Chaser_Unlocking the Genius of the Dog Who Knows a Thousand Words

by John W. Pilley

  I was still very rattled. A warm nose nuzzled my hand, and I looked down to see Chaser plastering her body to my knees and staring up at me with her huge brown eyes. She was imploring me to assure her that everything was okay, and she wouldn’t leave my side until I did so. I looked up and saw Sally, Debbie, Alliston, Julia, and Vicky in a loose circle around Chaser and me. All the techs and stagehands were watching quietly. Even the producer’s assistant had stopped tapping messages on her phone and was looking expectantly at me.

  I knelt down to give Chaser a solid hug and whispered in her ear, “It’s okay, girl.” She immediately wiggled her body happily and nudged my cheek with her nose. I petted her some more, and stood up. Chaser dashed to the beach ball and nosed it up into the air for me to catch, which I did. I smiled at her, and in reply she grinned, tongue hanging out of her mouth, and wagged her tail.

  I felt my tension melting away as I regained my confidence. I immediately knew how to get on the same page with our producer. I turned to him with an amicable grin and said gently, “Let me show you what Chaser can do.”

  We went back to the same area of the set. The enormous red curtain was gone, replaced by a backdrop banner with TODAY repeated over and over on it. The carpet of bright green artificial grass was still there. I grabbed a few toys from the plastic tub and tossed them onto the artificial grass. Chaser watched intently, ready to start herding her surrogate sheep in response to my words.

  I knelt down and beckoned to the producer to kneel beside me. He shook his head no and politely said he was glad to stand back and observe. With equal politeness I said that he would gain a much better sense of Chaser’s abilities if he got down on her level and gave her some commands himself.

  The negotiations hung in the balance as the producer looked reluctantly at the floor. No one had ever completely resisted engaging with Chaser, but for a long moment I feared the producer would be the first. Finally he knelt beside me.

  Thrilled to have another person at her level, Chaser made the next move. She grabbed Santie Claus in her mouth and, swinging her head straight up, she “tossed” it to the producer. He was taken by surprise and instinctively caught the doll in one hand.

  I encouraged the producer to play a little bit with Chaser to make her comfortable with him. He tossed Santie Claus several feet away and said, “Fetch, Chaser.” She bounded after the doll, picked it up in her mouth, and then returned to stand directly in front of the young man, locking her eyes on him. He leaned forward to take Santie Claus from her mouth, and she teasingly backed up while maintaining eye contact with him. He said, “Chaser,” and patted his knee to indicate she should come to him. She stepped forward, never breaking eye contact, her ears up in full attention. Once again he leaned forward to take the toy from her mouth, and once again she teasingly backed up.

  The producer cracked a small smile, and I could see the walls coming down as Chaser worked her wiles on him. “Congratulations!” I said. “You are now one of Chaser’s many slaves.”

  The rest of the rehearsal went beautifully. As Chaser retrieved objects by name and took them in her mouth, nosed them, or pawed them on his commands, the producer saw that her language learning wasn’t a stage trick performed in a rote way. Everyone was smiling as we said good night.

  On the brief car ride back to Brooklyn, I tried not to think about the fact that Chaser’s live national television debut was only a few hours away. I hoped I hadn’t been too insistent with the producer, but a story of Debbie’s had convinced me that I couldn’t be careless about how the media presented Chaser.

  As professional musicians, Debbie and Jay are both experienced performers. Yet they also both get nervous before any performance, big or small. When I asked why, Debbie told me about two friends, a pianist and a bass player, who meet for the first time in a long while. The pianist asks the bass player what he’s been up to, and the bass player reports that he’s recently completed a successful tour with a great band, recorded on a superstar’s new album, and written the music for a hit movie. To each piece of good news the pianist says, “Yeah? I hadn’t heard about that.”

  The bass player says, “The funny thing is that last week at a jam session I crashed and burned on a relatively simple tune.”

  The pianist says, “Yeah, I heard about that.”

  In other words, you are only as good as your last performance. I hoped Chaser’s first live television gig wouldn’t be her last.

