Born to Bark (39 page)

The book’s publication ignited a massive press response. The whole list that ranks dog breeds by intelligence was printed on the front page of the newspaper
USA Today
and in the lifestyle and science sections of many other papers. The owners of the top-ranked dogs—including the border collie, poodle, German shepherd, golden retriever, Doberman pinscher, Shetland sheepdog, and Labrador retriever—all felt that they had bragging rights. The owners of dogs like the Afghan hound, Basenji, and bulldog, which were judged the least intelligent breeds, were hostile and defensive. I can’t tel
l you how many television and radio reports of my work began with the once popular children’s song “My Dog’s Smarter Than Your Dog.” And I suddenly found myself appearing on virtually all of the television shows that have talk and interview segments such as
Oprah, Larry King Live, Charlie Rose
, and many national morning and evening magazine and news shows.

Joannie became increasingly uncomfortable with my public exposure, feeling that her own privacy was being violated even though the majority of my appearances involved me traveling alone to studios in other cities. She also worried about my decorum duri
ng these appearances. One day after I returned home, I found her fuming. In a clipped voice she said, “I just got a phone call from one of my friends, and she said that she saw you on
Oprah
and you were barking! You were demonstrating different dog barks by barking at the camera. I am so embarrassed and humiliated. How can I maintain any sense of dignity if my friends know that my husband was barking on national television?”

I tried to explain: “Joannie, I was talking about the sounds that dogs make. I didn’t have any tape clips with those sounds, but those kinds of barks are simple and easy to mimic. I gave some examples of the various barks so that people could understand what I was talking about and so that they could learn how dogs communicate.”

“So if you want to talk about how dogs use urine to mark their territory and send messages are you going to pee in front of everybody on national television?” she asked.

Joan came from a family where she had been taught to be quiet and discrete, modest, unobtrusive, no matter what the situation might be. In my family, however, storytelling and clear communication were important. If you had to jump up on a table and pretend to be a monkey doing a ballet in order to make the story more interesting or the make the point that you were trying to get across more understandable, then to not dance on the table would be a violation of proper behavior. Given an irresolvable conflict like this, I chose to retreat, grabbed a pair of leashes, and took my dogs o
ut for an hour-long walk, hoping that Joan’s anger would have burned out by the time I got home again.

Eventually, as I feared might happen, the media coverage made its way to my home. The first such was NBC Television’s
Dateline
. They sent a crew to film me testing and interacting with dogs. They also wanted to meet my own dogs and asked if they could do some of the filming in my home. Joan would be very uncomfortable having a TV crew there, but she would be teaching and away for most of the day, so I somewhat reluctantly agreed with the idea that part of the segment would be shot in my house, with the proviso that the area must be cleaned up and back to normal before the time Joan
normally returned. The
crew descended upon my tiny house and filled my living room with lights, sound equipment, and cameras.

The camera kept slipping so the crew kept adding additional straps and strips of duct tape
.

In order to show a dog’s-eye view of what it looks like being trained by a human, the crew had a “doggy-cam,” a small camera that could be strapped to a dog’s head to film what he was seeing. We had made the decision to use Wizard for this segment simply because his head was somewhat broader and flatter, which made strapping on the camera a little bit easier, but even so the camera kept slipping forward to point down toward his nose, and the crew kept adding additional straps and improvised supports i
ngeniously constructed with strips of duct tape. Wiz showed a remarkable degree of patience and forbearance—more than I had, since I was starting to get edgy about what all of that tugging and taping to properly fix and aim the device was doing to the emotional state of my dog. By the time it was fully anchored and pointing in the correct direction, my poor Wiz looked like a canine refugee from Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory,
although true to his breed characteristics, he still wagged his tail and showed few signs of being upset by the proceedings.

Flint was getting excited watching me and everyone else fuss with Wiz, and I thought about putting him in another room until the filming was done, but he was already showing his little front paw prancing movements, which meant that he might be sufficiently wound up that he might start barking if he were separated from me. So I called over one of the crew members and enlisted his help, saying, “Just stand nearby, so he can see me, and hold his leash and he should be okay.” He nodded, and I went back to working with Wiz.

