Chaser (30 page)

When it was time to record the segment, the lights went up with Diane and Neil on their stools. Chaser was at their feet among several toys, where I had given her a single command to stay. I hoped she would.

The moment Diane and Neil began to talk, they had Chaser's attention. After about thirty seconds, she lowered her head between her paws, but remained in a relaxed state of readiness. Every now and then she closed her eyes briefly as Neil spoke about the latest findings on animal intelligence and showed clips, mostly but not all including Chaser, from that night's
Nova scienceNow
.

It was a long wait for Chaser, who at one point raised her head and curled into a slight “C” to look over at me. I held my hand straight up and down, palm out, and mouthed, “Stay.”

Almost three minutes into the three-minute-and-fifty-three-second segment Diane said, “Okay, I think we all want to see . . .”

Neil finished the sentence for her: “. . . a demonstration.”

Chaser straightened herself out but remained lying down even as Diane and Neil abandoned their stools and knelt down beside her.

When Neil said, “Chaser,” however, she immediately got to her feet. She turned around to face him and hear him say, “Find Goose.” She pivoted around to scan the toys, took a quick step to find and pick up Goose, then pivoted back around and took a quick return step in front of Neil, squeaking the toy at him.

Diane and Neil both laughed, and Diane asked Neil, “Can I do this one?” She looked toward Chaser, who was looking all around the set and wagging her tail. Diane said, “Chaser,” but she continued to look around the set. Diane said a little more firmly, “Chaser,” and she turned to look at her with full attention. Diane said, “Find ABC.”

Chaser sauntered over to the square cloth toy with the letters A, B, and C on its sides, grabbed it in her mouth, and turned to shake it at Diane, who said, “You did it! ABC! You did it!”

Diane looked at the camera and told viewers about that night's “truly remarkable”
Nova scienceNow
. Meanwhile, Chaser had plucked Goose out of the blue tub and was squeaking it, hoping to initiate a play session after successfully accomplishing her appointed language tasks. Spreading her arms in a gesture that embraced both Chaser and viewers, Diane concluded the segment—and assuming no breaking news required a change of plans, that night's broadcast—by saying, “And to you and your brilliant dogs at home, good night.”

A few minutes later we all reconvened in the conference room. Unprompted, Diane and Neil both quickly wrote and signed personal notes to Aidan, who received them with a mixture of awe, gratitude, and delight. And then it was time for us to leave.

Going back out through the newsroom, Chaser was once again the happy center of attention. She wiggled and tail-wagged around the room to receive hugs and praise from as many people as possible.

The black SUV was waiting for us on West Sixty-Sixth Street. We all started piling into the vehicle, and before I knew it Chaser was sitting on the first row of seats behind the driver.

I gently said, “Get down, girl.” She ignored me and looked in the other direction.

“Come on, Chase,” I said. “You've got to get down.”

She slunk down to the floor, and then climbed right back up on the seat.

“No, Chaser,” I said. “On the floor!”

She grunted discontentedly, stood up on the seat, turned to face the window, and sat back down. I sat beside her and tried to nudge her down.

She wouldn't budge. So I gently tried to lift her off the seat toward the floor. I felt her move and thought she was going to get on the floor, but instead she threw all her weight against the back of the seat.

I couldn't bring myself to peel her off the seat after all she had done that day. She might have been oohed and aahed at and fussed over. But she had also put up with a lot of stress, especially being repeatedly denied play with her toys after she'd completed language tasks involving them. She had performed brilliantly. She had a right to be a cranky diva and want to sit on the seat as she normally did in our own car.

All the same, I felt helpless about there not being enough seats for everyone. I wondered if I should sit on the floor.

Julia graciously solved the problem, saying that she really should take a cab to her hotel and get some rest before a very early plane flight the next morning. I would happily have ridden on the floor in order for Julia to have dinner with us. But I didn't want to argue if she actually needed to prepare for her trip home from New York. We exchanged hugs, congratulations, and goodbyes, and then she departed in a cab.