  In Brooklyn, Debbie unlocked the door to the house and went inside with Sally. Holding Chaser’s leash loosely in my hand, I slipped through the door and let it close behind me. We were all trudging up the stairs when Sally said, “Where’s Chaser?”

  With an “Oh, gosh” I clambered back down the stairs. As I pulled the door open I heard Chaser’s resonant new bark. She stood on the sidewalk wagging her tail and holding her leash in her mouth.

  “I’m so sorry, girl,” I said, reaching for her leash. Teasing me as she had the producer, she stepped back, dropped the leash, and gave another deep bark.

  I laughed and said, “Come on now, Chaser. We’ve got to go to bed.” She grabbed her leash in her mouth and backed up a little more.

  At that moment, three young women rounded the corner and saw Chaser. The one in the middle exclaimed, “Too cute!” Her friends loudly agreed, and they all giggled and squealed more praise as Chaser wagged the whole back half of her body at them. She spotted a small stick on the sidewalk, picked it up in her mouth, and dropped it at the young women’s feet, initiating a few minutes of play with them. I told the young women about Chaser’s television debut the next morning, and they wished her luck as they waved goodbye. With that, Chaser was finally ready to go inside to bed.

  The next morning, returning with Chaser from our normal pre-dawn walk, I saw a black SUV with an NBC sign in the side window idling outside Debbie and Jay’s house. A small knot tightened in my stomach.

  Sally, Deb, and Aidan were all waiting in the kitchen, ready to go. Alliston, Julia, and Vicky were going to meet us at Rockefeller Center. Aidan was excited about getting to miss school and tag along to Today and ABC World News. With his Creamsicle cheeks, light brown hair, and creative imagination, Aidan reminds me of a young Tom Sawyer. The rest of the family says he looks like me when I was his age. His presence makes Chaser light up faster than I can say Frisbee, and she was excited about going on an outing with him.

  We went down to get into the large SUV, which had two rows of back seats. Chaser hopped in right after Sally and sat on the seat beside her. In our own car she always gets to sit on the seat.

  Wanting to be respectful of the driver and his vehicle’s leather upholstery, I instructed Chaser to sit on the floor. It took two commands before she reluctantly left the seat for the floor. She sighed heavily as she lay down and rested her head on her front paws.

  A few minutes later we were at NBC’s Rockefeller Center studios. An NBC page whisked us to the Today green room. There was a little makeshift holding area for Chaser right outside, because animals were not allowed in the green room. When it was time to go to the set, Alliston, Chaser, and I followed the producer’s assistant, taking a different route through the maze than the night before, until we reached the part of the set with the artificial grass and backdrop banner.

  The assistant asked us to take our positions on the fake turf and wait for Matt Lauer. We had to be very quiet, because Meredith Vieira was conducting an interview only a few steps away. In contrast to the night before, the set was fully lit and crowded with people. Camera operators were catching every angle of the different set areas, as we could see on wall-mounted monitors.

  In contrast to her exuberance the night before, Chaser was subdued, plainly feeling the impact of the bright lights and the activity all around. She lay down on the artificial grass as if she was bored, and she showed only mild interest when stagehands spread most of the twenty-five toys we’d brought in the plastic tub on the artificial grass and put the plastic tub to my left.


  Matt Lauer walked briskly out from behind the backdrop banner. I felt his magnetism as he extended his hand toward Alliston and me with a friendly smile. And then he immediately dropped to one knee to introduce himself to Chaser. She rose to greet him, ears slightly back, tail a little low but still wagging. She glanced up at Matt for only a second, then looked at her toys.

  “Do you want to play, Chaser?” Matt asked with a laugh. He grabbed a stuffed animal and tossed it in the air for her to catch. Her ears went up and her tail wagged vigorously as she caught it in her mouth. The entire studio seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief, but I thought I might be projecting my own response. Matt played catch with Chaser for a minute, and only then did he stand up and quickly run through the segment with Alliston and me. Matt’s consummate professionalism and unmistakable humanity, and Chaser’s immediate positive response, made my concerns vanish as quickly as when Neil deGrasse Tyson had instantly made friends with her.