As with most things involving filming, the setup took longer than we expected, but finally the lights were on and the doggy-cam was pointed in the right direction and recording. To allow viewers to see and hear what the dogs were experiencing when they received commands, I gave Wiz the signal and command to sit, and he sat. Then I said “Wiz, down,” and signaled him to lie down, and he responded. Next I called and signaled him to come. I thought that it went well, but the person doing the directing wanted me to repeat the sequence and to “Make your words a bit more forceful and make your ha
nd signals broader and larger so that they can be more easily seen.”

So, as instructed, I repeated the sequence of commands with a louder voice and used much larger hand and arm movements. All went well until, probably because of the pressure of trying to be more vigorous on camera, I did what I often do when I am tired or distracted, which is to use the alternate, generic name that I give to all of my dogs. That means that when I called for Wizard to come, instead of saying “Wiz, come,” I made a large gesture and called out “Puppy, come!” Immediately, there was a loud crash, a bright flash, and the smell of ozone. I spun in the direction of the
commotion and saw Flint dashing toward me dragging a flimsy tripod that was attached to his leash, and
bouncing behind it was a light with a large reflector. Instead of holding Flint as he had been asked to do, the crew member had tied him to the light stand, thinking that he was a small dog and could do little harm. On hearing my command, Flint had charged forward with enough force to completely demolish an expensive TV light.

The room exploded into pandemonium, as I tried to untangle Flint from the lamp he was dragging while trying to avoid entangling Wiz, who was pulling his camera cable behind him. The camera man was standing with his arms clutched around the big TV camera, clearly fearing that the tripod on which it was standing might become the next victim of all of this mayhem. I finally managed to sort out the dogs, and as I sat on the floor unhooking Flint, Wizard sat nearby with the doggy-cam still on his head. “That dog camera didn’t catch all of this madness, did it?” I asked.

One of the cameramen shook his head and the interviewer added in a good-natured way, “Apparently not. It might have been an interesting bit. Would you like to have your dog do it again?”

Fortunately, the film from the previous doggy-cam sequence was good enough to use.

We still needed to do the interview segment. Unfortunately the crew had not brought an additional lamp, so we did it outside with me walking the dogs where nature and a bright sky supplied enough light. I thought it best not to inform Joannie about the little catastrophe.

Only a few weeks had passed since the NBC crew had visited the house and once again my living room was filled with lights and cameras. This time a woman was interviewing me and we
were sitting on the sofa while the crew set up lights and cameras, when Flint jumped up between us to say hello to this visitor.

The very first dog “trick” that I teach my puppies is to “Give a kiss.” I tap my index finger against my own or someone else’s cheek, and the dog then moves his head close to the spot that was tapped and gives a little lick with his tongue. It is a cute little bit of behavior that makes children laugh.

To train for this trick, I simply put a little dab of butter on my index finger and then let the dog lick it off. Next I show him another dab of butter on my finger, then touch my cheek, say “Give a kiss,” and let the dog come over to lick the butter off my cheek. Next I have him lick a dab of butter off the face of someone else after the person taps a finger to her own cheek. A few rounds of this and most dogs will respond to the word
kiss
and a finger tap by coming over to lick the spot you touch.

Flint knew this trick quite well—perhaps too well. The interviewer laughed at Flint’s sudden arrival on the sofa and raised her hands in front of her face in a surprised, amused gesture and said, “He appears to be a kissy dog.” As she said this, her index finger landed on the side of her nose, and at the word “kissy” Flint did what he was trained to do—craned his head forward to lick her face. Somewhat startled by his quick movement, she flinched backward, so Flint did what he always did when seeing something move quickly, he tried to grab it. My little gray hunter had had lots of practi
ce and was very quick, and he managed to catch the end of her nose in a nip. The interviewer squealed, swung her arms out to her sides, and toppled the table lamp beside the arm of the sofa. The lamp and its stained glass shade hit the floor with a crash and broke into several large pieces.

Flint had not actually broken the skin on her nose, but there were two little red marks. So while the blonde was in the bathroom putting on makeup, I was cleaning up the broken glass. This time the havoc that Flint had initiated could not be completely hidden from Joan.

While the TV crew continued setting up, I turned to Flint and announced, “I think that this is the last TV interview that we do at home. It’s just too hard on the lighting fixtures.”