by Jan Fennell
But while I agreed with the behaviourists’ idea, I disagreed with the method that flowed from this. The behaviourists’ approach was to impose a pecking order during the evening meal. Under this system, the human finished their meal in full view of the dog before allowing it to eat its meal afterwards. It was a procedure that undoubtedly produced results but there was a lot I was not happy about. Apart from anything else, people feed their dogs at different times of the day and night. Dogs in sanctuaries, for instance, are fed in the morning. I also thought the approach was too protracted. Again I thought about dogs in the wild, and couldn’t see how the pack would wait until the evening. A dog is an opportunist eater rather than only a gorge eater. It will catch a hare, a bird – any prey that will keep it going – it will not lounge around all day: getting food is the priority of the day.
On top of all this, it seemed an unkind thing to do. I put myself in the dog’s place. I thought: ‘If you’ve gone all day without food and then the human sits down to eat before you finally get yours, you are going to be ravenous.’ This might put the dogs in their place but it is not very nice. I knew feeding time had huge potential as a means of reinforcing the leadership signals, but I wasn’t going to eat a full breakfast or an evening meal in front of them, so I had to think of something else to get that information across. I had to come up with a new method.
I was beginning to realise that quick, instinctive information was the most useful, probably because a dog has no concept of the future at all. I had seen that sometimes the slightest gesture is capable of conveying a huge amount of information. The thought came to me one day. That evening, before I mixed their food, I put a cracker on a plate. Then I got out their bowls and mixed it up on a raised surface. What I then did was take the cracker out and eat it, making it look as if the food was coming out of their bowls. Again I was thinking of it in terms of the pack mentality. What do they see? They see you eating out of their bowl. What does that make you? The leader.
I was not tackling bad behaviour in this case. There were no particular problems at feeding time, quite the opposite in fact, it was a time when I knew I could get their undivided attention and their best behaviour too. I fed them in their individual bowls, each of them dotted around the kitchen and the hallway. They knew their spots and – apart from their habit of exploring each other’s empty bowls – behaved very well. In this case, my motivation was simply to underline the message I was getting across in the other areas.
They quickly sensed something was different. I can remember them looking at me rather strangely, trying to work out what I was up to. There was a little drama at first. There would be a little jumping and whining but soon they were used to the ritual and would wait patiently while I ate my cracker. They seemed to accept that I had to be satisfied before they too could eat. Then when I placed their bowls down they ate contentedly. The changes were not dramatic but on this occasion I had not expected them to be. It was simply another confirmation that I was their leader, another trick up my sleeve. And what pleased me most once more was that success had come by thinking of the nature of the dog.
By now I must admit I was feeling quite pleased with myself. Life always has a habit of cutting you down to size, however, and I was soon reeling from a terrible setback. I had already lost Sandy in the summer of 1992 but then in February 1994, I lost my beloved Khan. It was, I have to confess, a real blow to me. More than any other dog, Khan had been with me through good times and bad. I only had Sasha and the beagle, Kim, left. I missed the dogs I had lost terribly. It took the arrival of another dog to solidify all the ideas I had been working on.
Chapter 5
The First Test
A few weeks after Khan’s death, I popped into a local animal sanctuary. I had gone there to see the boss, a close friend, but my visit had nothing to do with dogs. It was about going to the theatre, if memory serves me well. My friend was busy so, while I waited, I decided to take a walk around the sanctuary. As I did so, I came across one of the most pathetic sights I’ve seen in my life. Inside one of the blocks there was this thin, pathetic little Jack Russell. I was aware of their reputation for being snappy and aggressive ankle biters, and had never particularly warmed to the breed. But it was impossible not to be drawn to this poor creature. He was trembling, and not just because it was winter and he was cold; I could see the fear in his eyes.
I soon learned his heartbreaking background. He had been discovered abandoned, tied to a concrete block by a piece of string. He had not eaten for days and was emaciated. If he had not been taken in by the sanctuary he would have been dead by now. He was clearly a badly damaged dog. As I spoke to the kennel girl who was looking after him, she told me he kept running off. They were also worried that he might bite. Finding a new dog had been the last thing on my mind as I had driven over there. Nevertheless, I drove back with a new addition to the family shivering in the back seat. I had decided to take him in.
I soon named him Barmie, for no other reason than the fact that he was, well, a little bit barmy, mad. When I got him back home, he sat under my kitchen table. Every time I walked past him he growled. All I could feel was sympathy. It wasn’t aggression I was seeing, it was nothing but sheer terror; I knew I’d be petrified if someone had treated me the way he had been.
I hadn’t taken Barmie in as an experiment, but I was soon thinking that he was going to provide me with a great opportunity. I had so far been working with dogs that were comparatively well adjusted – animals that were used to always being treated kindly. Here I had one who had known nothing but bad treatment. Over the coming weeks, Barmie would provide me with the chance to test the knowledge I had been gaining so fast with my own dogs, to put all the pieces together. In return I hoped I would have the opportunity to help this troubled little dog get over his past.
