Chaser (7 page)

I repeated “Do your business” a few times, especially once the puppy began to do just that. As soon as she finished I praised her warmly: “Good girl! Good dog!” She promptly wiggled over and leaned against my legs for a pet, apparently pleased with herself for making me so happy.

I took her back into the house, gave her some water, and poured myself a cup of coffee. While I drank my coffee in the kitchen, the puppy wandered into the living room that opens out from the kitchen and dining area. She gently picked up a stuffed animal that we'd played with yesterday, a little lion with a tail that she enjoyed seeing whip back and forth in the air when she shook it. Holding it in her mouth by the neck, she gave it a little shake, and then stopped and looked at me and came over to me with it.

“Good girl,” I told her, and gave her a pet. It was wonderful to see her initiating the play routine and engagement with me. Domestic dogs come into the world prepared to do these things. But how you respond is crucial to reinforcing this positive, playful engagement with you and sustaining it throughout a dog's life.

Kneeling down, I gently moved the toy in her mouth while slowly saying, “Out . . . out . . . out.” She gradually relaxed her jaw, and the instant she let go of the toy I reinforced her behavior with a vigorous “Good girl!” and another pet. And then I tossed the toy into the middle of the living room floor. The puppy sprang after it, took it in her mouth and gave it a shake, and brought it back to me.

As she performed each action I named it and praised her performance with quiet enthusiasm. “Take toy; good girl,” I said, when she spontaneously picked up the toy in her mouth. “Shake toy; good girl,” I said, when she spontaneously shook it. “Here; toy to Pop-Pop; good girl!” I said, when she spontaneously brought it to me. The more I associated the sound of a word in her mind with a specific action, the more that word would become a signal for that action. And, I suspected, the better foundation we would have for teaching her the meaning of the word apart from the specific action of the moment.

Still on my knees, I petted her for coming to me with the toy. She looked up with a grin on her face and held eye contact with me for several seconds, a good bit longer than she'd yet done. Building eye contact with your dog is an essential part of training and establishing a loving relationship. But it can be difficult for dogs to learn to do this comfortably—food is usually necessary as a lure and reward—because in the natural environment a direct gaze between dogs often represents a challenge and triggers a fight-or-flight situation. Sally and I were amazed by how willing the puppy already was to look us in the eye, and I was delighted to see this quick progress.

“Out,” I again said softly two or three times while gently moving the toy in her mouth. She released the toy and I petted her and said, “Good girl! Good puppy!” She wiggled with pleasure and interest, eyes bright and wide, ears pricking up at the sound of my words.

I tossed the toy across the floor a few more times for her to capture and bring to me, reinforcing the results with praise and pets. And then I said, “Let's take a walk, Puppy. You've got to explore your new world.” I put her on the leash and we went out the front door. It was only five-thirty a.m. and there was no traffic in our quiet residential neighborhood. Although sunrise was a little ways off, the front yard was bathed in soft dawn light.

There was more than a hint of a typical South Carolina summer's day ahead, but that was fine with me. I love warm weather and it's rarely too hot for me. That's not the case with Sally, and we always have to negotiate how we set the air conditioning in the house or the car. With her thick coat, the puppy was probably going to be more of Sally's mind than mine on that issue, I reckoned.

As we walked across the front yard, a squirrel scampered to a tree and the puppy instinctively chased it. In a firm but not harsh tone I said, “No!” I held the leash as the puppy ran to the end of it and brought herself up short, actually knocking herself off her feet. I knelt down and when the puppy got to her feet gently called her to me: “Here, girl. Here, Puppy. Come to Pop-Pop.” She came to me with a confused look on her face, tail and ears down, eyes narrowed.

She immediately brightened back up and wagged her tail as I petted her and said, “Good girl. You came to Pop-Pop. Good girl.” I continued to pet her and talk to her softly for a few moments: “You have to learn not to chase squirrels and other little animals. But you'll get to chase lots of other things. One of these days you'll even get to chase some sheep, I hope.”

We proceeded on our walk. “This is grass, Puppy. Grass. Grass,” I said. And then as we left our yard, “Puppy, this is the street. Street. Street.” There were no sidewalks in our neighborhood, and if a car came along I planned to take the puppy onto the edge of a neighbor's lawn.

