Bones Would Rain from the Sky: Deepening Our Relationships with Dogs Read online

  that what I love most about working with dogs is their willingness to accept new ways and discard old ones. If you show a dog a more comfortable and productive way to experience life, he is usually quite glad to trade in his confusion, anxiety, anger or fear for more pleasant feelings. Humans, on the other hand, can be a bit resistant to change. With an internal sigh, I told Kate that I'd have John race around and play ball with my dogs, working them up to as near hysteria as could be managed. My dogs were happy to oblige, and their usual excited, noisy play just a few feet on the other side of the fence was certainly of interest to Angel. But he did not explode or lose his mind or do anything except occasionally forget himself and get up from the sit I had requested. At a quiet reminder, he promptly sat back down, watching the dogs play, still unmistakably connected to me. I had but to whisper his name for him to instantly turn his attention away from the dogs and to me. At last, Kate had to admit that perhaps what I had been telling her had some merit. She apologized for being so resistant and allowed that on the long drive home, she would have plenty to think about. There is a beautiful red ribbon that hangs near my desk. Sometimes, a light breeze makes the long streamers dance, and the gold lettering on the rosette gleams softly and tells me that this ribbon was presented for second place in a competition. This is a very special gift from Angel, this first ribbon he ever earned. In the note of thanks that accompanied the ribbon, Kate told me that in his first official competition just a few months after meeting the turkeys, Angel had performed with style and precision, joining her in a mutual dance. Kate had not fully believed that this might ever be possible, and certainly not so soon. Angel had lost first place by only a point when instead of jumping up onto and immediately lying down on the table obstacle as required, Angel just had to peek under the table to see what was there. Kate felt that Angel knew I would understand why he did this, and I did: The world's an interesting place. Beyond the ribbon that I treasure, Angel gave me a far greater gift, one that exists only in my memory, a snapshot of a moment when we were working with the turkeys. I stand behind him, softly calling his name and giving a little flutter on the leash to say, "Come with me, this way." His beautiful neck is arched as he cranes his head to keep the turkeys in sight for as long as possible. Even though I laugh at his wide-eyed curiosity, I am insistent with my gentle nudges and reminders that this dog be with me. I know he is torn, reluctant to leave these darkly feathered hoodlums who peer sternly past their dangling snoods at him. "Angel," I call again, and one ear swivels back to let me know that he hears my request. Without taking his eyes off the turkeys, the dog begins to back up in my direction. "Good dog," I say with deeply felt sincerity; this is such tremendous cooperation in a difficult situation. He backs a few more steps, then surprises me by lifting himself up and walking backward on his hind legs so that he can keep the turkeys in clear view. This is his counteroffer to my request-he agrees to come with me but in return he asks for only this, to be allowed to keep his eyes on the birds. I don't need him to turn away from the turkeys; I only need his cooperation, and I have it, though it is styled uniquely in this brilliant compromise that both pleases and amuses me. In this unusual fashion we retreat, Angel walking backward on his hind legs with amazing coordination. At last, we reach a point where the turkeys can no longer be seen, and Angel drops to all fours and turns toward me, the expression on his face one of wonder and pleasure. He prances at my side, smiling up at me, and it is clear that he finds this new adventure a good deal of fun. As we walk together down the driveway, away from the birds, Angel glances longingly over his shoulder and then up at me, his tail wagging. I feel as if I am walking a reluctant but ultimately agreeable child out of Disneyland. To fix the weak spots in a relationship, you need to begin at the beginning. The quality of connection is created and repaired at the most fundamental level of attentive awareness. In each moment that you are with the dog, you must be aware, gently and persistently shifting the balance toward one of mutual agreement and cooperation. This is not easy, and it requires some thought. Most of all, it requires a desire to create-over and over again-the event of quality, which in turn creates a heartfelt commitment to truly being with the dog.

