Born to Bark (21 page)

The essence of my plan to socialize Flint was to take him to work with me at the university. I already had the agreement of my department head Peter Suedfeld (whom I had designated as my puppy’s godfather). I set up my office to accommodate the puppy with a wire kennel crate, which I wedged between the side of my desk and the wall to provide a “den,” and which also allowed me to leave him there when I was out of the office teaching, at meetings, or in the lab. I threw a large beach towel over the tiny two-cushion purple sofa in my office to keep it free of dog hairs. A water bowl in the
corner finished the modifications.

In a recent survey, the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association, a nonprofit organization that conducts an annual survey on a variety of topics associated with pet ownership in the United States, reported that 1 out of 5 large companies allows pets in the workplace and that it seems to
produce tangible
benefits. Workers seem happier and are less stressed, more cooperative, and there is even a marked decrease in absenteeism in companies where pets come to work with their owners.

Taking Flint with me was a daily confirmation of the positive effects of dogs at work. Walking into the psychology building and stopping at the departmental office and mail room on the way to my own office became a social occasion. People would smile at the sight of the gray puppy beside me. Others would come over and fuss over him. For the first time in all of my years at the university, I got to know virtually all of the graduate students in my department, as they would veer away from whatever route they were walking to say hello to Flint.

Being the effervescent terrier that he was, Flint was not one to remain still and unresponsive. He would dance around and jump up to greet people that he liked, so he occasionally left some muddy footprints on clothing. Being a dog, he was also always on the lookout for something to eat, so one day when a female graduate student put her mug of coffee down on the floor when she knelt down to pat the little dog, he marched over to it and stuck his tongue into the hot liquid. It was too hot, and he gave a slight yelp and jumped back, dumping the mug over and pouring the coffee onto th
e floor. The cold floor quickly cooled the coffee so that now he could safely drink it, and he mopped the floor dry with his tongue. From that day on, if someone put a mug of hot liquid on the floor near him, he would knock it over with his paw or nose and then drink the cooled fluid from the ground (unless it was on a carpet which, of course, defeated his strategy).

Once, while visiting the departmental office, Flint found a sandwich that one of the secretaries had left in her open-topped purse on the floor. The sandwich was nearly gone when I reached him, so of course I felt compelled to buy another for her. However, from then on, when I entered the office I would announce, “All food off of the floor! The scavenger has arrived.” Everyone
was good-natured about it, and the secretaries still greeted the shaggy gray dog with smiles.

Occasionally, when I was working in my office, faculty members, staff, and students would wander by just to say hello to Flint. He thus became socialized to virtually every type of human being and became remarkably friendly and controlled in the presence of strangers. Our wandering around campus had also let him become familiar with a variety of different places, and so he became quite unflappable.

Flint was also a comfort to me. Whenever I felt a bit stressed or pressured, I would run my hand over his dense coat as he lay on the little sofa. Touching him eased my mind, which was the same result that I had experienced from every dog that had gone before him. The power of dogs for healing sore minds became even more salient to me one Saint Valentine’s Day.

I was working on the statistics for a scientific report when I heard a tap at my door. I looked up, and one of our clinical psychology students, Jan, was standing there. A pleasant girl who had grown up in Ontario, which is where her family still lived, Jan liked Flint and had told me a little about her family life and growing up with a series of dogs, several of which had been small terriers. On this day her face looked puffy and her eyes were red, as though she had a cold or had been crying.

“Hi, Jan,” I said. “What’s up? You look like you’re a bit under the weather?”

“I was wondering if I could spend a little time with Flint this morning,” she said quietly, and rubbed at one eye with her hand. “My boyfriend is leaving me. Could you believe that he’d tell me that on Valentine’s Day?”

Jan bit her lower lip and looked down at the floor. “Anyway, when I was home and had problems, I would sit with my dog and talk to her until I felt better. This time my dog is two thousand miles away, and I was wondering if I could just spend a little time with Flint?”

Flint, heartbreak therapy
.

“Sure,” I said, and she crossed the office and dropped heavily onto my little purple sofa next to Flint. She swept my puppy up into her arms like a teddy bear and pressed her face against his fur. I continued talking to her as though I expected that she might be listening—which I doubted, “I haven’t taught him to speak yet, but he’s a good listener—trained in Rogerian Therapy. [Carl Rogers was a clinical psychologist who introduced a method of therapy which involves, at least for the early stages, a lot of listening and very little speaking on the part of the therapist.] Anyway, I
have a couple of errands to run, so I’ll leave you here. When you want to go just pull my office door closed if I haven’t returned yet.”

