Chaser (9 page)

In the end she'd decided to enter the graduate physics program at Washington University in St. Louis. Sally and I were eager to hear about Allyson's first year in grad school.

Puppy had another idea. As we sat down in the living room, Puppy brought over a small ball and dropped it at Allyson's feet. Allyson delighted her by rolling the ball across the floor for her to chase down and capture. In between rolls, Allyson looked up and said, “Doc and Sally, I can't believe you've had this sweetie-pie a whole month and are still just calling her Puppy. Don't you have any idea what you're going to name her?”

Sally laughed and said, “Everyone who meets her asks us about her name. But we want to give her a name that really expresses her personality, and we haven't figured that out yet.”

I chimed in that names are powerful, and because we didn't want to name her lightly, her name was seriously eluding us. I had offered up “Baby,” since I was calling her that anyway, but that was immediately shot down by Sally and the peanut gallery. Robin and Deb had not yet met her, but they were getting tired of hearing us constantly call her “the puppy” and “Puppy.” They suggested a multitude of forgettable names from Girl to Lassie, Wilma, and Tasha (to go with Yasha). The list went on and on, and nothing seemed quite right.

“I am going to teach Puppy lots and lots of proper nouns,” I said. “She has to have a name that fits that quest as well as her personality.”

Over the past four weeks I'd spent more concentrated and extended time with Puppy than I ever had before with a young dog. Her personality and temperament were unmistakably soft, rather than rough-and-tumble, yet also—and without ever losing that softness—increasingly confident, curious, and even bold. Both aspects came out in her social behavior with people, as they just had in making a new friend and playmate in Allyson.

By the time Allyson rang our doorbell, Puppy had successfully interacted with dozens of people with growing assurance. She used an instinctive repertoire of behaviors—bowing her legs, looking up with her tongue lolling out of her mouth, licking the person's face, wagging her tail—that evolved in dogs in the wild and became a foundation for their unique social relationship with human beings. She already was adept at varying that repertoire to suit the individual. I had never observed a young puppy so persistent and creative in winning people's engagement, even if at first they wouldn't crack a smile. When we met a group of people she usually wanted to have some kind of interaction with each of them.

Dogs have evolved to be ready to interact with humans, and Border collies in particular have been bred to work in close harmony with farmers and their families. So Puppy's interest in people had a lot to do with her species and breed, but her rate of learning seemed remarkably fast. I had never devoted so much concentrated time to training a dog before, and I had to allow for that. But still, I found myself marveling at how smart dogs are. Our puppy seemed to have such a good mind, she was so eager to engage with people and so sensitive to voices, and her attention span was increasing so quickly. I was convinced she could learn that words have meanings and that names are labels that refer to specific objects, things, or individuals.

This is something that toddlers do. They first learn words, including their own names, by associating the particular sound of the word with a particular object or individual. A few months later they take a remarkable leap and come to understand that some words refer to categories. I was hoping Puppy could take that leap, and everything I saw in her made me believe that she could. Her fast emotional and cognitive development made me think we could soon ramp up the language training.

Puppy continued to show little or no interest in other dogs. The two dogs whose backyard abutted ours were friendly race competitors along the chainlink fence. And Puppy quickly accepted the dogs that belonged to Sally's fellow Ya-Yas. But she made no effort to play with them. She only wanted to engage with Sally or, if they showed any inclination for it, one of the other Ya-Yas.

Witnessing this behavior, I finally understood a comment of Wayne West's: “A dog doesn't need another dog as a buddy. A dog needs a master or a mistress.”

Sally and I preferred to think of ourselves as our dogs' parents and older buddies. We presented ourselves to Puppy as Pop-Pop and Nanny, the same names that our grandson, Aidan, knew us by. We happily indulged Puppy as we did Aidan, and as we had our daughters when they were young, but without spoiling any of them. To be a good daddy and momma to Puppy, we had to set appropriate boundaries for her and teach her to be happy within them.

