Born to Bark (18 page)

Once at the Swartz Bay ferry terminal, we had nearly an hour’s wait ahead of us. So I clipped a leash onto Flint’s new little collar. In my house, from the moment a dog enters my life until the day that
it dies, it wears a collar. My father had been quite adamant when he had said, “A dog with a collar is an owned dog and he wears that collar with pride.”

I lifted up Flint and said to Joan that we had time to wander around and let him explore a bit of the world. Although it was a nippy December day, the sun was shining and she agreed that a walk would be nice.

I carried Flint over to the nearest patch of grass, and, as puppies usually do when they first wake up, he squatted to eliminate. Then we strolled down toward the edge of the water, Flint inquisitively shoving his nose into everything that he encountered. Occasionally he’d stop and twirl around in a full circle, apparently trying to get his bearings.

At the edge of the berth where the ferry would moor, Flint became quite fascinated with the water. Perhaps it was the smell of the saltwater and its contents, or maybe the sparkling caused by the sun glinting off the ripples on the surface. In any case, he climbed onto a wide, flat wharf support and began staring down, moving his head up and down like a bobble-head toy on the dashboard of a car.

At that moment a seagull landed a couple of feet away from
Flint. I was amazed at the size of the bird, which seemed to tower over my tiny puppy and looked as if he clearly outweighed him as well. Flint turned to face this feathery visitor, showing no fear at all. He looked at the gull carefully, took one step in his direction, and then sat down as if to consider what to do next.

The bird eyed the pup carefully and then looked to the side and squawked “Grock! Grock!”

Flint jumped to his feet and answered in his high-pitched puppy voice, “Ruff! Ruff!”

The pup matched the gull’s squawks
.

The two animals stood watching each other, and the bird announced loudly “Grock!” to which Flint responded “Ruff!”

The bird nodded its head then gave its wing a cursory stroke with its beak. The gull then stared directly at Flint and screeched, “Grock! Grock! Grock! Grock!”

Flint stood and responded “Ruff! Ruff! Ruff! Ruff!”

The bird then shook itself and flew off with Flint staring after it. I turned to Joannie and asked, “Did did you notice that he was counting?”

“What do you mean by that?”

I was fairly excited. “When the bird squawked twice, Flint answered with two barks. When he squawked once, Flint answered with one bark, and finally when the bird gave four squawks Flint answered with four barks. He was counting and matching the number of sounds that the bird was making.”

She looked at me as if I had just said something remarkably stupid or impolite. “Dogs can’t count. Kids have to be taught to count, so dogs can’t be born with the ability to count, and he is not old enough to have learned to count on his own. I hope that this doesn’t mean that you are going to brag about your genius dog from now on.”

I quickly did the math in my head. Suppose that the dog and the bird have a vocabulary consisting of 1, 2, 3, or 4 barks or squawks. Then the chance that the two animals would make the same number of sounds in any one “conversational exchange” is 1 out of 4. That means that the chance that the gull and my pup would match the number of sounds they were making 3 times in a row turns out to be less than 4 chances in 1,000. Those are pretty long odds.

It would be 3 or 4 years later that I would have a better demonstration that dogs can count. I would be back on Vancouver Island with Flint at a dog obedience competition held a few miles from that same ferry terminal, in a town called Saanich. We had completed our time in the ring, which had been a disaster, since Flint had been in a playful mood and had decided to dash out of the ring to “visit” with some kids who had been watching and waving at him. Nonetheless, he had made people laugh, and I would rather have a friendly and not fully obedient dog than a standoffish but obedient animal.
At the end of our performance I took him out of the building to enjoy the spring
afternoon. One of the other competitors had finished for the day and was in a large field near the parking lot with his small black Labrador retriever named Poco. He was tossing orange plastic retrieving bumpers. The bumpers were about the size and shape of a small loaf of bread and each had a cord on the end so that you could whip them around quickly and throw them quite a distance. As we watched, he casually mentioned to me, “She can count to four quite reliably, and to five with only an occasional miss.”

“She must be a really smart dog to be able to count,” I replied.

“She is, but all retrievers have to be able to count to three if you want to compete in high-level hunting competitions. Look, I’ll show you how it works. First, you pick a number from one to five.”

I chose the number 3, and while the dog watched, her owner tossed 3 bumpers out into the field in different directions and at different distances. All disappeared from sight in the high grass. I got down on my hands and knees at the dog’s eye level to verify that she couldn’t see the bumpers from the starting position. Then, without pointing or giving any other signals, the man simply told the dog “Poco, fetch.”