I grabbed my empty coffee cup and left the office, quietly closing the door behind me. I wandered down to the mail room and then with a handful of unopened envelopes went into our little lounge, which had a coffee urn. After about 20 minutes I had gone through my mail and finished my cup of coffee. As I stepped back into the hall, Jan approached me. Her eyes were still red, but she was visibly less tense.

She put her arms around me and gave me a gentle hug while whispering in my ear, “He is a good therapist. Thank you.”

As I watched her leave, I thought to myself, “Not only has bringing Flint to work socialized him, but it has also certified him as a clinical psychologist. How’s that for early dog training?”

Whether it’s fate, destiny, karma, chance, or predestination, certain events at some times in our lives seem to foreshadow later ones. Events separated by thousands of miles and decades of time often appear to be connected. Of course, as a scientist, I recognize that sometimes things are linked by random chance with no real connection or bond beyond accident or happenstance. But in the intimacy of my own thoughts, a fluke or a matter of luck can cause me to wonder about cosmic influences. And so it was when I decided to begin to train Flint formally.

Dog obedience classes are almost a necessity if you really want a well-trained dog. It is certainly possible to train a dog to respond to basic commands at home, simply using a book as a guide, but classes with multiple people and dogs work better. Class not only continues to socialize your dog, it also teaches the dog that, even when many things are going on in his environment, (including the presence of other dogs), his master is still in control of his behavior.

Now, before a sensitive, feeling reader gets bent out of shape by my use of the word
master
in this context, I think
that an explanation is in order. My dogs are my companions and friends, but for a dog to be civilized and under control, the relationship between the dog and his owner cannot be equal. When you tell a dog to “sit” or “come,” you expect the dog to execute those commands. It is not a matter of equals discussing alternate courses of action. “Come” means that the dog is supposed to return to you. It is not a request that the dog can choose to evaluate and then decide whether or not he wants to respond to you or whether something else is more interesting. The old-fashioned word
master
works in describing this relationship, since one individual (the master) gives the commands and another (the dog) responds to them. Other words describing this relationship don’t seem to work as well. Referring to a dog and his “general,” or a dog and his “boss,” or a dog and his “king” sound silly and inappropriate. So until someone gives me a term that works better, I will stick with the traditional
master
.

By the time he was 4 months old, Flint had found his voice. One day, I spoke to him and for the first time gave an answer in his voice. It imitated that of Bert Lahr, the actor who played the cowardly lion in
The Wizard of Oz
. I asked Flint, “Do you want to go to school now?” and answered myself with a
“Lemme at it. I’ve never been so ready!”
My imitation of Lahr’s voice was so bad that it made me laugh, and that in turn excited Flint, who then danced around as if he had actually said the words.

Locally, the Vancouver Dog Obedience Training Club was highly recommended, and sever
al dogs trained in that club had gone on to become top competitors in national dog obedience competitions. The classes were held in a church, in a large room that also served as a children’s day care center. Although I had called ahead to preregister Flint in the beginners’ class I did not know much about the club and certainly had no idea that I
would ultimately come to be associated with it for more than 30 years. I eventually learned that I also had a sort of karmic link to its past.

The Vancouver Dog Obedience Training Club (which we usually call “The Club”) is a nonprofit dog training club that has no officers and no written constitution or set of bylaws. It gives classes for dogs and owners at all skill levels. All of the instructors are unpaid volunteers who have earned titles for their dogs in national kennel club competitions. Some have even placed in the top 10 of national rankings for dog obedience competitors. Each instructor has full control over his or her classes and decides on the methods of instruction that he or she feels work best. Three or four instructors
may be present at each class, and they are always willing to step in to help a student who needs more personalized instruction. They also often playfully provide their own viewpoints and suggestions from the sidelines, which keeps the classes light and informal.

The club actually owes its existence to a housewife named Jean Lyle who had become interested in showing purebred dogs in 1948. Her boxer hadn’t been doing very well in the show ring, so she had decided to try her out in obedience competition. Since there were no obedience classes around at the time, she ended up using Blanche Saunders’s
Training You to Train Your Dog
, the same book that I had started training dogs with when I was 9 or 10 years of age. A few other people who wanted to train their dogs for competition joined with her. Each had a copy of the book, and they shared equipment and tr
ied to support each other. Other people found out that they were training dogs and asked if they would be willing to run some beginners’ dog classes for pet owners.

Jean found out that Blanche Saunders would be doing some workshops and judging a series of shows in Washington State in May 1952, so Jean wrote to her and invited her to Vancouver to show them how to run an obedience class. Saunders agreed and
arrived with a car full of jumps and other obedience equipment as well as some of her poodles to use as demonstration dogs.