Born to Bark (36 page)

I was hurting a bit but felt it was important to work through
any problems that might arise as the result of my clumsiness, which had clearly startled Flint. “Okay, let’s try that again. Flint, jump!” I called to him and painfully vaulted over the broad jump only to see my dog run around it giving the white boards a wide berth. I could hear him in my mind saying,
“Those boards tried to leap up and bite me. I’m not taking a chance on them again! I saw what they did to you!”

Flint contemplates the broad jump
.

Back in the early part of the twentieth century the psychologist John B. Watson showed that if you show a baby a white furry animal and then simultaneously produce a loud, unexpected sound that frightens the baby, the child will learn to be afraid—not only of that animal, but of anything with white fur. In effect, the child has been taught to be afraid of something that he was not afraid of before.

I was now faced with a similar situation. Clearly, Flint had become anxious about jumping over the broad jump. I tried
reducing the width of the jump, but he still shied away from it and would not jump with me. He wouldn’t even jump over a single board when I called him or tried to lure him with a treat. This meant that I needed some motivation that was stronger than his fear. It dawned on me that his hunting and chasing instincts might work in this instance.

I went to my equipment bag and pulled out a small squeaky toy. It was a fuzzy pillow-shaped object about the size of a tennis ball that made a high squeaking sound when it was squeezed. This was one object that Flint loved to chase and “kill.” I then took some long pieces of wood and made a sort of tight corridor with the broad jump in the middle. The pieces of wood, although low, would discourage my dog from going around the jump. Then back to the starting place in front of the jump.

“Hey, Flint! Look at this!” I waved his toy excitedly and made it squeak a few times. “Do you want it? Yeah, you want it!” followed by more squeaking. At this point Flint was dancing around with excitement. I then tossed the toy so that it fell just in front of the jump.

Flint dashed out, grabbed the toy, and brought it back to me, squeaking all the way. I repeated the procedure, only this time I tossed the toy so that it landed over the first board of the jump. Flint again dashed out, hesitated a moment at the board but leapt over, grabbed the toy, leapt back over the board, and returned to me.

This was going well, so I lengthened the throw and the toy went completely over the jump. There was a bit more hesitation this time, but Flint wanted that toy enough that he pushed away his fear and made the jump. With the toy in his mouth squeaking loudly, he jumped back and returned to me. We repeated this a few times with me calling “Jump!” just as he went over. Now I felt that we were ready to try a more formal version of the broad jump again.

Back to the starting point with the leash on him: “Flint, let’s go!” and then “Jump!” as I leapt over the boards. I turned to watch my dog only to see that he had stalled in front of the jump and was looking at me with his ears lowered in a fearful manner. I could hear him saying,
“There’s no toy for me to hunt and kill out there, and I’m not going to risk my life by going over this monster for nothing.”

I sighed but then had an idea how to continue Flint’s “therapy.” When he was not looking, I dropped the toy between the boards. This time I let him watch me make the jump while asking him to accompany me—which he did not do. But once on the other side, I picked up the toy and started to make it squeak while I danced around singing, “It’s mine. I made the jump, so the toy is mine.”

Flint approached hopefully, but I didn’t give him the toy. Again when he was not looking I hid the toy—this time near the far end of the jump, just barely out of sight. Again I made the jump alone and snatched up the toy, happily waving and squeaking it. Flint was excited now.

Finally, with the toy again hidden at the far end of the jump, I went back to Flint, attached his leash, and asked “Do you want the toy?” then with a command to go and another to jump, I went over the boards. This time he jumped with me. As a reward I let him find the toy and play with it for a few moments.

Although I had broken through his fear of the jump, another problem presented itself, which was the direct result of the method that I used to solve his fear. This is the bane of psychology: every form of therapy has the potential for not only curing problems but also for triggering others that eventually have to be dealt with as well. Flint was happily going over the jump, beginning with his single bark of joy, but in his mind he had come to suspect that there was always going to be a toy hidden near or in the broad jump. In competition, once the dog completes the broad jump, he i
s supposed to circle back and sit in front of his
handler, who is standing next to the boards. Flint was now making the broad jump, but was then immediately stopping to check around under each of the boards for his squeaky toy.

