Chaser (33 page)

They liked it better when I did a figure eight around two chairs, walked to the end of the room and up onto the stage, circled the long table, and came back to the starting point. This was obviously a behavior that Chaser would be extremely unlikely to emit on her own, and everyone was stunned to see her do it. They were even more stunned when Chaser did it all once more when I said, “Again.” I explained that Chaser also understood “faster,” “slower,” and “reverse,” which she demonstrated when I asked her to imitate a figure eight around two different chairs.

The demonstration was scheduled to last thirty minutes. It ran to forty minutes, right up against the start of the second demonstration, which was just as successful and ran just as long as the first.

We piled into a couple of cabs to go back to the hotel. Recalling our car seat struggles in New York, I was glad once again that Washington, D.C., cabdrivers didn't mind Chaser's riding up on the seat.

A copy of
USA Today
with Sharon Jayson's story was waiting for us at the hotel:

 

RESEARCH DOG REVEALS CANINES'
COGNITIVE POTENTIAL

 

WASHINGTON
—Don't underestimate the mind of a mutt—at least when the canine in question is one of the smartest breeds and her trainer has painstakingly taught her to identify more than 1,000 objects
.

The dog of this day is Chaser, a 7-year-old Border collie who can also distinguish between nouns and verbs. She's a featured player at the American Psychological Association's annual meeting here, where her owner and trainer—retired psychology professor John Pilley—today let Chaser bask in the attention at the first of several weekend demonstrations planned
.

From the moment this popular pooch entered the room, she was clearly the star, with cameras flashing and people maneuvering for shots of the brainy dog. . . 
.

 

We opened a bottle of wine in our room and toasted Chaser. She grabbed her Frisbee Snow in her mouth and shook it as she jumped on the bed. (Sorry, Westin.) And then we all got our supper and spent the evening unwinding together.

On Saturday morning Chaser and I played Frisbee again in the hallway, although we moved down from our door a bit in case Sally heard us. I don't believe we disturbed anyone else either, but I can only swear to the fact that no one opened a door to complain.

Our demonstrations that morning were again standing-room-only events, and after lunch we were all ready to drive to New York in our two cars. Debbie was going to go with Chaser and me, and Sally was going to ride with Aidan and Jay in their car. When I opened the rear car door for Chaser, she stood stock-still just as she had on Friday morning outside our house in Spartanburg and during our two stops along the road.

But as soon as I began to say “You want me to help you,” she leaped into the car onto the back seat and turned around to look at me. I was already praising her warmly, and I saw that her wariness was diminishing. In fact, she was looking quite pleased with herself. The expression on her face seemed to say, “You think I'm gonna let you lift me into the car? Ha-ha, fooled you again!” It was like her game of dropping a pine cone in front of Sally or me on a walk, and then racing to grab it before we could pick it up.

Ever since then, all I have to do to get Chaser in the car is to start saying “You want me to help you?” I wouldn't say she's forgotten entirely that my helping her into the car that very hot morning in Spartanburg was a little uncomfortable. But we've layered pleasant associations on top of it, so that we can both feel good about how she gets into the car now.

The journey with Chaser always has the same number one priority: fun. Sally and I find fun with her every day, a routine that never becomes stale.

16

I
T'S A ROUTINE
of surprises. Most mornings around five a.m., Chaser and I are on the ten-minute drive to Wofford. As we have since Chaser was a puppy, we're going to hold our first training-and-play session of the day in the exercise center. But we don't know exactly what will happen while we're there. When we turn in to the campus, Chaser stands up on the car seat, tongue lolling out and tail wagging eagerly.

The surprises begin as soon as we enter the Richardson Physical Activities Building. Chaser wheels to face me, and I bounce her one of her blue racquetballs.

Chaser catches Blue and immediately drops it at my feet. I kick the ball down the hall and she darts ahead to snag it on the bounce, carom, or roll, twisting and turning to keep up with its crazy course. She drops it at my feet as I walk down the hall, and I give it another kick.

A few more paces and the exercise center opens up on our right, with weight machines, treadmills, and other equipment. There's usually an early bird or two working out, and others come in as the morning advances. If Chaser knows the people, she offers her ball for a kick or throw. With new people, she tries to make friends with the same approach.

I give her time only for brief hellos and pets at this point, and we go into a large room off the main exercise area. The room is about twenty-five feet by forty feet, with two glass-wall-backed racquetball courts on either side. In addition to being an entry and waiting area for the courts, it has mats and exercise balls for stretching. On the opposite side of the room is a doorway to a hallway that we also use for training. There's clear glass around the doors at either end of the room, and it's a wonderful space for us because it's self-contained but doesn't feel closed in. Sometimes half a dozen people or more will stand on the other side of the glass and observe us. I always wave to them. If we are near the end of the session I may invite them in, which Chaser loves.

Chaser and I begin with a fast-paced five minutes of play with several named toys to rehearse her language learning. I randomly ask her to fetch, shake, catch, toss, take in her mouth, nose, paw, and herd one toy after another. And I kick and throw the ball for her to capture as it ricochets around the room.

From there we work on new or recent learning. We alternate brief trials in the current lesson with brief periods of play. The play provides more opportunities to rehearse her language learning as she chases and gathers her toys while I verbalize what she is doing or what I want her to do next. After we've worked on the current language task for ten to fifteen minutes, we follow the same fast-paced rhythm as we move on to match-to-sample and imitation learning.

Play with Chaser's toys continues to enhance the value of the toys and the language tasks and games involving them. What is more important is that the play refreshes us both, that it continues to confirm and deepen our relationship as fellow creatures. That is really what enables her language learning to progress.