Poco immediately dashed out to the most recently thrown bumper and brought it back. He took the bumper from the dog and repeated, “Poco, fetch.” The dog quickly moved out into the field and started to cast about and search for the next one. After the second bumper was returned, he again commanded, “Poco, fetch,” and she quickly retrieved the remaining lure. Removing this last bumper from the dog’s mouth, he continued as if he believed that there were yet another object out there to be retrieved and again gave the command, “Poco, fetch.” At this, the dog simply looked at him, barked once, an
d moved to his left side, to the usual heeling position, and sat down. He smiled and gave Poco a pat and murmured, “Clever girl!” He
then explained to me, “She knows that she’s retrieved all three, and that is all that there were. She keeps a running count. When there are no more bumpers to find, she lets me know with that ‘They’re all here, stupid’ bark that you just heard, and then goes to heel to let me know that she’s ready for the next thing that I want her to do.”

Although Poco’s performance was impressive, I was still a bit skeptical. In the end we spent the better part of a half hour, varying the number of bumpers up to 5, with me and another dog handler tossing the bumpers and sending the dog to fetch. We reasoned that this would serve as a sort of a check to see if something in the way the items were placed or the way Poco’s master gave the commands affected the dog’s success. None of these changes seemed to matter, and even with 5 objects, the dog never missed the count once. If I had conducted a similar experiment with a young child, by tossi
ng toys behind items of furniture, and they had performed as well as Poco, I certainly would have taken that as proof that they could count from 1 to 5. Some 20 years later researchers would confirm that dogs not only have the ability to count, but may even have a primitive ability to add and subtract.

However, all of that was in the future, and on that day I simply suspected that Flint could count. I had never seen any mathematical ability in my previous dogs, so maybe this puppy was really clever, or maybe I should start observing dogs’ abilities more closely. I had to smile at the puppy teaching the professor of psychology new tricks.

When we got home, Joan carried Flint into the house and I brought the kennel crate inside and placed it in the bedroom next to my side of the bed. I went back out into the living room, where Flint was sniffing around, took the very light nylon show
leash that I had just purchased and attached it to Flint’s collar. Then I put a spring clip on the other end and attached the leash to my belt.

Joan gave me a puzzled look. “He’s in the house, so he really doesn’t need a leash now,” she said.

“I’ll leash him in the house for the first few weeks. He’ll have to stay close, but clipping the leash to my belt leaves my hands free for normal activities. Obviously, he can’t sneak off and get himself into trouble while I’m not paying attention to him. Young puppies are always chewing on inappropriate things and some of those, like electrical cords or even knitting yarn, can hurt them. But I’ll be close enough to see everything that goes into his mouth. It also gives me a chance to start house-training him since I’m likely to notice when he stands and indicates that he wants to go
to the potty.”

This training method has psychological benefits as well. Dogs don’t instinctively understand that they’ve been adopted and are beginning a new life with a new family. Having the pup by your side continuously teaches him that he is now supposed to be with you rather than off on his own.

It was also a great way to teach Flint to pay attention to me so that he could learn his name. Every time I would get up to go someplace, I just said his name. Soon he’d learned that the sound of his name had a special significance and meant that something concerning him was about to happen. Before long, whenever I said, “Flint,” he would look at my face to see what was going on.

I explained to Joan that the leash is a kind of umbilical cord connecting the pup to me, the human who was going to be “his person.” Even though the natural umbilical is cut when the dog is born, the puppy in a new home needs to be reborn as my dog and also reborn into new behaviors. Flint would have to be at least a minimally well behaved and house-trained dog before I removed this umbilical house leash.

Joan asked, “You mean you’re going to drag him around with you every time that you move?”

“No. He’ll learn his name and walk happily beside me.”

To demonstrate I said, “Flint!” in a happy voice and looked at the pup who was dozing beside me. He didn’t move or respond, so I repeated his name “Flint!”

Joannie snorted, “Like I said, you’re going to drag him around every time you move,” and then left the room as I was gently nudging the pup to awaken him.

Applying psychological principles is not the same as applying the principles of physics or engineering, in which you create an apparatus, turn it on, and get instantaneous, predictable results. Chemists know that mixing the same set of chemicals will always produce exactly the same compound. Biologists know that each seed or fertilized egg is programmed to produce only one, completely predictable species. Behavioral psychology, however, is different. Even when psychological principles are sound, their application does not always produce exactly the predicted results, and even when
it does, those results are often not immediate. While a physicist or chemist may have the ability to control reality and force it into the shape that he or she desires, psychologists are often in the position of
negotiating with
reality, since they are dealing with living beings who can behave unexpectedly. Each living thing has its own agenda, motives, and history, which are often unclear to those around them. So psychologists have learned to apply the principles that have the highest probability of working. Then they must be patient and adaptable, modify procedures to fit the current circumstances
, and respond to changes as they occur. It would take a few days before Flint would learn the routine, but he quickly learned to pay attention because each time I said his name it meant that I was about to move. I used the umbilical for only around 2 weeks (with occasional returns to it during his housebreaking period), but the effects were lifelong. Every time I said Flint’s name, he would pause in what he was doing and look at my face.