Talking to her frequently in simple words and a quiet, soothing tone would contribute to her development in a couple of ways, if all went well. First, it would definitely help build positive associations for the puppy with the sounds of Sally's voice and mine, and with proximity to us. That was also the heart of the play sessions we'd begun as soon as we'd gotten her home the day before. Second, it might help to prepare her for learning the meaning of words. Although I wasn't yet as well versed in children's language learning as I soon would be, I knew that children whose parents talked to them a lot throughout infancy and toddlerhood tended to be much quicker, more proficient language learners. I was eager to see what effect the same practice could have with the puppy.

We turned right on Seal Street, the block-long street our house sits in the middle of, and turned right again at each intersection, onto Tanglewylde Drive, Foxcross Road, Briarwood Road, and back onto Seal Street again. Like all puppies, our puppy was eager to sniff here and there along the walk. A couple of times she wanted to leave her scent and stopped to urinate. She didn't have much left in her bladder, but on each occasion I repeated “Do your business!” in an encouraging tone several times as she urinated, and praised her warmly with pets and repetitions of “Good girl!” when she finished. I told myself it was probably my imagination, a case of wishful thinking, but it seemed that her ears pricked up a bit on hearing “Do your business!”

The puppy pulled and strained at the leash when she wanted to get to something she smelled or saw. I responded as neutrally as possible to this undesirable behavior. I stood in one place and held the leash firmly, but didn't pull back or yank on it, and I moved along only when the puppy came closer to me and released the tension on the leash herself. When she did this I strode ahead and told her, “Good girl, Puppy! Good dog!” Then I let her explore the spot she'd been trying to reach.

This made progress on the walk slow at times, but I managed not to get exasperated and yank on the leash or speak harshly to her when she pulled. Fighting a dog's behavior in this way is counterproductive. Over time it would create strong negative associations in the puppy's mind with me and my actions and tone of voice, and I was determined to avoid that. Our main goal, as the puppy got to know Sally and me, was to create strong positive associations in the puppy's mind with us, our actions, and our voices, increasing the likelihood that she would come to us and stay by our sides when we asked her to.

We didn't see a single car on the road, but the puppy saw and ran after two more squirrels. I responded to each event the same way as before. I said a firm but not harsh “No!” And then I let the puppy run to the end of the leash, calling and beckoning her over after she knocked herself off her feet, and praising and petting her for coming to me. The puppy's third chase had a little hesitation to it, and as we continued our walk after that she strained at the leash a bit less and released the tension on it herself a bit more quickly.

These were signs that she was already learning an important lesson that would make walks easier and help to keep her safe. Although our neighborhood is relatively sleepy, Briarwood Road can be very busy at times. Sally and I knew several neighbors whose beloved pets were hit and killed by cars when they chased squirrels or other animals into the street. In a couple of cases, large dogs had even yanked their leashes out of their owners' grips and then run fatally into the street. Nothing like that had ever happened to one of our dogs, and we sure didn't want it to happen with our new puppy.

As the puppy and I turned in to our front yard, I glanced across the street. A big gray feral cat with a bushy tail was looking intently at us, especially at the puppy. The tip of the cat's raised tail was twitching back and forth, as if in readiness for a pouncing leap. Judging by its size it was probably a young male from a line of Maine coon cats, among the biggest domestic cats. It was about twelve inches tall and almost two feet long, not counting its tail, and it weighed a good fifteen pounds if it weighed an ounce. Our puppy was only eight weeks old. She was scarcely ten inches high at the shoulder and weighed only a few pounds. She'd be helpless if that big cat caught her alone.

The cat had been roaming the neighborhood for a few weeks, making regular visits at the house of a kindhearted neighbor who put out food and water for it. But the cat was also a busy hunter, as we'd seen him racing across the lawn, critter in mouth. Robin said she'd seen the cat near one end of a drainpipe that ran under the street to the woods behind our house. That made me more uncomfortable.

I moved in front of the puppy and stared the cat down, doing my best to appear threatening. Unimpressed, it gave me a nonchalant look and then padded off in between two houses on its side of the street. Before bringing the puppy home yesterday, I hadn't really given the cat much thought. Now I wanted it gone.

