Chaser (4 page)

The first time I introduced this assignment, I asked the students to compliment the person sitting next to them. I then asked the class to share what they had learned from that. There was silence until a female student said, “I learned that the guys have a lot to learn about giving compliments.” That sparked laughter and several valuable comments, mostly by the women, such as that a compliment should be sincere, embody emotion, be something that you think is important to the other person, and refer to something that the person has done as opposed to an aspect of their personality or appearance. The last idea evoked a heated debate, always a good sign that a class is engaged.

Students were often initially flummoxed about how to work with Yasha and Grindle. “Gee, Dr. Pilley,” they said, “Yasha and Grindle already know how to sit, lie down, stay, come, and all of that on cue.”

“So think of a twist,” I said. “Think of getting them to do something they already know on a unique signal. Or think of something entirely new. This is your chance to be creative.”

If students continued to have trouble starting to train, I steered them to Grindle and coached them in training her in a variation of a basic obedience behavior, such as sitting in response to another word besides “sit.” Grindle was much more patient than Yasha, who adopted a piercing, high-pitched bark when he wanted students to speed things up so he could earn a treat.

Training a single behavior was just a prelude to the major training assignment, which was to teach one of the dogs to complete a chain of heterogeneous behaviors on a single command. The idea was to string together behaviors that a dog was very unlikely to emit in sequence naturally, such as walking a precise route and stopping to sit or lie down at designated locations, and put them all under stimulus control.

Grindle and Yasha both learned impressively long behavior chains in this way. I don't think Yasha ever forgot anything students taught him, but Grindle's working drive and memory didn't match his. Without continued repetition, she forgot much of what students had taught her the previous semester, especially over the summer break.

One thing my students taught Grindle that she unfortunately never forgot was how to open doors with round doorknobs. Brass doorknobs throughout the Psychology Department were soon dented with Grindle's tooth marks. The Maintenance Department had to replace the knob on my office door numerous times, owing to a big, powerful German shepherd twisting it around. Occasionally Grindle managed to click the catch on a door in such a way that she locked herself inside. A pair of brand-new boots, handmade in Spain, met an untimely end when Grindle locked herself in Debbie's room and had nothing to occupy her but chewing on some beautiful leather.

Grindle taught herself to open the unlocked door of our Volkswagen Bug from the outside. No doubt she was inspired to do this by her success with round doorknobs. But it took cleverness for her to figure out how to push the pushbutton outside the handle of one of the Bug's doors in order to pop it open. This caused us a lot of worry, because Grindle couldn't open the door from the inside and could easily get trapped inside on a hot South Carolina day.

There were occasionally other problematic results of the students' interactions with Yasha and Grindle. For example, Yasha usually wandered around a little at the beginning of a class, unobtrusively soliciting treats from students who were working with him in my lab, and then settled down quietly in the back of the room. However, one day he interrupted my lecture three times with his unignorable high-pitched bark. Three times I corrected him. A few moments after the third “Hush, Yasha,” as I paused in my lecture, everyone heard a male student whisper, “Frisbee, Yasha. Frisbee.” Students will be students, and we all had a good laugh.

There was also the time that one of my favorite students, Gervais Hollowell, and two of his classmates taught Grindle to answer the telephone in my office. I missed quite a few calls until Gervais and I solved the problem by putting the telephone on a cabinet where Grindle couldn't reach it. However, Grindle was also picking up a ringing telephone at home. When I was somewhere in the house or out in the yard where I couldn't get to the phone when it rang, I heard the ringing stop after three or four rings and assumed Sally had answered it. Meanwhile, she was often assuming the same thing. It could be hours before we found the phone off the hook. After we put it back, it inevitably started ringing with calls from friends or family members who had been trying to reach us and getting a permanent busy signal. It took a few weeks of not being rewarded for picking up a ringing telephone before Grindle began to forget about doing it.

Yasha really had a remarkable memory. One year a student took him to the opposite side of the Wofford campus from my office and lab and put a Frisbee in a tree. A month later the student asked Yasha to find the Frisbee, and he took off like a shot straight for that tree.

