there would be more bites, more shouting, and a general escalation of the conflict between my wife and my terrier. The best that I could do was to keep them apart, so whenever I was in the house I kept Flint near me and as far from Joan as possible, sometimes even resorting to the umbilical that I had used when he was a puppy.
The fact that Flint was becoming deaf did not end my ability to communicate with him, because I have always combined voice commands with hand signals. This age-proofs the dog to a degree since, if my aging dog’s eyes fail, he can still respond to my voice and if his ears fail he can respond to my hand signals. I could still tell Flint what I wanted him to do, even though he could barely hear me now. I had even made sure that there was a hand signal meaning “Good dog!” so that he would know when I was happy with him.
Because Flint knew his signals, he could still compete in two kinds of obedience competitions where he would not be required to jump. The first was the Veterans Class, which was the same as the first-level Novice exercises, but restricted to dogs who already had their Companion Dog title and were 7 years of age or older. Two or three times that year I entere
d Flint in Veterans competition and he always earned a qualifying score. Best of all, to my mind, was that people outside of our dog club did not have the least suspicion that he was nearly deaf. It just looked like a normal competition where the handler used a lot of signals instead of his voice.
Of course, Flint did show his age now and then in the ring. In one Veterans competition, for instance, we were doing the long down group exercise. I gave the signal instructing Flint to lie down and he did so. Because he settled down with his head on his paws in a comfortable pose I knew that he was unlikely to break his position. A few moments after I reached the far side of the ring I thought I heard a faint rumbling sound coming from the line of dogs. It was rhythmic, and I couldn’t quite identify it or determine where it was coming from. The judge apparently also heard it, and she walked slowly down in front of the line of dogs. When she reached Flint, she stopped and smiled, then returned to her usual position at the edge of the ring.
On her command, “Return to your dogs,” I went back to stand beside Flint and all became clear. The rumbling sound was Flint snoring. In the midst of an obedience trial, when he was still in the ring, my old dog had decided to take a nap. It was a strange way to earn a qualifying score in that exercise.
The other class that Flint could still compete in was the Brace competition in which two dogs are linked together with a Y-shaped device that hooks them both to one leash. The objective is to do the basic Novice obedience exercises with two dogs together as a team. Most people who participate in Brace competition use two dogs of the same breed, which is mandatory in American Kennel Club trials. When the dogs are closely matched in size and physical characteristics the team can look quite elegant when performing the exercises. However, in Canada there is no requirement that the dogs be the same breed or size, and I rather enjoyed the fact that I could compete with Flint and Wiz as a brace because, except for their heights, there was nothing similar about them. Flint had pricked ears, Wiz had floppy ears. Flint was dark, Wiz was light-colored. Flint had a carrot-shaped tail that he carried upright while Wiz had a fully feathered tail that he carried horizontally. They worked well together, nevertheless, and Wiz had also been trained to hand signals from his puppyhood.
Flint and Wiz win an obedience Brace competition under a Canadian judge.
One obedience judge (on loan from the AKC) was quite upset when I arrived at his ring with Flint and Wiz as my brace. He sputtered, “That’s not a brace—that’s a disgrace. They’re not even the same breed. Have you no pride, sir?”
The other three braces competing that day were a pair of well-matched Boston terriers, a pair of golden retrievers, and a pair of Shetland sheepdogs. Those braces did look quite stylish and pleasing to the eye; however, each ran into a problem on at least one exercise, while my mismatched brace of Flint and Wiz was the only one to qualify.
The judge glowered at us as he was forced to give us the high in class. The ring steward who handed the judge the ribbon and the little prize that went with first place was an acquaintance who knew Flint well. I heard him lean over and say to the judge, “You know that the Cairn terrier in that pair is twelve years old and quite deaf.”
“Really?” the judge responded, looking down at Flint and smiling at us for the first time. “Good job! I never would have guessed that.”
I sometimes believe that God has a strange sense of humor. I certainly never expected Flint’s deafness to turn out to be a blessing. This situation started with a phone call to my university office.
“Hello, Dr. Coren,” said a pleasant female voice. “You won’t remember me, but I took your Introductory Psychology course about seven years ago. There were about three hundred people in my class so you never knew our names. Anyway, my name is Jennifer and I have a bit of a strange request. Do you still have that gray Cairn terrier?”
I was puzzled as to where this conversation was going but acknowledged that I still had Flint.