By now a golden rule had begun to emerge: whatever it was that the traditional methods of training recommended, I needed to do the opposite. So I resisted the temptation to throw myself at Barmie, to shower him with love and affection. He was such a vulnerable creature it was almost impossible at times. There were days when I just wanted to cuddle him and tell him he was all right. But instead I decided not to invade his space and just to leave him alone. So he just sat there under the kitchen table glaring. And I just carried on around the house as normal.
In everything I had read and seen, it was agreed that it takes 48 hours for a dog to suss out its environment. Then it takes about two weeks for it to sort out its place in its new home. It’s like anybody starting a new job, it takes you about a day or two to sort out your desk then another two weeks to find your place in the company. So for the first two weeks I continued in this vein, effectively leaving him to his own devices. Whenever I did speak to him I did so as kindly as possible. Every now and again I would look across the room at him and just say: ‘Hello, love.’ I would see his little tail wagging, almost against his will as if he couldn’t help it. It was as if he wanted to know what was required of him, but again I let him be.
The first thing I tried out with him was the ‘gesture eating’ technique. At this stage I was still experimenting with that theory. It was an ideal opportunity to really try it out because I had him on four very small feeds a day in an attempt to build him up. The poor thing had been starved, and weighed about two-thirds the weight he should have been. He responded immediately. He would sit there watching me with his ears pinned back. Then his little tail would begin to wag as if to say: ‘Yes, I’ve got that.’ I would then put his food down and walk away. He would watch me go, then tuck in.
He began to put on weight and slowly but surely he began relaxing. The growling stopped, he began slinking out into the garden when I was there hanging out the washing. Sometimes when I was sitting around he would come up to me very, very tentatively. When he came, I wouldn’t touch him, just let him get to know me. He was still very sensitive. When I got a lead out, he nearly died a death – if you become attached to a lead, you lose the abilit
y to take flight. But I was not going to push him in any way, so I left it. My general principle remained that I was going to leave him alone, to give him time to make up his own mind.
The breakthrough came after about a month or so when I was out in the garden playing ball with Sasha. It was springtime now, and I remember that Sasha was retrieving and bringing a ball to me. Suddenly Barmie appeared in the garden with a rubber ring, or quoit, in his mouth. He had decided to join us. He was seeing that Sasha was getting attention because we were playing this game, and came over with the ring. I asked him to leave it and he did. I picked it up and threw it and he chased after it, grabbed it then shot back into the house to hide under the bed.
I knew this was an opportunity to establish some sort of pattern so I decided I wasn’t going to chase after him. I wanted him to play the game by our rules so I carried on playing with Sasha. Sure enough, a few minutes later he reappeared. He came up with the ring again, I threw it again and he went to retrieve it again. This time, however, he came back and brought it back to me. I rewarded him with a ‘good boy’ and repeated the exercise. He did the same thing again.
Every dog, like every human, learns at its own pace. In this case we were talking about a remedial animal, a damaged dog, so I knew it was going to be a slow process. Finally, however, the breakthrough had come. I now knew that he was a more confident little dog. He had learned that nobody would hurt him. He felt he was safe and I could move forward with him.
I had showed him that I would play with him but only on my terms. So then I started calling him to me. One thing I bore in mind was that dogs are, like humans, selfish creatures by nature. This can be a means of survival or simply for fun, but dogs are driven by the question ‘Why should I do this?’ My thinking was based on the idea of stimulus and reward, which I learned from behaviourism and B.F. Skinner, but by now I was adding to this the principles of the wolf pack and the primacy of the leader. I knew that the leader was not just the authoritative member of the pack but also the provider, so I too had to be both. Therefore when I called Barmie to me, I had a little piece of food in my hand. This began to work really well, so well that I then moved on to stroking him. Given how touchy he had been when he first arrived, this was a far more significant moment than usual. I could have cried when he responded to the affection. How long had it been since he had been shown such warmth, I wondered?
It was as I began to stroke him that I realised how far I had come. I noticed with Barmie that he would duck before I stroked him at the back of his neck. I had spent time with other dogs at the sanctuary and dogs there did the same thing, they ducked. My dogs didn’t and I wondered why did this dog act this way? When I did more research I discovered that this is the most vulnerable area in most species, including humans. How many humans do you allow to touch your head and neck? Only those you trust. When dogs fight, the violence will begin when one arches over the neck of the other one. It was at this moment that I remembered something that Monty Roberts had said. He explained that if the animal believes in you, you can touch its most vulnerable area. It is, in some ways, the ultimate expression of your leadership. You are telling your subordinate that you know how to destroy it. The fact that you do not only underlines your authority even more. It made me realise how much trust I had now gained, how effective I had become in persuading my dogs that I was a leader to whom they could entrust their lives. It was a poignant moment.