  Learning to really be with their dogs, to truly listen (with far more than their ears) to what their dogs were telling them about that moment's experience, some people I've worked with have found themselves also examining the quality of their connection with others around them. Newly and profoundly aware of the difference that results from a conscious choice to create an event of quality, they begin to apply an equally attentive and loving approach in their dealings with friends and family. This commitment to truly being with their dog sometimes proves more difficult than some expect, requiring as it does ongoing and greater awareness in every moment. Many have reported to me how exhausting they initially found the work of being truly deeply attentive to and aware of their dogs. At a very basic level, we are out of practice. Our modern world does not encourage deep, thoughtful listening skills but rather offers us quick "sound bites"-perhaps acceptable when zipping through a quick review of news stories, but hardly supportive of a meaningful relationship. The gift of attentiveness and total focus on what we are saying is so rare, in fact, that when we are truly heard, we often exclaim with pleasure and amazement, "He really listens!" It is strangely true that while each of us wishes to be heard at length, we often listen to others in only short bursts of attention. Sad that something as fundamental to a loving relationship should so often be incomplete or even missing. If we would understand our dogs, then we begin by shifting our awareness toward understanding that in every interaction, we are in conversation with our dogs. Every conversation begins with a simple connection, a shift of attention away from the world and to another being. It is only when we choose to create an event of quality by bringing our full attention to bear that we open ourselves to truly hear another.

  calling dr. doolittle "Lots of people talk to animals," said Pooh. "Maybe, but..." "Not very many listen, thouah," he said. 'That's the problem," he added. benjamin hoff, the tao of pooh

  YOU'VE SIMPLY GOT TO LOVE A MAN WITH A DUCK FOR A HOUSEKEEPER. I keep telling folks that the real reason Dr.

  Doolittle has been my lifelong hero is that he trusted his household to the reliable Jemima Puddleduck. As someone who has dealt with her share of ducks (there was that mallard who lived in the living room for a few months and happily swam in the bathtub, bobbing for Cheerios), I can attest to the fact that our web-footed friends are not exactly the kings of clean. Never a fan of vacuuming or other forms of keeping house, I've defended myself over the years by pointing out that I simply haven't yet found the right duck to help me keep an orderly house. To be truthful, far beyond his choice in housekeepers (she did carry her own feather duster with her at all times), what I admired most was the good doctor's ability to talk to the animals. To be able to speak fluent Horse or Dog was, to my mind, the finest of all possibilities. The notion that it was possible to talk to the animals was not a new concept to me when I first encountered Dr. Doolittle at a tender age. Like most children, my earliest books contained countless animal characters, most gifted with memorable personalities and intelligence and the ability to speak. The animal heroes of books I read as an older child somehow- without my noticing-lost the power of speech. The Black Stallion, Black Beauty, the troubled Flicka, Lad of Sunnybank, White Fang, Old Yeller and others all continued to communicate, but wordlessly. In their gestures, in their resistance and their agreeable compliance, in their misdeeds and heroic actions, these animals spoke volumes. If there was a common thread running through these books and many others, it was that powerful communications were possible without a single word being said. In Jack London's Call of the Wild, silent testimony to a dog's utmost willingness is given in Buck's struggle to move the sled that his master has piled high with a staggering load and the foolish freight of human pride. And what more could mere words convey about love and loyalty than a Collie who has traveled the brea
dth of Scotland to return to the boy she loved? Even if author Eric Knight had given her a voice, Lassie could have said nothing more eloquent than what was told in her eyes as she lay exhausted, nearly dead, outside her young master's schoolyard gate. Though behaviorists and cognitive scientists might insist otherwise, what we see in our dog's eyes is more than just animal instinct or the trained behaviors of dumb beasts. Looking back at us, we see intelligence, humor, joy, disappointment, fear, anger, lust, anticipation, relief, curiosity, delight, boredom, resignation, amazement, sorrow, sympathy, and-undeniably-love. If we honor the dog as a dog, we do not see another human being trapped in a fur coat, doomed to wander through life on all fours at the end of a leash. We see another sentient being who, though science may anxiously remind us there's no "proof," has feelings and experiences that often parallel our own but are uniquely canine. Our dogs look at us, and we cannot shake the feeling that they are telling us something, in fact that they are telling us a lot more than we can understand. And we want to know.