Although the great Border collie breeders and trainers I know, Wayne and his friend David Johnson, generally do not speak of themselves as their dogs' parents, that's how I see them. They are tough-love daddies who foster their dogs' development with care and concern for them as individuals.

Working Border collies must have great confidence and skill in cooperating with people, including responding to verbal as well as visual cues. Their instincts give them the potential to do this. But they can only develop the confidence and skill they need through their relationship with their trainer.

Speaking very much as a parent to the dogs he trains, David told me, “Training dogs is kind of like raising children. I've got three grown sons, and I use the same approach with my dogs as I did with my boys. You just have to be consistent every day with them, children or dogs.

“Every dog that's brought to me for training, I have to find something in that dog that I like, and dwell on that and learn to love that dog. Because if I don't like the dog, the dog is not gonna like me. If I give my heart to the dog and can get the dog to like me and love me, then when he gives me his heart he'll give me his brain. When the dog does that, we can really accomplish some training.”

Whenever Wayne had a litter of puppies on his farm, he and his wife made sure to interact with them positively and to provide opportunities for them to play with their grandchildren and other young children. David also testified to the value of interaction with young children, especially when puppies were in the critical early developmental phase from eight to twelve weeks of age. During these weeks, puppies are the most impressionable they will be in their lives, not counting their very first experiences with their mothers and littermates. It is a critical time for bonding with people as well as for learning other habits.

By the same token, Wayne and David shared with me how difficult it could be to train Border collies that had not had positive experiences with people. They spent enormous effort in building loving, trusting relationships with such dogs. The behavioral psychologists Clive Wynne and Monique Udell have shown that shelter dogs that have little or no contact with people are not readily able to focus on what humans are paying attention to and whether they are receptive to interacting with them. With some human attention, however, the dogs gain, or regain, this ability.

We didn't have any young children in the house, but as much as possible I played with Puppy like a little kid myself. I got down on the floor or the grass with her as we played with different toys, or to investigate something that attracted her interest. Within the limits of my human senses, I wanted to see what she saw, hear what she heard, and smell what she smelled.

Now Puppy had her focus squarely on Allyson. I watched Puppy bringing out Allyson's inner child, as Allyson alternated between rolling the ball straight at Puppy, letting her race in to get it, and rolling the ball quickly at an angle so she could race to cut it off. Each time, Puppy stopped on a dime when she got to the ball and picked it up in her mouth, looking proudly at Allyson while she held her trophy. Then she hesitated, as if she was debating whether she should give up the ball or not.

Part of this reluctance, I believe, was instinct—the longer Puppy had the ball in her mouth, the more it took on the character of food and the more reluctant she was to give up what felt like a yummy treat. But Puppy was also gaining confidence in Allyson's willingness to continue the game and wanted to exchange roles. “It's my turn now,” her behavior said. When friendly dogs play, they frequently trade roles as they chase each other around. Occasionally Allyson obliged, chasing Puppy around our open living room, dining room, and kitchen area. Without any prompting on my part, Allyson always gave Puppy an energetic “Good girl!” for releasing the ball, and then rolled it across the floor again.

“Way to go, Allyson,” I said at one point. “Reinforce her bigtime for giving you the ball, and then show her how that produces more fun chasing and capturing it again.”

“Roger that, Doc,” Allyson replied with a grin. She had participated in programs for prospective astronauts at the NASA Academy, and some of that lingo had become part of our banter.

Puppy exhibited classic Border collie behavior as she played with Allyson. The way Puppy attacked the ball instead of waiting for it to come to her typified the athleticism of the Border collie. Likewise, cutting off the ball at an angle was analogous to cutting off the escape of a sheep when it broke ranks and tried to peel off from the flock.