I had to do a quick fix, so next when he went over the jump, and while he was still in the air, I tossed the squeaky toy in the direction he was going. When he landed, he continued moving forward and grabbed the toy happily. I could then call him back to sit in front of me. Flint had now come to love this exercise because it seemed like play to him and he would indicate how happy he was by making excited up-and-down pitter-patting movements with his front paws while he waited for the command to jump. At that point I knew that his brain was filled with little more than
“Where’s
my toy? Let me at it!”

All that remained was to phase out the toy; but here, too, I ended up with a problem that is typical in older dogs and common in virtually all terriers, regardless of age. It is generally easy to teach a dog something new, but once he’s learned to do a task in a certain way, it can be difficult for him to learn to do it differently. I’d trained away Flint’s fear that the jump boards would leap up and bite him by teaching him that a chance to play with a toy was associated with the jump. In competition there would be no toy, so I had to phase out its use. But when I tried to replace th
e toy with a treat after he completed the jump, it wasn’t as much fun, so there were times when he would suddenly revert back to what he learned first and start searching the area for his toy after taking the jump rather than returning to me.

Eventually, Flint was reliable enough to compete in obedience trials, but occasionally his early experiences with the broad jump would swamp his mind. For example, in one competitive trial Flint had performed splendidly and all that remained was the broad jump. As we stood in front of it, I began to worry
when I saw him doing an excited pitter-patting with his paws, which meant that he was in his “chase the toy” mode.

“Just one more exercise, my puppy. Focus! We’re almost there,” I said hopefully.

At the command to jump, Flint gave his happy bark and then hurdled over the broad jump. When he landed he spun around. He was clearly searching for his squeaky toy. He then looked straight in front of him and dashed out of the ring. Before the ring steward or I could respond, he reappeared carrying a small terrycloth hand towel that one of the other competitors must have used when grooming a dog. With the blue-and-white towel in his mouth, he ran directly to me, snapped the towel back and forth a few times, then sat down. I knew what he was saying:
“Hey, it doesn’t squeak, but it’
s better than nothing.”

Running out of the ring is an automatic failure in an obedience trial. The judge for this trial was known for having a good sense of humor, however, and also understood terriers, since his wife worked with Manchester terriers. He walked over to me, laughed, and then, as if ringing the bell at the close of a boxing match, said, “Ding! Ding! Ding! It appears that your dog has thrown in towel. Sorry, you’re out.”

Teaching Flint to retrieve was a different problem, since terriers are not natural retrievers. They will chase things, but reliably picking up objects and bringing them back on command is not natural for them. I decided to use what psychologists call shaping or rewarding successive approximations, where you gradually build up the behavior that you want in a step-by-step sequence. The object that Flint would eventually have to retrieve was a wooden dumbbell, so I started by holding a dumbbell in front of Flint as he sat in front of me and telling him, “Flint, take it.” Then immediately but g
ently I rolled it into his mouth and
said, “Hold it,” while keeping my hand under his chin to keep him from spitting it out. Finally, I told him “Give” and took it from his mouth, then told him “Yes!” and gave him a treat. We repeated this steps many times. After a while I would wait until he spontaneously opened his mouth before giving it to him. Next I held the dumbbell out in front of him, just an inch or two so he had to bend forward to take. Later, I gradually increased the distance so that he was bending down to take the dumbbell from a lower position, until he was picking it up from the floor. Eventually, I would put
it down a foot or two in front of him so that he had to take a step, then further out where he had to run to pick it up, until finally I was tossing it 10 or 15 feet for him to go out and get. Each successful completion of part of the exercise ended in a bit of praise and a treat, so Flint liked the training.

Unfortunately, this is a slow process, especially with a terrier. It was not unusual for each step to take a dozen or so repetitions on any given day, and sometimes several days of practice before I could move to the next stage. I rigged my training sessions so that they would be in the evenings when Joan and I usually watched TV. During commercials or when the program had not caught my interest, I would sit on the floor and patiently go through parts of training the initial steps of the retrieving. “Take it” and I placed the dumbbell in his mouth, “Hold it,” and finally the release “
Give” where he dropped the dumbbell to trade for a treat. This early training took many evenings so it was, perhaps, not surprising when one evening Joan sat down on the sofa and looked at me on the floor getting ready to work with Flint and asked, “Is there anything worth watching on TV tonight—other than ‘Take It—Hold it—and Give’?”