Born to Bark (40 page)

Flint’s goofy voice responded,
“It was her fault. She shouldn’t lead a guy on like that with promises of a kiss!”

Flint’s escapades with the TV crews brought him back onto Joan’s annoyance radar. However, his training was going well and he was now ready for the highest level of obedience competition—the Utility Class. Once Flint earned that title, he would become an OTCH, or Obedience Training Champion. It was a bit more difficult to find time to train him now because of changes at the university.

I often brought both Flint and Wiz into work with me. They stayed in my office during the day, and when I was in the lab or teaching, they slept in a wire pen under my computer table. Often I would take a break from my work in the midmorning or midafternoon to take the dogs out and practice some obedience exercises with them for about 15 minutes. I kept a few training items in a drawer in my desk and improvised high jumps by propping up a piece of cardboard for them to go over. I could also lay down a few boards to act as a broad jump. This bit of training every day made their prog
ress much faster.

Sometimes I would eat lunch quickly in order to leave time to take one or both dogs out, sometimes simply to play. Having the dogs near helped me to deal with the pressures of research
and my administrative duties, which in turn made me more creative and productive. Working with my dogs also provided me some much needed physical exercise.

Flint would chase things that I threw, but he would seldom pick them up and bring them back on his own accord unless specifically commanded to do so. It was much more likely that he would try to “kill” the toy by shaking it to death. A friend had given me a Frisbee-like throwing disk made of cloth stretched over a flexible plastic hoop. I thought this had some promise as a retrieval toy for Flint. Wiz never chased anything of his own volition, and whenever I would try to entice him, I would say in his quiet voice,
“I don’t do that sort of thing. I am a companion dog—the ‘spaniel’ in my br
eed title is merely honorary.”
Then he would trot off to find someplace to lie down.

This particular day I left Wiz dozing in my office and Flint and I went off behind the psychology building to a small grassy area. I waved the flexible throwing disk in front of him and tried to get him interested in it by chanting “Do you want it? I know you want it!” in an excited voice. The sun was glinting off the bright colors of the disk and Flint started to do his little front paw prancing indicating that he was interested in what was going on. Next I threw the disk and it flew in a low flat path over the sunlit lawn while I called out, “Fetch it up, Pup!”

Flint was off like a shot, chasing after it as fast as his short feet would allow. When it stopped he grabbed it, and, as I had expected, went into his “kill the vermin” mode, shaking it vigorously back and forth. Because the disk was large and soft, every shake of his head caused it to curl and hit him in the face. These slaps made him more excited and motivated him to shake harder. Suddenly he lost his grip on the disk in the middle of shaking and it flew through the air on a perfect trajectory—just as if he had intended to toss it to me. Obviously surprised by his prey’s esca
pe, he stood and stared with his tail quivering with excitement. I made a quick dash to my side and managed
to catch the disk. Flint barked with what I chose to interpret as approval and trotted toward me.

Since I had the disk in my hand once more, I threw it again, and Flint chased it again. This time, when he grabbed the disk he gave it only a few shakes before releasing it, and it once more flew in my direction—close enough so that by running quickly I could catch it midair. Flint now seemed to be truly amused and barked for me to throw it again. I did, only by this time it appeared that my gray dog had worked out was happening. Now he grabbed the disk, gave it only two shakes, and on the second one released it for me to chase across the lawn.

The game of me tossing the floppy Frisbee to Flint and him tossing it back for me to chase went on for several more rounds. He was clearly enjoying the fact that he could do something to make me run across the lawn. After we had been at the game for around 10 minutes, I had gotten tired of all the running, and since I did have work to do back in my office, I decided to end the game. I hadn’t noticed that a small crowd of students had gathered to watch a dog tossing a Frisbee for a university professor to chase. They smiled and two or three of them applauded, so I waved at them.

I had clipped on Flint’s leash and started to return to the building when I noticed that one of my colleagues, whose research involved the training of animals (mostly rats and pigeons), was watching with a visitor—someone I identified as an eminent animal behavior researcher who was giving a guest lecture later that afternoon. The visitor looked amused and asked politely, “How did you teach him to do that?”

Feeling rather silly at being caught at play with my dog by such a well-respected scientist, I dodged the question and gave a lighthearted response, “Well, he hasn’t fully learned the game yet. He’s not very accurate with his throws, and I still have to run a lot to catch it.”

