Born to Bark (24 page)

Unfortunately, the excited barking of a terrier is a behavior that would not endear a dog to Joan, who prefers dogs that pay attention to humans, are strongly inclined to do what they were told, and work silently. Joan cherishes quiet, order, reliability, predictability, and unobtrusiveness in her own life and expects these qualities in dogs, so she was completely unprepared for a terrier like Flint who barks at any change in his environment or at anything that has raised his excitement level. Joan was certainly not amused when he created what would become his favorite game,
The Barbarians Are Coming!
It always began with him leaping into the air with a furious round of barking explosive enough to be heard throughout the entire house. He would then rush to a door or window or leap onto the highest surface he could reach, the bed or sofa, where he kept up the cascade of noise until I did the modern equivalent of grabbing bows and arrows and rushing to the ramparts to defend the realm. The game always started when the house was quiet—when Joan was reading, sewing, or napping. It could also be played in the dead of night when Joan and I were sleeping. Careful
investigation would often reveal that the triggering event was something like the wind brushing some tree branches against the house or a noisy vehicle traveling down the nearby street.

When Flint’s barking one night awakened us at around 3
A.M.
Joan turned to me angrily and hissed, “Why must he do that?”

“Joannie, terriers are bred to bark. They have to bark so that when they are underground in a burrow the hunters know where to dig them out and uncover the fox or badger they’ve cornered.”

My historical explanation was lost on her. Joan bolted from the bed and stood glaring at me, then turned and angrily shouted at Flint.

“Stop your damned barking. There is no badger under this bed—look for yourself! And if there is a fox or a badger under
there, you just keep that information to yourself. This is a bedroom—not a burrow!”

Over the next few days I tried to reduce the tension between my wife and my dog as best I could. I even bought Flint a silly little doggy cap with the motto “Born to Bark” embroidered on it and a collar tag that said “Woof!” Joan was not amused.

“Why didn’t you tell me all this before we got him?” she grumbled and turned away, muttering about “nice quiet dogs, like golden retrievers and Labs.” She then stopped and, hands on her hips, said, “Promise me that the next dog that you bring into this house will not be a terrier—will not be genetically programmed to bark—will not be anything more than a standard, quiet, unassuming dog!”

There actually were a few times when Flint’s barking proved to be useful. Since Flint’s barking was communication—specifically an attempt to call his pack leader over to check to see if there was some threat—the easiest way to quiet him when he was barking at a window or a door was to get up, make a show of looking out at where he thought the problem was, and then give him a little pat.

“Good watchdog,” I would tell him. I would then call him away, back to where I was sitting or working. Generally, he would calm down because the leader of his pack had indicated that there was no problem.

One night, I was awakened by Flint’s barking and, as I normally did, I went to the bedroom window to see what he was barking at. Joan’s car was usually parked along the side of the house and in full view from the bedroom. When I looked down to the street, I saw a man with what looked like a screwdriver appearing to pry at the car door. I opened the window and shouted, “Get away from there! I’m calling the police!”

The man immediately ran down the street.

The next morning I checked Joan’s car. There were scratch marks on the door on the driver’s side, so it appeared that the man had been trying to open the car, no doubt to steal it.

As I poured Joan a cup of coffee and told her what I’d seen, I asked, “Doesn’t Flint deserve a bit of thanks today? After all, his warning probably kept your car from being stolen last night.”

Joan glanced at Flint, who had started wagging his tail at the sound of his name, then shook her head.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Too many false alarms,” she replied.

If you read the genetic code of a terrier it would say, “bark-eat-bark-dig-bark-chase-bark-grab-bark-hunt-bark-kill it (if it is little, furry, and moves quickly)-bark-growl-bark-tug-bark-shred-bark-ignore sounds from two-footed creatures-bark-bark …”

Flint was clearly growing into his genes. He was not only barking more, his hunting instincts were beginning to emerge. Every terrier carries the genetic ability and desire to kill rats and other vermin. People who don’t know terriers tend to think that the most efficient rat killers are cats, who certainly are efficient at killing mice, which requires stealth and patience. Rats, however, are a different matter. Today’s modern cats are smaller on average than those that were first domesticated some 7,000 years ago, but even at their original size, adult rats were often too large and vicious
for cats to handle. This fact ultimately encouraged the breeding of terriers to keep down the population of the larger rodents.

Terriers are not stealthy in their hunting of vermin. Their technique simply involves sighting and chasing anything small that is moving swiftly. They dispatch their pr
ey by grasping the rat
or other small mammal by the neck and giving it one or two swift shakes to break its neck. In our relatively rodent-free cities today, it is difficult to appreciate just how efficient terriers can be at rat killing; however, back in the Victorian era, the terrier’s abilities were turned into a sport that attracted enthusiasts like the young girl who later would become Queen Victoria of England. In this type of “sporting event,” terriers and rats were placed in a pit to fight to the death. Side bets were often taken on the survival of dogs or rats, while other bets were taken on the am
ount of time that some of the better dogs might take to finish off a particular group of rodents. A number of records have survived describing some of the “superstars” of the sport. For instance, we know that one champion rat fighter was “Tiny,” a bull terrier who weighed only 5½ pounds. On one particular night he killed 50 rats (some of which were nearly as large as he) in 28 minutes and 5 seconds.

Cairn terriers are no different from other terriers, and their desire to chase vermin, whether rats, mice, rabbits, or squirrels, is built in. Basically, any small thing that moved erratically could trigger Flint’s genetic programming to hunt.

One morning Joan announced, “Flint has finally flipped out. Look at him.”

As we turned to watch him, he made a mad dash across the room, stopped and stared at something, then dashed in another direction. I looked more carefully at what he was doing and noticed that he was pursuing some glints of light on the floor. I finally figured out that these moving flashes were coming from the sunlight reflecting off a large heart-shaped cut-crystal pendant that Joan was wearing around her neck. I had gotten her that bit of jewelry specifically because I liked the way it reflected light in many colors. Now, as the sunshine
bounced off the crystal,
it scattered into tiny points of light that randomly moved around the room, turning on Flint’s vermin-hunting behaviors. I pointed this out Joan, along with my version of Flint’s voice saying,
“Hey, Mom, if it moves I’ll chase it!”
The woman I love responded with a large theatrical sigh. Looking back and forth between me and my dog (who was still chasing miniature points of rainbow-colored light), she plaintively asked, “Do I have to now start taking the way Flint’s brain is wired into account before I get dressed in the morning?”

Flint was one of the few dogs that I have owned who spontaneously watched television. You can get dogs to watch televised images, but you have to attend to certain details. To be most effective you have to lower the TV set so that it is about at the dog’s eye level and use images that are shot from the a dog’s point of view—say, a foot or two from the ground. Images taken from a dog’s eye level that have a lot of motion can capture a dog’s attention, especially if the soundtrack contains lots of exciting sounds. I recently created a series of videos with these characterist
ics designed for dogs to watch. The dogs do seem to enjoy them, but the videos don’t make a whole lot of sense or have much entertainment value for humans viewing them.

Most dogs tend to ignore TV images designed for human viewing, but Flint was in hyperdrive all the time, always scanning the environment for something that moved and might be chaseable. My spunky dog first became interested in television when I was watching a program called
The Littlest Hobo
, a low-budget series about a German shepherd who wandered around the countryside befriending various people and getting them out of trouble through his heroism and cleverness. Then, like an errant knight, after each good deed Hobo would wander away looking for his next adventure.

Flint spontaneously watched television
.

Flint’s attention was immediately captured by this dog moving across the TV screen. He stood up on his hind legs, as he often did at the windows to watch other dogs go by. When Hobo disappeared from the screen, Flint would get closer and look slantwise in the direction that the dog had gone, trying to catch a glimpse of the disappearing furry star. From then on, he would always check the TV screen as he passed. If a dog or another animal were visible, he would often stop to watch; sometimes his tail would tremble as he studied the images,
sometimes he would let loose an excited whimper or a quick bark.