  A good thing, too, because over the studio speakers we heard, “Chaser, stand by. And five, four, three, two, one.”

  We were live on air. Chaser lay in front of me with her head between her front paws and her ears up as Matt asked Alliston and me about the scientific significance of her learning. She knew intuitively that it was almost time for her to work. She was listening intently for the first words that would tell her what she needed to do.

  As he had a minute before, Matt dropped to one knee facing Chaser, and she immediately sat up. Matt said, “Chaser, fetch Tennis. Fetch Tennis.” Chaser stood on hearing her name, and on hearing “Tennis” walked toward two blue racquetballs a few feet apart from each other. When she was closer she saw that neither of them was Tennis. She came back toward Matt and he repeated encouragingly, “Chaser, fetch Tennis.”

  Chaser pricked up her ears when Matt spoke, looked toward him quizzically, and wheeled around to scan her toys. For whatever reason, probably the studio lighting, she didn’t seem to see the yellow tennis ball that was Tennis amid the thick, bright green artificial grass. What humans see as yellow and green, dogs see as mostly yellow blurring into gray. In any case, Chaser hadn’t gone near Tennis yet.

  She stood in the center of the artificial grass, and her tail went down. My heart sank. But Matt wasn’t giving up. As softly and urgently as David Johnson saying “You can do it,” Matt whispered, “Chaser, fetch Tennis.”

  Chaser started to walk around to view her toys. She turned right wide enough so that a couple of steps finally brought her near Tennis, and she could identify it by its size and shape. She quickly picked it up in her mouth, triggering a little chorus of “awww”s from around the studio and a “Good girl!” from me as she took it to Matt.

  When I saw the video later, I noted that it took sixteen seconds for Chaser to find Tennis and bring it to Matt. They were the longest sixteen seconds of my life.

  Matt told Chaser to put the ball in the tub. She wanted to play with it first, following our pattern after she successfully completed a language task. But there wasn’t time for play in the segment, and Chaser reluctantly tossed the ball into the tub, eliciting more “awww”s from around the studio.

  Matt stroked Chaser on the head and told her, “Good girl!” And then he said, “Chaser, fetch Peppermint.” Chaser went straight to Peppermint, a small white rubber barbell with pink and green stripes. She snatched it up in her mouth with a playful squeak, and teasingly squeaked it some more as she quickly brought it to Matt and dropped it in the tub.

  Matt said, “Chaser, fetch SpongeBob.” As she began to make a circuit of the more than twenty toys still scattered around, Matt repeated, “Fetch SpongeBob.”

  Chaser continued on her circuit. Her tail went up and her step quickened. But I didn’t see SpongeBob.

  “SpongeBob’s not out there,” I said apologetically.

  Chaser kept heading across the stage and picked up something on the other side of Matt from me, as he said, “No, here it is right here.”

  Chaser brought the object to us, and I saw it was a Frisbee with SpongeBob’s face on it.

  “She sees better than I do,” I said, feeling very relieved.

  Chaser wanted to play with the Frisbee, but Matt told her to put it in the tub and she did so, resigned to its being out of commission for play.

  Chaser was ready to fetch another toy and if possible play with it. However, there were only about forty seconds left of the segment’s three-and-a-half-minute slot on the show. Matt stood up and asked what else we wanted to accomplish with Chaser. I put Alliston on the spot with a silly “Speak, Alliston.” He good-naturedly replied, “Woof,” and then explained that the next steps of language learning for Chaser would be working with syntax and how the order of words can affect meaning.

  Meanwhile, Chaser had picked up KG, a toy barbell made out of purple rubber, and was squeaking it hopefully. She continued to squeak it as Alliston spoke, until I whispered firmly, “Out, out,” meaning let go of the toy, and “Drop,” meaning lie down. As she complied, like a child who knows that protest is no longer tolerated, I silently gave thanks that she had charmed her audience as usual.

  The next moments flew by. Matt wrapped up the segment by telling viewers about that evening’s Nova scienceNow. We stayed right where we were until the monitors switched to Russell Brand, sitting opposite Meredith Vieira. The show then cut to commercial, but not before Russell Brand wisecracked, in response to Meredith’s saying it must be tough to follow a dog, “It’s pretty easy, actually, because I could have put all those things in that tub. I was watching Chaser and I thought, ‘That is easy.’”