  what Is it, girl? From the time the First Dog crept up to the fireside, man and dog have been trying to understand each other. We have not always been successful, but on both sides we keep plugging along at it. Roughly fourteen thousand years later, communication between man and dog reached its ultimate expression, of course, in Lassie. Not even Rin Tin Tin was as eloquent or as capable of saying so much with just a few barks. Lassie needed only to appear on the scene with an inquiring or urgent look on her face to prompt the classic question, "What is it, girl?" In response, Lassie might say, "Woof. Arf, arf, ARF'-ROWF!" and Grandpa or Timmy would instantly know that a busload of hungry Boy Scouts was trapped in an abandoned mine just two miles southeast of the farm and that subtle [but detectable by canine senses) seismic activity foretold a collapse of the main mine shaft in the next twenty-four minutes. Whatever the situation and no matter how complicated it might be, Lassie could always find a way to make things crystal clear and rouse the humans to appropriate action. Few scenarios were as guaranteed to arouse tension and interest in the audience as those dreadful moments when, despite Lassie's attempts to communicate, the humans would not listen or got the message all wrong. "Are these people idiots?" we mutter under our breath, waiting for the lightbulbs to turn on. The director of the show made very sure that the viewers were led by the nose to an understanding of the situation, so that Lassie's barks would be magically translated into meaningful communication. But as someone who was given a collection of Lassie reruns on video as a wedding present, I can assure you that if you miss the first half of the show and tune in just as Lassie makes her dramatic vocalizations, you cannot make heads or tails of what she's saying. Is this, you wonder in vain, the episode where the tiger gets loose from his trainer? Or the one where the greedy rich man from town is tearing up the forest with illegal logging activities? Without the information received in the first half of the show, nothing makes sense. We would all like to look at the dogs at our feet and ask, "What is it, girl?" and be sure of getting an answer. But our dogs are not Lassie, and it might fairly be said that in our communications with our dogs, we sometimes feel like we've arrived in the middle of the episode. Faced with a series of meaningless barks, you long for clarity like that of the cartoon that shows a Collie at the front steps greeting the lady of the house with a human arm dangling from the dog's mouth. The woman inquires, "What is it, girl? Is something wrong with Timmy?" Communication is a critical ingredient in any relationship, yet as our human interactions show, even between two members of the same species speaking the same language this is not necessarily an easy matter. On a visit to Washington, D.c., my husband and I were walking near the reflecting pool between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. As we walked, I was paying attention to the various trees and plants along the path. John said, "Mint?" in a casual tone, and immediately I began scanning the rather closely manicured area for anything that resembled mint. It is a plant I'm familiar with, but no matter how closely I looked, I couldn't find anything that looked even vaguely like any form of mint: spearmint, peppermint, apple mint or even catmint. Still scanning, I heard him say again, "Mint?" Frustrated, I turned to him, annoyed at his superior observation skills; a former park ranger and an avid gardener, he's famous for spotting wild asparagus from a vehicle moving at sixty miles an hour. "What mint?" I asked in irritation. Puzzled by my sudden mood shift, he smiled cautiously and held out the peppermint candy he'd been offering me. When we add the complications created by not only another language but also another culture, it gets more difficult. And when the other speaks a different language and is from another culture and is also another species, we have reached what is perhaps the most difficult challenge of communication with the possible exception of communicating with the average teenager. How, we wonder, can we communicate with a creature that drinks out of the toilet bowl and speaks in a mysterious blend of growls and woofs and wags of his tail? Though it's tempting [and easy) to focus on the differences between us and our dogs as the cause of problems that arise, the truth is that a great deal of the difficulty lies not in understanding canine communications, but within ourselves. Many of the problems that complicate our human communications also exist in our relationships with dogs. Dog or daughter, puppy or parent, Fido or friend, we still have to find ways to understand and be understood; such is the nature of communication in any form. We still have to find ways to shape our conversations with respect, curiosity about the other's point of view, a willingness to listen (even when we don't like what we hear), and a compassionate sense of how our communications are received and how the listener may be affected. We still need to find ways to hear with more than our ears; to listen is to tune every other sense to another's communication, to the nuance of eyes and gesture and breath and body. To hear our dogs, we must also listen with our hearts. Within a loving relationship, we must be willing to do the work of choosing the event of quality, aware that in each interaction, we are moving in only one of two directions: toward greater trust, understanding and intensity of connection, or toward greater distance between ourselves and another. How we choose to communicate with our dogs will either enhance or limit our relationships. Norwegian trainer Turid Rugaas is a pioneer in understanding canine communications, particularly what she calls "calming signals"-gestures used by dogs to acknowledge, reassure, calm and defuse tense situations. These gestures are offered by dogs to other dogs, to humans, and even to other species. Observing that in