As I was talking, Flint snatched the disk that I had been
loosely holding in my hand. He gave a quick snap of his head and released it in my direction. He was only a leash length away from me and instead of arching through the air, the Frisbee hit me right in my crotch. Flint’s throw had a lot of force so the impact was hard and it hurt. The breath was knocked out of me and I buckled over in pain. As I tried to strand straight again, I noticed that my colleague and our visitor were trying to suppress outright laughter, and all that I could think to say was to painfully grunt, “Like I said, he is not very accurate with his throws.”

Sadly, the era of my bringing my dogs to the university was coming to a close. Peter had resigned as head of the department of psychology and gone on to become the dean of graduate studies. The person who replaced him did not like me personally and used the authority of his office to make life unpleasant for me. He had little leverage to use against me, since my research and writing were internationally acclaimed and respected, my teaching ratings were among the highest in the department, and I carried a heavy administrative load as well. The only thing that he could do (other than
making snarky comments) was to take action against my having my dogs at work. In fact, on the very first morning that he took over the office of department head, he sent me a memo denying me the right to continue to bring my dogs into the psychology building. It was a petty action and not really enforceable. Peter was concerned that I would resist this edict and turn the issue into a noisy and unpleasant fight that could harm the image and harmony of the department. He asked me as a personal favor to be a “team player” and not contest this order. My fondness for Peter and my love of the de
partment that I had seen grow to its current mature stature prevailed.

I had always worked longer days than many other faculty members and had been continuously available to provide assistance, guidance, and advice to all faculty and students in the department on issues associated with teaching and research. However, since data analysis and writing could be done anywhere that there was a computer, I really did not have to be on campus to continue to function at a high level. If I could not have my dogs with me in my university office, I decided I would spend less time working on campus and
would work at home, where my dogs could keep me company.

My absence was noticed, but since my research productivity continued unabated and I never missed classes, meetings, or required campus activities, our department head was unable to make an issue of this change in my schedule.

The degree of Utility Dog requires dogs to do some fairly complex tasks. In addition to more advanced retrieving and jumping, the dog has to show that he understands hand signals and can identify items by their scent.

For scent discrimination (my favorite exercise), a number of dumbbell-shaped articles made of wood, metal, or leather are scattered around in a sort of loose circle. The dog’s owner has touched one of these dumbbells to give it his or her scent, and the dog’s task is to find that one and bring it back.

Training Flint to identify and retrieve items by scent was a bit difficult at first. The most common technique for training involves using a pegboard to which two or three unscented articles are tied down with strings and the board is laid flat on the ground. The article with the scent that the dog is supposed to detect is the only one not tied down, although a piece of string is attached to it so that all of the dumbbells look the same.

Flint already knew how to fetch dumbbells on command,
but now he needed to learn that when several articles were present, the scented article was the correct one—or at least the only one that he could be retrieve since the others were anchored in place. Many dog training theories do not take into account the stubbornness and tenacity of terriers, however.

The first time that we practiced the exercise there were three items on the pegboard. One had my scent while the other two were unscented and tied down. I let Flint sniff my hand to remind him of my odor. Then I gave a new command “Find it” but used the same hand signal that I use to send him off to retrieve something. As I expected, he gave the excited
“Here I go!”
bark that he gives when he is retrieving and raced to the closest dumbbell. It happened to be tied down. He grabbed it and when it didn’t move, instead of moving off to investigate the others (the way that retrievers, collie
s, and dogs with nonterrier brains usually do) he began to worry at it, tugging while snapping his head back and forth to give it short, hard jerks. The flimsy piece of kitchen twine I had used to tie it down was not adequate and broke, allowing Flint to march happily back to me with the dumbbell.

After a trip to the store to get heavier string, I tried again. This time on the “Find it” command, Flint again dashed out and grabbed the nearest dumbbell. By chance it was the correct one with my scent. He brought it back happily and was rewarded. He gave me that look and body posture that indicated that he thought that he understood this new game. However, the next time out he grabbed one of the tied-down dumbbells. It didn’t move and this time his tugging and worrying actions were not successful in breaking it free. Terriers do not give up easily, though, and he had decided that this was
the correct item; the idea of testing the others never entered his head. The piece of pegboard that I had used was a little bit more than 2 feet square, so it turned out that he could keep his jaws locked on the tied-down article and get his hind legs off the board. When he did
that, his struggling caused the whole board to move an inch or so. Once he recognized that possibility, the result was predetermined. Using a strange hop-and-bend motion with his hind legs, inch by inch he moved the entire pegboard across the floor until it was in front of me. He then sat beside the dumbbell he had chosen and gave a bark that seemed to say,
“After all that work, I would appreciate a quality treat!”