  Matt shook our hands and thanked us for coming and bringing Chaser, graciously posed for pictures, and then strode off to his next segment. Pumped up with excitement, I looked around for Chaser. Russell Brand was embracing her and posing for pictures with her and Aidan, until a producer rushed him off to join Matt Lauer in front of the crowd outside Today’s street-level studio.

  Suddenly I was feeling as light as air, busting my buttons with pride over Chaser’s national television debut. Matt Lauer could not have been more personable and amazing with Chaser, and the entire staff of Today had been great. Our segment’s young producer had completely delivered and knocked the ball out of the park. What a great day, and it was only 8:45 a.m.

  Here was Sally, beaming as she took my hand and squeezed it. She gave me a quick kiss and whispered, “Good job, Pill!” Julia Cort, also grinning from ear to ear over Chaser’s performance, was asking Deb, who was snapping pictures, to be sure to send her copies. Soon we were all assembled, and Aidan proudly took charge of Chaser on her leash.

  Plastic tub of Chaser’s toys in hand, an NBC page guided us through the maze to the stage door on West Forty-Eighth Street. The same black SUV was waiting for us. The sidewalk was streaming with people hurrying to work, and Chaser basked in the smiles, compliments, and pets she elicited from the passing throng.

  It was time to say goodbye to Alliston, who needed to catch a plane home. As his cab pulled away from the curb to take him to the airport, I thought about how lucky I was to have his friendship and his collaboration on the work with Chaser.

  I turned back to the black SUV and saw that Deb was still trying to orchestrate getting everyone inside. Chaser kept jumping in and trying to claim a seat, and it took plenty of coaxing from Deb and me to convince her to get down. With great reluctance—and a dramatic sigh—Chaser plopped down on the floor behind the front passenger seat, and at last we were on our way.

  We weren’t scheduled to arrive at the ABC studios for the taping with Diane Sawyer until one-thirty. So that we could rest a little without having to fight morning rush hour and midday traffic going back and forth to Brooklyn, Julia had thoughtfully reserved a room for us at a dog-friendly luxury hotel in Chelsea.

  The hotel was only twenty-five blocks away, but it took thirty minutes to get there because of the heavy traffic. Chaser ignored me and everyone else the whole way. I was a little frust
rated with her sulking, but then I reflected that she had just brilliantly demonstrated her creative learning without receiving any of her usual play rewards. How many people watching her on Today, I wondered, had ever seen an animal demonstrate something without getting food rewards for completing a trick or a step in a routine? How many noticed that Chaser did everything she was asked without being given a single treat?

  The hotel room had a king-size bed. As soon as Chaser saw it, she looked at me expectantly, wagging her tail.

  “Go ahead, girl!” I said.

  Chaser jumped up on the bed and spun around to face me with her ears pricked straight up at attention.

  “Fast fan,” I whispered. “Fast fan.”

  She hopped back a little, bowed her front legs, and shook her head back and forth with a low play-growl.

  “Fast fan,” I repeated, tossing her a toy misnamed “Ann.” When Aidan saw the toy, he gravely informed me that it was Marvin the Martian from Looney Tunes. But I’d already written “Ann” on the toy in permanent ink, and that was the name Chaser learned.

  Chaser has always loved jumping on our bed at home. She does this only when we invite her, never on her own. There is a ceiling fan above the foot of the bed, and she gets excited when we turn it on. She also likes the ceiling fans in the living room and upstairs, but the one in our bedroom is the most captivating, because it is right above the bouncy bed.

  It was Robin who first noticed Chaser’s fascination with the ceiling fans. And it was Robin who started the game by saying “fast fan” to attract Chaser’s attention when she turned on one of them.

  “Fast fan” can now mean play time anywhere, although most of all on a bed. But Chaser always looks up for a fan when she hears the phrase, because a whirring ceiling fan is the cherry on the ice cream sundae in her mind.