I was taking advantage of these and other Border collie behaviors to teach Puppy words by association. When I threw a ball into the middle of the floor or the backyard, she instinctively circled behind it, like an adult Border collie circling behind some sheep or cows. I said, “Puppy, come by,” if she went clockwise around the ball, and “Puppy, way to me,” if she went counterclockwise. In the course of chasing and herding play with the ball, I voiced all the commands that farmers give Border collies—go out, come by, way to me, there, drop, crawl, look back (there are livestock behind you), that'll do (stop what you're doing and rush to the trainer or shepherd)—by labeling her spontaneous behavior out loud. I also wove the basic obedience signals—sit, stay, here—into our play. The hope was that tying the obedience behaviors and their names into her instinctive behaviors would speed up the obedience learning and make it easier to direct her in chasing and herding and other activities, including word learning.

The process was working out beautifully. All things considered, Puppy was developing fast. And I wasn't shy about bragging on her.

“Puppy is learning to come, sit, stay, and all that super quick,” I told Allyson.

She asked for a demonstration, so I put Puppy on the leash and we all went outside. Sally sat on the porch to watch the show while Allyson and I took Puppy into the front yard.

It was almost noon and the late-July sun was beating down, but the big trees around our house provided large patches of shade. Before I dropped Puppy's leash, I glanced around to make sure the feral cat was nowhere to be seen. I'd glimpsed the cat often recently, slinking down into the gulley toward the drainpipe, and I'd about decided that Sally was right and I was overreacting.

Until the day before, when Puppy had come to a halt right near the end of our early-morning walk, a few paces from our driveway. Without looking to see what had stopped her, I gave a gentle tug on the leash. She didn't budge. I turned and saw her frozen in midstride, body taut with excitement, her head and shoulders dropping into an instinctive stalking posture, and her eyes locked on something to the right.

I followed her gaze, and dammit if it wasn't that pesky coon cat, not four feet away and staring right back at Puppy. The cat was perched on a sawn-off tree trunk, arching his back so high that I could see the just-rising sun under his belly. His tail pointed out behind him, snapping back and forth, and his entire body was puffed up to almost double his real size. His eyes burned into Puppy's as he opened his mouth wide and expelled a long, ugly hiss, followed by the loudest, meanest growl I've ever heard come out of a cat.

That was all I needed. I scooped Puppy up in my arms and boogied on down our driveway and into the house. As soon as I entered the door I hollered, “Saaaaallllyyy!” Once again, however, Sally did not put much stock in my fears.

Thankfully today there was no sign of the cat. Allyson and I took Puppy into a shady spot and I dropped the leash.

I worked up close with the puppy at first, and then gradually increased the distance between us, keeping her in the shade as much as possible. I asked her to sit, lie down, stand, stay, and come, and she did so happily. Tongue lolling out and tail wagging, she delighted in the praise, pets, and treats I gave her for her good performance. And she was exultant in the moments of play with Allyson and me that we interspersed here and there.

I gave Allyson a few little dog biscuits, and Puppy went through the obedience behaviors almost as readily for her as she did for me. Then I asked Puppy to sit under a big pine tree at one side of the yard. While Allyson stood watching from the front of the yard, about midway between us, I retreated to the opposite side, a good sixty feet away. It was quite a distance for a twelve-week-old puppy to keep her focus on me and my words. The thought crossed my mind that I was being overconfident, but I dismissed it. Everything was going great.

I was just about to call Puppy to me when a red Jeep Cherokee with the windows blacked out barreled down Seal Street beside us. Traffic was usually particularly slow on Seal Street, because it is only about seventy yards long. We had purposely not yet taken the puppy near any busy roads, so she had not yet seen a vehicle moving fast except when we were driving in our own car.

The instant Puppy heard and saw the Jeep she was on her feet. As it whooshed by she skedaddled after it despite my cries of “No! No!”

From the porch Sally yelled, “John! Get the puppy!” Allyson was the closest and she had already sprinted in pursuit, kicking off her flip-flops and dashing onto the asphalt in her bare feet. Sally rushed down the porch steps after her. The farthest away, I was also the slowest to react. I strained to catch up as the three of us chased the puppy chasing the red Jeep Cherokee toward Briarwood Road.