We know that the progress of toddlers' language learning depends on their language-based relationships with parents, siblings, and others. Toddlers whose parents speak to them on all sorts of topics throughout the day advance much faster and farther in language learning than toddlers whose parents rarely speak to them except to scold them or tell them to do something. Somehow, the mystery of what happens in children's minds when they first acquire a language and the relationships they have with other people are interdependent.

As children acquire language, they also acquire a sense of themselves as social beings. As they learn the meaning of words, they also learn that other people have unique points of view, thoughts, and feelings. As they develop an implicit understanding of grammar, they also develop the ability to infer how cues such as pointing, facial expression, and tone of voice indicate the meaning of words. No one knows precisely how these things reinforce each other, but language is inherently a social activity.

If I am less than enthusiastic in a language trial or the play following it, Chaser's engagement fades. She delights in pleasing me, and if my enthusiasm flags, she naturally thinks of something she's sure we'll enjoy. That's when she entices me to play with a ball or a Frisbee. In the end it is always the quality of our relationship that determines the quality of the learning.

We repeat the same language, match-to-sample, and imitation learning that we do at Wofford in the rest of the day's training sessions at home. But our early-morning visits to Wofford stand out for both of us because of the opportunities to engage with new and old friends among Wofford students, faculty, staff, and administrators.

One day we were working on a language task when half the women's varsity soccer team came by with their coach. Within seconds Chaser was getting belly rubs and other pets from the players. Smiling at this scene, the coach asked if we could do a brief demonstration.

I called Chaser to my side and told her, “Chaser, watch ball. Watch ball.” I rolled a racquetball onto the floor and said, “Go out, Chase. Go out, go out.” She raced to circle around behind the ball.

“Chaser, come by. Come by, come by.” She wheeled clockwise around the ball.

“Way to me, way to me.” She wheeled counterclockwise around the ball.

“Walk up, walk up.” She approached the ball.

“Drop.” She instantly went to her belly.

“One, two, three, take!” She sprang forward and grabbed the ball in her mouth.

“That'll do.” She ran to me with the ball.

“Good girl! Good dog!” I said, stroking her side.

The players crowded around us, and I stepped back to allow Chaser to wiggle and wag and flop on the floor for their pets, embraces, and cooing words. She was never sharper than in performing for this impromptu admiring audience, and she was in heaven with their praise and attention.

Unpredictable rewards for behavior motivate more powerfully than predictable ones. When Chaser and I went back to our language training, she was extra sharp at that too, because it was so closely associated in her mind with the team's arrival and her interaction with them.

Moments of discovery in language learning don't seem to loom up in Chaser's conscious mind the same way as discovering how to connect with new people. But like toddlers unconsciously understanding words as symbols, Chaser experiences unpredictable breakthroughs in language learning too. These are moments when the challenge of a language puzzle turns into a confident prelude to play.

The puzzle we were working through after the APA was understanding a sentence with three elements of grammar. I was excited, as always, to help Chaser experience more of the mystery of language acquisition, even if it was only a rudimentary language.

My training method continued to focus on what the eminent animal scientist John Staddon calls creative learning rather than rote learning. In rote learning the goal is to teach a predetermined response. In creative learning the goal is to stimulate and support spontaneous responses to solve a challenge.

Shepherds train Border collies using creative learning. Once Border collies have learned a few basic obedience and herding commands, they are literally turned loose with the sheep. Their knowledge of how to herd sheep then develops as they spontaneously behave in instinctual ways and the shepherd positively or negatively reinforces their choices of what to do.

As I mentioned in chapter 7, John Staddon has likened the way a wise teacher encourages a student's individual interests in learning to the way the early-nineteenth-century Scottish “shepherd poet” James Hogg trained his Border collie Sirrah. Hogg described this training as putting Sirrah into situations in which “he would try everywhere . . . till he found out what I wanted him to do.” In the process Sirrah demonstrated “a great share of reasoning.”

The result of Hogg's open-ended training was that Sirrah was later able to gather and safeguard seven hundred lambs that were scattered from their pens during a storm in the middle of the night, with no assistance or direction from Hogg or anyone else.

Staddon sums up creative learning for animals by saying that “it means creating an environment in which the animal's natural propensities (which, in an intelligent animal, go far beyond reflex response) can flower to their full extent.” Once we've created a positive way for an intelligent animal to tackle a challenging problem, we can let a natural creative learning process occur. Our job is to watch for the spontaneous problem-solving efforts that have the most promise, and reinforce them positively. As the educator Maria Montessori put it, “Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.”

That is what I've tried to do with Chaser. I've presented her with challenges just outside her grasp and encouraged her spontaneous efforts to solve them. Along the way I've seen her acquire greater and greater implicit understanding of words, making it possible to present her with even tougher challenges. Learning truly builds on learning.

Chaser and I started working on sentences with three elements of grammar late in 2010. As I mentioned, some researchers question whether a dog's correct responses to two-word sentences, such as “fetch sock,” demonstrate combinatorial understanding of two elements of grammar, a verb and a direct object, or understanding of a single element, a “fetch-the-sock” fusion. Chaser's take-nose-paw tests demonstrated her independent understanding of verbs and direct objects. She was ready to tackle a third element of grammar, an indirect object.

The question was how to add the indirect object. What action should I ask her to perform, and how should I structure the sentence to communicate that?

Early in her first year of life, Chaser learned that
to
means “go to” or “take to.” When Chaser already had an object in her mouth, Sally and I frequently told her, “To Pop-Pop,” “To Nanny,” “To living room,” “To front porch,” and so on. Likewise, early in her training, Chaser learned that
take
meant “hold the designated object in your mouth,” independent of any future action with the object.