Our stalwart driver took Sally, Debbie, me, and a sleeping Aidan and Chaser back to Brooklyn. We were all worn out, but it wasn't bedtime yet. First we had to watch the appearance on
Today
, which Jay had ready on the digital video recorder. When the segment reached the point where I said, “SpongeBob's not out there,” I felt a rush of embarrassment over my mistake. But then it occurred to me that there could not be a better example of Chaser's performing a language task with no cuing from me. While I thought she was failing in front of my eyes, she was actually succeeding in front of millions of eyes much sharper than mine.

We were able to watch
ABC World News
at its normal East Coast time. The segment with Chaser closed the broadcast, Debbie quipped, like the headline act at an all-star concert. She knelt on the floor to give Chaser a hug and said, “Who's a rock star?”

I was elated about Chaser's performance on both programs. I was also thoroughly intrigued by the brief clip that
Today
aired from the “How Smart Are Dogs?” segment of that night's
Nova scienceNow
, and by the longer clips that
ABC World News
aired. There were still two hours before
Nova scienceNow
. In the meantime we ordered Indian food. And of course Chaser had to have a walk and some play time, as well as her own dinner.

We'd all been up since five a.m., and it was nine p.m. when we crowded into the little family room off the kitchen to watch
Nova scienceNow
's “How Smart Are Animals?” program. Aidan curled up on the couch and quickly fell asleep. Chaser was oblivious to the television, but excited to be with everyone, including Jay. Although she respected her buddy Aidan's need for sleep, she interrupted the rest of us with her ball throughout the program.

After the excitement of the day, including seeing clips from the program on
Today
and
ABC World News
, I had a sense of anticlimax waiting for
Nova scienceNow
to start. But almost immediately I found myself watching with fascination, as if it portrayed a whole different family and their dog.

Written, produced, and directed by Julia Cort, the segment with Chaser, “How Smart Are Dogs?,” was the first and longest part of the program (there were also segments on dolphins, octopi and cuttlefish, and Alex the parrot and his owner and trainer Irene Pepperberg).

All the footage with Chaser was shot at our home in the living room and backyard. I'd emphasized to every journalist I spoke to that Chaser was not just a research animal but a member of the Pilley family, and this footage really conveyed that beautifully. I was also happy to see that a few scenes in our backyard, showing Chaser going through her little agility course and catching a Frisbee, captured a flavor of our play together. Neil joined right into that play, and the program brought back how immediately and genuinely he forged a connection with Chaser.

With regard to Chaser's learning, the segment first showed all 1,022 of Chaser's named toys piled in the backyard. I took her into the house and upstairs to my study, with no view of the backyard, while Neil randomly picked nine toys. He put them behind the couch in the living room, and then called Chaser downstairs.

She retrieved the nine objects correctly in rapid succession. And her body language and expression as she listened to Neil displayed her utter confidence and complete command of her vocabulary. I felt grateful for how vividly the program captured that, as well as how it duplicated my experimental procedures, with Chaser unable to see anything in the living room while she was waiting upstairs in my study.

Following this came footage of the evolutionary anthropologist Brian Hare at Duke University and the psychologist Clive Wynne at Wolf Park in Indiana, with each of them offering perspective on the social intelligence of dogs. Then it was back to our living room in Spartanburg to see Chaser demonstrate her ability to learn by exclusion. Sitting on our somewhat frayed couch, Neil said, “Let's see what [Chaser] does when we challenge her with a new toy she's never seen or heard the name of.” Then he held up a toy and said, “I smuggled this into your house. It's a Charles Darwin doll.” The doll looked very much like Charles Darwin in old age, bald on the top of his head but with a long fringe of white hair and a white beard.

While Chaser waited upstairs, Neil and I had put Darwin behind the couch with seven of Chaser's toys. Neil looked at the camera and said, “Okay, so [we] put seven toys behind the couch, plus Darwin. Chaser's never seen Darwin, hasn't even ever heard the name ‘Darwin.' So we're going to see if she picks out Darwin by inference.”