My other dogs, Sasha and Donna in particular, had taught me a lot. But in terms of putting flesh on the bones of the ideas I was working on, Barmie was my best teacher by far. He taught me that I could not move on until he felt secure and comfortable and trusted me. There was no pain, no fear in him, he was now learning because he wanted to and he believed in me. He had also helped me see that all the elements of my method must happen simultaneously. It is an absolute circle of events and the dogs must have that information supplied to them consistently.
The events of the last few months had been exciting and incredibly rewarding. I can’t begin to tell you the calm that had come over the dogs: it was awesome. And the more I took charge of these situations, the more control I had, the more I had them willing to do what I wanted. What made it even more rewarding was the fact that there was none of the enforcement of so-called obedience work. I had finally proved what I had sensed for so long: that it was possible for dogs to follow me because they wanted to rather than because they had to.
Predictably, the reaction of humans was less serene. By now I was talking openly about what I felt I had achieved – to a mixed reception. Some people smiled sweetly, shook their heads slowly and gave me a look that told me they thought I had finally gone off my trolley. Some people were more outspoken. Some said, ‘Oh, you are cruel,’ others dismissed me with ‘Oh, you and your daft ideas.’ I’m not going to pretend I’m made of steel, I was hurt a lot. A couple of times I thought to myself: ‘Why am I making all this trouble for myself, why am I bothering?’ But again I thought of Monty Roberts, whose father had beaten him for his ideas as a boy and who for almost forty years had put up with the scorn and ridicule of the horse world. I thought if Monty could stick it, then so could I. Perhaps unsurprisingly, of those who understood what I was up to, it was Wendy, who had after all introduced me to Monty Roberts, who was one of the most supportive. She was adopting my principles and trying them out on her dogs with encouraging results. She told me to persist, keep at it.
Slowly but surely the word spread and people began to ask me how it could work for their problem dogs. I began to visit people, applying the techniques I had learned with my own dogs to their problem pets. Seeing was believing. In home after home that I visited, the dogs’ behaviour would change immediately. I saw that the dogs were free and happy to change, that they wanted to do it. It was powerful stuff, and I felt very humble, very privileged.
Six years later, I have worked with hundreds of dogs. The communication technique I have evolved has helped improve the behaviour of all of them. I have now reached the point where, if an owner does as I say, their dog will have to do what that owner wants. The principles I laid down during those exciting early days now form the basis for my work. It is with them that we must begin the next section of this book.
Chapter 6
Amichien Bonding: Establishing Leadership of the Pack
No one could have a higher regard for the intelligence of the dog than me. There are still times when I seriously wonder whether they are wiser creatures than some of the humans with whom I come into contact! Even I have had to accept that one thing is beyond them, however. Dogs are never going to learn our language. The bad news is that to communicate successfully with our dogs, it is up to us to learn their language. It is a task that requires an open mind and a respect for the dog. No one who regards a dog as their inferior will achieve anything. It must be respected at all times for what it is.
The good news, however, is that whereas humans speak in a bewildering range of tongues and dialects, dogs share one universal language. It is a silent and extremely powerful language, yet at its heart are a simple set of principles that – with a few subtle variations – influence the way all dogs behave. To understand the principles of this language, we first have to understand the society within which all our dogs believe they are living. And the model for this community is the wolf pack.
The modern dog’s appearance and lifestyle is, of course, far removed from that of its ancient ancestor. Centuries of evolution have not removed its basic instincts, however. The dog may have been taken out of the wolf pack, but the instincts of the wolf pack have not been taken out of the dog. Two immensely powerful forces guide the life of a wolf pack. The first is its instinct for survival, the second its instinct for reproduction. The means it has evolved to guarantee these ends is a hierarchical system as strict and successful as any in the animal world. Every wolf pack is made up of leaders and subordinates. And at the head of every pack’s pecking order are the ultimate rulers: the Alpha pair.
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As the strongest, healthiest, most intelligent and most experienced members of the pack, it is the Alpha pair’s job to ensure its survival. As a result, they dominate and dictate everything that the pack does. Their status is maintained by consistent displays of authority. Underlining this, the Alpha pair are the only members of the pack who breed. As humans we have, of course, developed along different, what we would like to believe are more democratic, lines. Yet sometimes I wonder whether it is we rather than the dogs who took a wrong turn. How much trust can we really place in our leaders? How many of us have even met them? Within the wolf pack no such uncertainty exists. The Alpha pair control and direct life within the pack and the remainder of the pack accept that rule unfailingly. Each subordinate member is content to know its place and its function within this pecking order. Each lives happy in the knowledge that it has a vital role to play in the overall well-being of the pack.
The hierarchy of the pack is constantly reinforced through the use of highly-ritualised behaviour. The ever-changing nature of pack life – in which Alphas and their subordinates are frequently killed or replaced through age – makes this essential. As far as the wolf’s modern-day descendants are concerned, however, four main rituals hold the key to the pack instinct which lives on within them. They are central to all that will follow.