  our conversations with dogs we can choose to be friendly, neutral or threatening, Rugaas asks the very good question, "Why would we want to threaten our dogs?" In every communication, we have the power to choose how we communicate with our dogs. If we love them, if we respect them, if we are trying to create an event of quality, then we also have an obligation to listen to what they have to say. What is inescapable in every communication is this: The common ingredient in all our relationships, whether with man or beast, is us. As they say, "wherever you go, there you are." To an astonishing degree, our beliefs, expectations and assumptions color all of our communications. A well-known experiment years ago involved teachers and how their expectations might impact their teaching. One group of teachers was told that they had been assigned the brightest, most gifted students. Another group was told that their classes would consist of slow learners and poor students. In reality, all teachers were assigned their students on a purely random basis. The results were unsettling. The teachers with the "gifted" students had the test scores and progress to reflect just how smart those kids were; the teachers with the "slow learners" had test results that showed that indeed, these were slow learners. The researchers found an important difference in how the teachers taught as a result of their expectations. Teachers of "gifted" children had viewed any lack of understanding by the student as a teaching problem; since the child was known to be gifted, the only possible explanation for a failure to learn lay in the teaching style. These teachers worked in every way possible to ensure that they wer
e able to successfully communicate with what they knew to be gifted children. The teachers of the "slow learners," on the other hand, viewed a child's lack of comprehension as the unfortunate but inevitable outcome of the child's limited ability: If the students did not understand something as it was taught, the teachers did not change their communication style. A similar phenomenon is at work among dog lovers around the world. People frequently assume that certain breeds or types of dog are stupid, smart, stubborn, lazy, aggressive, friendly. And their beliefs shape their actions, sometimes most unfortunately for the dogs involved. Very often, what we label as stupid or stubborn has little to do with the dog's level of intelligence. What we really mean when we say that a dog is stupid or stubborn or lazy is that he's not in agreement with us, that he's not doing what we want him to do. When we try to force a dog to accept our particular methodology and ignore what he tells us about its unsuitability for him, we are really saying that our toolbox does not contain a teaching approach that will work for him and that we don't really care. The failure, we feel, rests on the stubborn, stupid, dominant, fearful (pick an adjective) dog, not in our approach to him. A good deal of dog training is rather Procrustean. Procrustes was a mythological fellow who had a special bed that he guaranteed would fit all who tried it. And amazingly, it did-because he would stretch anyone too short for the bed and cut off any parts that were too long and hung over the bed. Perfect fit, every time! And we do this to dogs, stretching them unnaturally to suit our training demands and lopping off the parts we don't like or the parts that don't neatly fit within our paradigm. everything's (ust peachy In some of my seminars, I have the participants play a little game I call Fruits and Veggies. An adaptation of trainer Karen Pryor's training game, Fruits and Veggies offers a reminder of how much we take for granted in our communications, an empathetic experience of how the dog may feel and a sometimes surprising look at how our expectations can ere ate problems. The rules are quite simple. Participants are split up into pairs, and each person is handed a slip of paper meant for their eyes only. On those slips of paper are three simple behaviors well within the ability of the average person, such as "hop," "blink," "take off one shoe." (the slips are color-coded so that each person in a pair has something different from what's on their partner's slip.] The goal is for each person ("the trainer") to teach their partner ("the dog") to perform those three behaviors. There is one catch: They may only address their partners using the names of fruits and veggies. All normal English is abandoned. The commands, praise and even negatives must all be the names of fruits and veggies. The trainers may use any technique they care to (except painful ones), but they must not take advantage of the human tendency to mimic or mirror what is shown. A trainer may not stand on one foot and then look meaningfully at their "dog"-a