Neil called Chaser back, and the program showed her scurrying down the stairs, obviously eager to have more fun with him. First he asked her to find two of the named toys that were already in her flock of surrogate sheep, Sugar and Crawdad. With the same confidence as before she quickly retrieved them on command. It delighted her that Neil raised the pitch of his baritone voice to squeak “Excellent!” like a cartoon character after each retrieval.

Neil said, “Okay, here it comes, a name she's never heard before.” Then he turned to Chaser and told her, “Find Darwin.”

In contrast to the previous retrievals, Chaser cocked her head and looked intently at Neil when she heard “Darwin.” After that slight pause she walked behind the couch. The cameras then showed her walking uncertainly around the toys behind the couch, and finally coming to a standstill directly over Darwin. Neil said in voice-over, “So, while searching for the other toys, Chaser knew exactly which one to pick up right away. Now, she seems to have to think about which one might be Darwin. . . . She takes so long, I call her back.”

When Neil called Chaser, she came to the side of the couch and turned her head to look at him. He said, “Find Darwin.” She looked at him for a second, then shifted her gaze to the front of the living room and then back to him, all with the same quizzical expression on her face.

“Find Darwin,” Neil repeated one more time. Chaser tilted her head at him again, and then slowly walked behind the couch. She hesitated over the toys for several seconds, but then the camera showed her coming around the couch with Darwin in her mouth. Neil's delight at that delighted her, and she wagged her tail exultantly.

In voice-over Neil said, “I can't believe it. Chaser's never seen that doll before. Yet somehow, she made the connection that the word she'd never heard before went with the one toy she didn't recognize.”

The segment ended soon after this, but we kept watching the program. I found the other segments fascinating too, and the profile of Irene Pepperberg's relationship with the parrot Alex, who had recently died, was very moving.

What a day it had been! Taking Chaser out for a last brief walk, I reflected on how lucky we were to have people like Matt Lauer, Diane Sawyer, and Neil deGrasse Tyson introduce her to America. In their own distinctive ways, they had each genuinely extended themselves to Chaser. In response, Chaser had adapted herself marvelously to each of them. Her interactions with Matt, Diane, and Neil demonstrated the abundant emotional and social intelligence that both sides must have for the dog-human relationship—and communication—to blossom to the full.

A couple of days later, Sally, Chaser, and I returned to Spartanburg. It was time to get back to our normal lives. And Chaser and I needed to get on with her learning.

15

C
HASER WAS A
hit on television. But our next public challenge was demonstrating her learning for a potentially much more critical audience of scientists.

Back home in Spartanburg, Sally and I were glad to pick up our normal routines with Chaser. The media kept calling and e-mailing with requests for interviews and appearances. We politely declined them all, with the exception of a BBC
Super Smart Animals
program that gave us another opportunity to document Chaser's learning under rigorous conditions. Sally and Chaser resumed their daily walks with the Ya-Yas, and Chaser and I resumed our language learning research.

Chaser was glad to be home and doing our usual things, too. Nicholas Wade nailed it in his article on Chaser in the
New York Times
when he wrote, “Border collies are working dogs. They have a reputation for smartness, and they are highly motivated. They are bred to herd sheep indefatigably all day long. Absent that task, they must be given something else to do or they go stir crazy.” For Chaser, the hours we spent each day working on language cognition tasks with her toys were the equivalent of time spent in the pasture herding sheep. The media appearances took Chaser away from the work and work-related play she needed for her quality of life. And they took me away from the work and play I needed for my quality of life, too.

In March the American Psychological Association, the main professional organization of scientists and clinicians in psychology, invited Alliston and me to give one of several plenary addresses at the association's 2011 annual convention in August in Washington, D.C. Alliston and I both felt honored by the invitation to present Chaser's learning at the APA convention, especially in a plenary address open to all attendees.