Over the years, Yasha also learned to pretend to jump over an invisible hurdle, balance a book on his back while walking, climb a ladder, and obey commands delivered by walkie-talkie, among numerous other behaviors.

Yasha was so quick to learn new behaviors and solve new challenges that I wondered if I could teach him to understand words, specifically the names of objects. My procedure was to place two objects, such as a rope and a ball, on the floor about two feet apart. Standing a few feet from the objects, I randomly showed Yasha a rope or a ball identical to the ones on the floor and asked him to fetch the corresponding object. I reasoned that seeing the rope or ball in my hand and hearing me name it would enable Yasha to quickly associate the object and name and retrieve the correct object.

Boy, was I wrong. After a hundred trials, Yasha failed to show any sign that he was learning to retrieve the objects by name. I modified our procedures over a dozen times, but still failed to produce positive results.

My efforts with Yasha never got anywhere, but I always suspected that this was because my method was wrong. I believe Chaser's success in language learning indicates this, because as bright as she is, I don't think she is a whit smarter than Yasha was.

In any case, Yasha continued to be a great teaching assistant and experimental subject for students. He had the freedom of the Wofford campus, although this occasionally raised a few eyebrows. One day a senior member of the campus security detail came to my office as I sat grading exams. This man was fondly known as Deputy Dawg for his success in solving campus thefts. He usually gave me a big smile whenever he saw me, but on this day he looked serious.

“Where's Yasha, Dr. Pilley?” Deputy Dawg asked.

“I don't rightly know at the moment,” I said. “He was here not too long ago, but then he wandered off. Is there a problem?”

“Don't you think it could be a problem having him wander everywhere he pleases, looking for mischief?”

“Well, I . . .”

A smile broke out on Deputy Dawg's face. “I'm just funnin' with you, Dr. Pilley. I remember when you first brought Yasha on campus as a puppy and he palled around with the dean's old hound, who already had the run of the place. The truth is, I think it's time we recognized Yasha's presence officially, and I've brought you his faculty ID badge.”

Deputy Dawg handed me a faculty ID card in a plastic case attached to a lanyard. It read, “Wofford College Faculty/Yasha/Teaching Assistant.”

Deputy Dawg said, “I don't expect Yasha to wear that, mind you. But you might want to keep it in a safe place. You never know when there might be a changing of the guard around here, and you'll need to show some whippersnapper that Yasha's official status precedes his.”

We laughed over that, and I thanked him. Just then Yasha trotted in and, tail wagging, went up to Deputy Dawg for a pet.

Deputy Dawg said, “I knew I'd be seeing you sooner or later, boy. Everybody knows that if Dr. Pilley is around, you're bound to be close by.”

It was true. If I drove to the grocery store for a gallon of milk, Yasha was in the front passenger seat. Unless Sally, Robin, Debbie, or another person was also along, in which case Yasha happily sat in the back.

In hindsight, the match-to-sample method was not the best starting point for teaching Yasha the names of objects. Moreover, I failed to incorporate Yasha's language training into our playful interactions as I had all of his prior training. I certainly wasn't taking good advantage of his social intelligence. That had to be a critical mistake, because language is inherently a social activity.

In 1990, ten-year-old Grindle became seriously infirm from arthritis, and she passed away that year. Sally took it especially hard, but the whole family mourned the loss of Grindle's big heart and calm, soothing presence.

A friend of mine says, “If you get a pet, eventually you get a broken heart.” The relatively short life spans of our pets cause us a lot of grief, but they also ground us in a natural cycle of life and death and, if we can accept it, renewal. The spirit of our relationship with one pet lives on in and shapes the spirit of our relationship with another pet, even years later.

I thought I knew that after our family's experiences with our first dog, Fluffy, a collie Sally rescued when she was pregnant with Robin, and then with Bimbo and Grindle. But I still had a lot to learn about loss and renewal.