Dismissing the cat from my mind for now, I took the puppy into our fenced-in backyard. I still wanted to be able to stop her from chasing a squirrel if she saw one, so I left the leash on her collar but let her trail it along behind her. She sniffed around the steps to the back porch, then trotted off to the sixty-foot-long chainlink fence that separated our yard from that of the neighbors directly behind us. Here she resumed sniffing with great intensity.

“Yes, girl,” I said. “Two dogs live on the other side of the fence. You'll meet them before long, I'm sure. They're a couple of friendly creatures.”

As if on cue, the neighbors' back door opened and their dogs came out. On spotting us they both ran over to the fence. A large mixed-breed dog was in the lead—the type of dog Sally calls a Heinz 57, a combination of so many varieties that it's hard to pin any kind of tag on it. A little bulldog came panting behind.

The puppy stood stock-still, and I knelt down behind her so that she was sheltered a bit between my knees, with the fence a foot in front of us. She wasn't cowering and didn't seem distressed, but she showed no inclination to engage with the dogs as they came to a stop at the fence, barking in excitement. “It's okay, girl,” I told the puppy, stroking her side. “These are nice dogs.” They were the first dogs she was exposed to besides her own kennel mates, and it was vital to socialize her so that she was comfortable around other dogs.

The little bulldog and the big mixed breed sniffed through the fence toward the puppy. She remained motionless. The neighbor dogs bounded back and forth in front of the fence, bowing their legs in play postures. The puppy stayed very still, and looked back at me as if to say she'd had enough of this encounter. But then the neighbor dogs started racing back and forth along the fence, and that excited the puppy to race back and forth with them.

I stood up and let them race. The puppy could barely cover a quarter of the length of the fence in the time the big dog took to run to the end and turn back to run the other way, and even the little bulldog was too fast for her. But the puppy plainly loved to run. Her exhilaration made me smile.

As the big dog barreled back along the fence, Puppy tried to turn around in midstride to run beside him and tumbled to the ground. I quickly stepped over to her, but she was back on her feet, grinning, before I got there. The neighbor dogs stopped running and came to the fence again to sniff, and this time Puppy trotted over to the fence and sniffed back, nose to nose. That made me chuckle and tell them all, “Good dogs! Good dogs!”

I heard my neighbor calling the bulldog and its big companion to their breakfast, and they were off like a shot. “Let's go inside too, Puppy,” I said. She turned from the fence at the sound of my voice and walked along beside me up our sloping backyard to the house. The back porch steps were too high for her, so I picked her up and carried her inside.

In the kitchen I held the puppy in my arms and saw her eyes slowly closing and then blinking open. She had tremendous energy, but racing the older dogs had worn her out for the moment.

I put her down by the water bowl to see if she wanted a drink. She did, and I quietly repeated, “Drink, drink,” while she lapped up some water. Thirst slaked, she was more than ready for a nap. I led her over to the new dog bed in the living room and encouraged her to lie down. I praised her as she did, and then contentedly watched her eyes close and her breathing deepen as she fell asleep.

She was a beautiful puppy inside and out. Her coat, more white than black, might not be the most favored for a Border collie. A mostly black coat stands out from the sheep better when the farmer is at a distance. But she was a pretty puppy—there was no doubt about that. The white parts of her coat had hints of mottled gray, which would likely become more pronounced as she matured. She had hazel to brown eyes, depending on how the light hit them. Her eyes shone, and I saw there her enthusiasm for life and interacting with Sally and me—and, I thought, keen intelligence.

Sitting beside her as she napped, I thought about the behaviors and characteristics she'd displayed so far. Her responsiveness to subtle changes in the tone of my voice, especially when I encouraged and praised her, her fast-increasing ability to maintain attention on me, her slight hesitation in chasing the third squirrel and her pulling slightly less on the leash during the rest of the walk—all these things suggested both that she had a quick mind for learning and that we were building a strong bond between us. What excited me even more was how quickly she seemed to be attaching meanings to “here,” “out,” and “do your business,” associating the sound of each word or phrase with an appropriate action on her part.