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Yasha, my devoted classroom assistant and white-water rafting partner.
COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR
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Grindle was a big-hearted German shepherd with a gift for turning doorknobs.
COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR
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Sally and I meet Chaser for the first time at Wayne West's Flint Hill Farm in 2004.
SANDY HANCE
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As a puppy, Chaser demonstrated boundless energy and an aptitude for learning.
ROBIN PILLEY
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Chaser herds sheep as I give herding commands. Often working Border collies know each sheep in a flock by name.
ROBIN PILLEY
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Some of Chaser's friends at Wayne West's farm. These sheep are frequently used to help train young Border collies.
ROBIN PILLEY
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Wayne West raises sheep and Border collies at Flint Hill Farm and taught Chaser and me how to herd sheep.
COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR
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In testing Chaser's syntax and semantics understanding, I instruct Chaser to retrieve one of two possible direct objects from the bed and take it to one of two possible prepositional objects in the living room.
COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR
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Each of Chaser's 1,022 toys has a unique proper noun name.
ROBIN PILLEY
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Chaser has demonstrated the ability to deduce the name of a novel object when it is placed among a group of familiar toys.
ROBIN PILLEY
Chaser knows the proper noun names of over one hundred individual balls, which she can also identify by the category labels “ball” and “toy.”
ROBIN PILLEY
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My former student Alliston Reid (on the far left) collaborated with me on the paper we published in
Behavioural Processes
.
SEBASTIEN MICKE, PARIS MATCH
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Play is a very effective reward for Chaser. One of her favorite games is playing fetch on the stairs . . . and most of the time she makes me do the fetching.
COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR
