Born to Bark (30 page)

Never underestimate the ability of a clever dog to find a way to embarrass you in public and to make it look as if you had never spent more than a total of 5 seconds training him. At our next competition Flint had been doing remarkably well. His heeling on and off leash was fine and his recall exercise was spectacular. He did move his front legs a little bit when the judge came over to touch him on the stand exercise, but that would simply be some points lost, not a failure. Only the long sit and down remained.

Wonder of wonders, Flint sat rock still for the full minute during the group sit test. Now only the long down for 3 minutes remained, and we would be one-third of the way toward earning him his first obedience title.

I stood beside him and commanded, “Flint, down!” and he obediently dropped to the ground, assuming the lying position popular with statues of lions who grace entrances to many public buildings. “Stay!” I told him and then walked the 40 feet to the other side of the ring. I turned and he was still in position. I took a breath, thinking to myself, “This might really work.”

Flint and I made eye contact and, to my dismay, he made a few movements with his front end. A judge might view them as a dog simply adjusting his position to make himself more comfortable, but these were almost always the precursors to Flint moving out of position. Had we been in the hall where my dog club trains, I would have immediately repeated the stay command to hold him in position, but in an actual obedience trial that would result in our failing immediately. So instead, I held my tongue and hoped that this really was merely an adjustment.

Flint looked at me in a manner that caused me to hear his voice in my mind saying,
“Hey, there! Aren’t you paying attention? Didn’t you see me move? Aren’t you supposed to say something?”
So, to see whether he could get me to respond, Flint squiggled his body forward another inch or two. I held my breath and glanced at my wristwatch—still more than 2 minutes to go. I looked back across the ring; while my attention had been on reading the time, Flint had moved another few inches toward me and was looking inquiringly at me, waiting for me to do something. Now the pattern was set. Every 10 seconds
or so, Flint would make that little swimming movement—never lifting his belly off the ground, but nonetheless inching ever closer to me. He would then pause to look at my face to see my response. Since I said nothing, he assumed that all was well and crept a few more inches toward me. Some of the ringside spectators giggled as they watched my dog swim along the ground.

By the time the judge ordered, “Back to your dogs!” Flint was halfway across the ring. I stopped and stood beside him,
effectively right in the middle of the ring, while all of the other handlers continued on to the far side. My little gray dog looked up and wagged his tail, and I could hear him saying,
“Because you have such a clever dog, you don’t have to walk all the way across the ring like those other dog owners do!”

Flint had swum halfway across the ring
.

Once we were outside the ring again, Shirley walked over and put her arm around me, “Well, look at it this way: he never actually got up.”

In the remaining two trials that weekend, Flint repeated his land-swimming performance during the down-stay exercise. On the last trial a large knot of people had gathered in anticipation of a chuckle as they watched him fail. Perhaps Flint simply felt that his mission in life was to bring some additional laughter into the world.

On a more sober note, Barbara Baker told me, “He’s too smart. He has become ‘ring-wise’ and he knows that in the actual show ring you won’t correct him. This may be a problem.” Her expression was serious, and she offered no immediate solution at that moment, which worried me a bit more.

Solving Flint’s tendency to move in the sit and down-stay tests turned out to be an exercise in thinking like a dog. Flint did not hold his position in the ring because I did not correct him when he started to move as I did when we were practicing at home or in the club. So I needed some way to correct him without my direct intervention.

The moment of insight came when I was in a store that sold sporting equipment and saw a spool of “shark line.” This is a heavy monofilament fishing line used to catch sharks or other heavy fish. It is transparent but can withstand being pulled by more than 100 pounds of tension. I purchased the shark line and cut a length of about 3 or 4 feet. I then attached a clip to each end. Afterward, before I placed Flint in a sit or a down and told him to stay, I removed his leash, as usual, but now clipped the shark line onto his collar. The other end of the line had already been attached to a stati
onary object or, when we were outdoors, to a small stake that I drove into the ground. Now when Flint would break his position to move toward me, the tug of the line would correct him. I did not need to respond to every twitch that he made and only had to repeat the sit or down and stay command when he had moved far enough that the fishing line was tugging on his collar.

This worked beautifully. Flint would start to move, get corrected automatically by the tug on the shark line, then look at me in confusion. I would repeat “Down and stay!” and he would settle back into position for the remaining time. Soon he came to expect that corrective tug and simply stopped testing and remained in place. I felt that the problem was solved well enough that we could return to competition.

I had fallen into a very common trap that catches psychologists and other behavioral scientists—the assumption that what
works in one situation is apt to work in a completely different situation. So there I was, back in an obedience competition ring with Flint. We were not doing spectacularly well, but our performance up to the group sits and downs was passing. Just two more exercises to go.

I stood and watched from the far side of the ring while Flint held his sit position for the full minute. I was almost giddy when I placed him in the down position and told him to stay. Just 3 more minutes and we would have our first qualifying score. I stood across the ring looking benignly at my dog. Suddenly he looked around, as if noticing that this was a new and different place where the rules might be different. Then, with his belly still on the ground, he made a swimming movement. I could imagine what was going on in his mind. Something like,
“What? No correction? I’m free again!”

It was déjà vu, complete with the familiar chuckles from the sidelines while my dog swam on his belly out into the middle of the ring to disqualify our otherwise acceptable performance. Another weekend with no ribbons to take home and no legs earned toward his title.

Sometime later I figured out that to solve the problem I had to think more like a dog or at least know what was going on in this dog’s mind. The obvious fact was that when he knew that he was tethered he didn’t even try to move, but when he felt free, or felt that he was in a different situation, he would test to see if he was still restrained. If the test failed and he was free, he would carefully try to work his way back to me regardless of my command to stay.

“So how do I convince you that you are still tied down when you are not?” I asked him.

“Look at it this way,”
it was a goofy, patronizing voice that
answered,
“I obviously am not seeing the shark line. That’s because us dogs are all dreadfully far-sighted, and since the fish line is close and transparent, it’s really hard to see. That means that what tells me that I’m tied to something is the feeling of the tug at my collar. All you have to do is to tug my collar from forty feet away.”

The idea that popped into my mind was simple: Flint must feel the tug
before
he decided to move. That tug had to be felt whether he was physically tethered or not.

Training then became quite simple. Each time I would put the shark line on Flint to hold him in place, after clipping the line on, I would give a sharp downward tug on his collar before I moved away. This served two purposes. First, it confirmed that the clip was securely attached and, second, it signaled to Flint that the line was attached. I mixed this action with some training sessions where I would put him in a down-stay position without tethering him and with no tug. At these times I would come back to face him, then back away a few steps and call him to me. As he walked towar
d me, his freedom confirmed that he was not tied. What Flint didn’t know was that I was building a signal for him. A tug on his collar before I moved meant his movements were restricted. No tug meant that he was not.

Now the real test. Again I found myself in the obedience ring with Flint, and again we were working toward a qualifying score except for the sit and down stays. Now, however, after I removed his leash, I made a show of fumbling with his collar and finished with a sharp tug on it before I stood up. Flint’s sit-stay was rock solid.

I returned from the other side of the ring and waited for the judge to say “Exercise finished.” At that moment I bent down to fumble with Flint’s collar again, and I may even have mumbled something like “Let me check that shark line.” Again just before I stood up I gave another sharp tug on the collar. Flint looked at me, and I thought that I heard him give a little sigh. I didn’t
know whether that was a good or bad sign. At the judge’s command I ordered Flint to lie down and to stay, then walked to the far end of the ring. Flint was still lying there. Once he stirred a bit to look behind him. I think that he was looking for the tether, but he seemed to be more clearly trusting that the tugs that I gave him represented reliable information that he was physically anchored in place, rather than relying on the usually less dependable information from his vision.

The judge ordered us back to our dogs, and when the exercise finished I made another big fuss and fumbled with his collar as if removing the shark line. As we left the ring I told him how proud I was of his performance, and he made a little sneezing sound as if to say,
“And what choice did I have, since you left me tied down?”

When we exited the ring I got congratulatory hugs from both Barbaras, Shirley, and Emma, and Flint got treats from everybody. Barbara Merkley gave a big smile and announced, “Just two more to go!”