Border collies often work sheep until they are fourteen or even fifteen years old. Yasha was so vigorous for so long that I found it hard to accept when he began to slow down dramatically. Through the fall semester of 1993 he faithfully and effectively served as teaching assistant and research subject. But at the beginning of the spring semester, I saw that Yasha no longer had the energy to go to Wofford and be at my side day in and day out. I began leaving him home, and our reunions every day were bittersweet.

One cold day in March I sensed something was wrong as soon as I came in the door. “Yasha,” I called, and then, raising my voice, because at sixteen years of age Yasha was a little deaf, “Yasha! I'm home.”

The low whimpers that came back cut through me. I followed the sounds and found Yasha lying on the rug in our first-floor bedroom. “I've left you alone too long, haven't I, boy?” I said as I knelt down beside him and stroked his head. Sally was in New York City visiting Debbie, and no one else was in the house.

Yasha relaxed under my touch. Looking into his trusting brown eyes and seeing his indomitable spirit flashing there, I asked myself if it was time to let him go. I couldn't let myself think that it was.

“C'mon, Yasha. Let's get you some water, and some food, if you want it.” I got to my feet and half turned to the door. Yasha strained to get to his feet, but he couldn't. When I'd left the house a few hours earlier, he'd still been able to get up and walk around.

When I bent down to pick Yasha up, feeling how thin he was gave me another wrench. I carried him into the kitchen, then knelt down with him cradled in my arms so that he could drink a few sips of water. I carried him to the living room couch and sat down beside him, scratching behind his ears. He lifted his head and looked at me with utter trust, then lowered his head to his paws and fell into a light doze. While he slept, I convinced myself it was not yet time to let him go. When he stirred awake intermittently and I saw him become aware of his discomfort, my heart sank. Around ten o'clock, Yasha woke up and started panting. He was suffering, and I knew I couldn't let that continue any longer. I called the emergency animal clinic to make sure a vet was on duty, then I wrapped Yasha in a blue blanket against the cold and carried him out to my pickup truck. It was only a ten-minute drive, and every second of the way I wished it was longer.

The vet examined Yasha and agreed with me that it was time to help him on his way. He gave Yasha a sedative and then an injection to stop his heart. It was almost more than I could stand to see the light go out of Yasha's eyes. Back home, I carried Yasha, still wrapped in the blue blanket from shoulder to tail, into the bedroom and put him on top of the bed. Fully clothed with my shoes still on, I lay down beside him and turned out the light.

The next morning I went slowly about the house in a daze, picking up and putting down Yasha's toys: various Frisbees, all of them chewed around the edges, especially his favorite yellow one, and a stuffed rabbit with one eye and torn ears that Sally had mended over and over again. I was in no hurry for what came next. But it had to be done. I got a shovel and went out behind the house to where Grindle was buried. It was a grassy spot shaded by three oaks and a pine. Turning back to face the house, which I'd built myself in a log cabin style, I remembered how Yasha had followed me up the ladder one day when I was finishing the roof and I'd had to carry him back down.

I started to dig. The effort released the tears I'd been holding back for hours, and I had to stop several times and lean on the shovel to prop myself up. Finally the two-by-three-foot grave was ready. I went inside and got Yasha, still wrapped in the blue blanket, and gently laid him beside the grave. I went back inside for his favorite yellow Frisbee, the stuffed bunny, and his brown leather collar, which he hadn't been wearing because he was so thin.

I sat down beside Yasha and his things, covered my face with my hands, and wept. When my tears finally stopped and I looked up, the sky was lowering and threatening to pour with rain. I couldn't wait any longer. I picked up Yasha and embraced him one last time, then laid him in the grave with his yellow Frisbee, stuffed bunny, and collar. Slowly, I picked up the shovel and began to fill the grave with dirt.

I knew friends would tell me to get another dog, another Border collie, soon. And I knew I couldn't do that. I told myself that I would never get another dog, and I allowed myself one more cry.

Walking slowly toward the house, I recalled my grandmother's words whenever we came home from a funeral service for someone near and dear to her. As the front screen door slammed behind me I heard her holler, “Child, it's not the letting go that hurts so much, it's the holding on!”