Bones Would Rain from the Sky: Deepening Our Relationships with Dogs (12 page)

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 breadth 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