“I remember that you brought him into class one day to demonstrate animal learning principles. Here is my problem. My grandparents, my mother’s parents, were married for 53 years and just around four weeks ago my grandpa died. The two of them had been very close—inseparable. After the funeral Grandma Alice just crawled into her bed and doesn’t talk to anyone and hardly seems to recognize anyone. A psychologist looked at her and he said something about posttraumatic stress syndrome, and then told my mom that sometimes when people have been together in a loving relationship for a long time, after one of them dies, the other one just kind of folds up and dies shortly afterward. He suggested that if we could get through to her, interest her in something or remind her of something pleasant in her past, she might ‘wake up’ again. But Mom is beginning to think that she really can’t handle Grandma acting like a zombie, and is worried that we might have to send her to some kind of home.
“When you taught us about clinical psychology, you mentioned therapy dogs and how they sometimes helped troubled people break out of their emotional or mental shells. Before my grandparents moved into their apartment they had a Cairn terrier like yours, even the same color as yours. They loved him a lot. I was wondering if you might be willing to bring your dog over for a visit—sort of a therapy dog visit.
“If it helps at all, Mom is prepared to get her a dog.”
I am a sucker for pleas for help, especially when they involve my students or dogs, and this involved both. I did caution her, “There are no guarantees in this sort of thing. The examples that we talk about when we discuss therapy dogs in class are always the special and remarkable ones, but sometimes therapy dogs are no more successful than the casual visit of a friend or a mental health worker.”
Jennifer said that she understood but really wanted me to try. So we set up a time for the next day when I would visit her mother’s home.
At the agreed-upon time, Flint and I arrived at a modest, well-kept two-story house. Jennifer, and her mother, Norma, met us at the door. Both bent down to pat Flint, who happily wagged his tail at the attention. They then ushered me upstairs to a small bedroom at the rear of the house where a thin, frail woman, probably well into her seventies, lay partially propped up with pillows.
When we entered the room, Alice’s eyes were open, but she didn’t respond in any way. Norma spoke to her, “Mom, this is Dr. Coren, a psychologist from the university. He was one of Jennifer’s professors and he’s brought someone to meet you.” Alice did not respond.
I said, in as cheerful a voice as I could, “Hi, Alice.”
There were two dining room–style chairs against the wall and I took one and pushed it up against the bed. I patted the seat of the chair and Flint recognized the signal and jumped up to sit on the chair in the place I had indicated. “This is Flint,” I continued. “I thought that you might like to meet him. I know that he would like to meet you.”
There was no response from Alice, so I tapped the bed’s surface to encourage Flint to approach her. He took a step from the chair to the bed, and stood there, tail waving tentatively—expectantly. At that moment Alice’s eyes moved to look at him. She stared at him and slowly her head turned toward him. Then a whispery, cracked voice said, “Snuffy?”
Flint took another step toward her, and Alice uncertainly lifted her hand and swung it in his direction. Flint then stepped fully onto the bed in an attempt to draw closer to her. All the while his eyes were only on Alice. Perhaps because of her several weeks of little movement, Alice seemed to lack full coordination, and the hand that she was moving in Flint’s direction accidentally hit the metal tray on the side table. It crashed to the floor with a loud enough clang to startle everyone in the room—except for Alice, who acted as though nothing had happened, and Flint, my hearing-impaired dog.
I did not help the situation any. I made a grab for the tray when I saw it slipping off the table. In the process I tripped on the chair, which toppled over with a bang, and then I lurched into the side table, causing the lamp to topple to the floor adding to the clam
or. I really believe that Flint radiated bad karma for lamps and lighting fixtures all through his life, since so many seemed to fall over in his proximity.
Flint did not even flinch at all of this commotion, but merely glanced in my direction and then continued to approach Alice. She moved her hand again, this time clearly reaching for him, repeating “Snuffy?”
Flint was now next to Alice, and he gently inched himself forward until he was actually leaning on her chest. She slowly raised her hand, touched him, and then began to pet him with slow, deliberately gentle movements. I had managed to stand up, and returned the chair to its upright position, glancing at the tray and lamp that were now on the floor. Neither Jennifer nor Norma was looking at me. Their eyes were fixed on Flint and Alice. I repeated quietly, “His name is Flint.”
The cracked whispery voice said, “You look just like our Snuffy dog. You even feel like him. David [her deceased husband] always promised me that he would get me another Snuffy someday.”
Norma stepped to the other side of the bed and asked, “Would you like me to get you another Snuffy, Mom?”
Flint gently inched himself forward.
There was a pause that seemed to go on for hours, while Alice sat with her eyes on Flint as she patted him with slow hand movements. Finally, she responded in what might have been a wishful tone of voice, “Could you get me another Snuffy?”
Norma’s eyes were full of tears, “As soon as I can.” I nodded my head and silently mouthed, “Tomorrow.”
Norma glanced at me and said tentatively, “Maybe even tomorrow.”
Alice momentarily moved her eyes from Flint to her daughter and smiled a wan smile. “That would be wonderful.” She then looked back at Flint, who was contentedly resting on her, and said to him, “You could be my Snuffy, you know.”
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