Born to Bark Read online

  Peter reads or speaks four languages. He is a creative researcher and good writer. One of the most exciting aspects of his research has to do with his studies of extreme and unusual environments. This research has taken him into the high Arctic and the North Pole and down to the Antarctic and the South Pole. In the process he became the head of the Canadian Antarctic Research Program. He has consulted with NASA and worked with astronauts in both the American and Russian space programs. During all of this he still had time to serve as head of the Psychology Department for twelve years, dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies for six years, president of the Canadian Psychological Association … well, you get the idea.

  One evening we sat in my apartment eating one of our favorite comfort foods, spaghetti with marinara sauce and sausages. After I had poured some red wine, I told him I wanted his advice on dealing with my research addiction. He smiled and said, “You know, as addictions go, being addicted to research and writing is not so bad. If you think about it, no scientist who was historically significant was casual about his research. You have to have a compulsion to spend the time and effort to make progress in science, and it is hard to turn your brain off when you are struggling with a problem or a manuscript.

  “I’ll tell you what I think your real problem is—time management! You do virtually everything in your lab by yourself. You have one research assistant and a couple of part-time students doing the testing, and everything else you do by yourself. You end up doing a lot of the data coding and routine analysis. You even stuff envelopes when you are sending out sets of research surveys. Do you really think that that kind of work requires a full professor with a PhD degree?”

  Peter’s advice was to obtain some additional grant funding and put it all into paying for lab personnel to do the routine work. I did as he suggested, and it freed up a large amount of time for more creative work and writing. My rate of publication went up, and several theoretical breakthroughs emerged from the research. I was still coming into campus early, but I could leave at a normal hour and had time to spend my evenings in more relaxing activities or with friends.

  If I were ever to be able to have that dog and that regular family life, I would have to be comfortable with the idea of spending a little more time at home. So I set up something more like an office in my apartment and began to work at home two afternoons each week. To my surprise, working at home actually seemed more efficient, since I had few interruptions and could concentrate fully.

  During this transitional time, Joan had taken a second-year course that I was also teaching. After completing her second-year work, she came to my office to ask for some advice about future course work. It was an early spring afternoon and I felt in need of a cup of coffee, so I invited her to come with me while we continued our discussion.

  The Bus Stop was the closest place to get coffee, an old-style diner with counter service for customers who sat on pedestal-style stools. As the waitress, a Chinese woman in her midfifties, placed our coffee on the shiny white counter, I asked her about her dog. The waitress had recently adopted a mature dog from the SPCA that turned out to not to be fully housebroken. I had suggested some things that she might do to remedy the situation. She patted my hand and told me that the dog was behaving much better and thanked me.

  Joan said, “Everybody feels comfortable talking to you. That’s why I felt that I could come to you for some advice.”

  I never know how to respond to compliments, especially when I am not sure that they truly reflect my nature or accomplishments. Fortunately, I didn’t have to search for something to say, since Joan continued telling me about her concerns. In addition to her course of study in the Faculty of Education (with an aim to become a primary school teacher), she was taking a minor in psychology. Because she had a husband and family to care for, she was not taking a full course load and expected that it would take an extra year or so to complete her studies. She was considering several different courses in psychology and wanted to know who the best teachers in our department were.

  Most of her questions were easy to answer. With the business part of the conversation completed, and since there was still coffee in our cups, we continued talking and the conversation became more general.

  Eventually I looked at my watch and told her that I was leaving campus to work the rest of the afternoon at home. She also glanced at her watch and said that she had to leave campus shortly as well, since she had to drive her kids to the swimming pool. Her three children, Kevin, Geoff, and Karen, were all competitive swimmers. Joan’s part in their training was rather dull, involving spending several hours in the afternoon at the pool sitting and waiting for them to complete their practice sessions. Because the pool was only a few minutes away from my apartment, I mentioned to her that I usually worked on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons at home, and if she got bored watching the kids some time, she could give me a call and come over and talk. Then I gave her my home phone number.

  I winked deliberately and added, “Who knows, I might even offer you a glass of sherry along with the conversation.”

  She looked down and, with a sweet, half smile she said, “I might just take you up on that.”

  A few weeks later I was working at home when Joan called. She was at the pool and wouldn’t be needed for a couple of hours and wondered if she could drop by. I was surprised but not displeased.

  A short time later we were sitting on my sofa sipping dry sherry. We talked a bit and eventually our conversation became more personal. Over time her visits would become more frequent and soon I could expect that once every week or so she would come to visit for a few hours. During these visits I learned more about her life, her history, and her children. Her marriage was in trouble, and she dropped a lot of small clues that suggested that she was being ill treated by her husband. Ultimately, she revealed that she was contemplating leaving him.

  I did not press Joan for details. Talking about that aspect of her life made her uncomfortable, and she was quite happy when talking about any other topic. I liked talking and interacting with her when she was smiling and her eyes were sparkling. I expected that our relationship would end when Joan finished her education and started to work as a teacher. I had no idea that I would fall in love with her, so at that time sherry, smiles, and friendly company in the afternoon were all that I was seeking.

  I sometimes wonder if I should have explored her consciousness more deeply in order to better understand her. It would have been easier to do that in those early stages, since there still was some distance and a clear status differential between us—important components for psychological analysis. However, it is likely that had I done such an analysis, we never would have formed the affectionate bond that we did. Once that bond was formed, my doorway to her past would remain locked, and after more than 30 years of knowing Joan, it still is. I have no desire to awaken those past feelings in her, since I still enjoy that half smile and find it difficult to endure her discomfort. Knowing the past is not a requirement for living well and happily in the present. This is one place where Freud and I part company.

  Joan did leave her husband. After she moved out of her house, we began to see each other more frequently, not just in the afternoon when the kids were swimming, but for dinner and for various social occasions involving my friends and colleagues. She was intelligent and dedicated; on her graduation, she was awarded the provincial silver medal for being the best student in the primary education program.

  By now I had accumulated enough money to buy the house that I would need for my dog. After a lot of searching, I found a small bungalow that I could afford, with only 835 square feet of floor space divided into six rooms (if you count the bathroom as a room). Above each of the drafty, ill-fitting wooden-frame windows was a beautiful stained-glass panel. Dark wood trim, ceiling beams, and window frames gave the main rooms the look of an old hunting lodge. In the dining room, which was the largest room in the house, there was a fireplace. The lot that the house sat on was very
small, 30 by 70 feet. The backyard was only 12 feet wide but could be fenced for a dog. I felt comfortable in this little house. It seemed like sort of a freestanding apartment with its own little yard, and I knew I could live here quite easily with my dog.

  The house was built in 1916, during the era when mail-order catalogs were a primary source of obtaining goods. Sears and Montgomery Ward, in the United States, and Eaton’s, in Canada, were the big suppliers of mail-order goods: work pants for Dad, a new dress for Mom, special gifts for the kids, and almost everything you needed for your house. Between 1910 and 1930, you could also purchase the whole house from the catalog. According to the Eaton’s 1915 catalog, the style of house I was looking at had a starting cost of $925, plus $150 for indoor plumbing and $90 for hot air heating. The special stained-glass window trim cost an additional $70. Thus the total cost would have been $1,235. It cost me a lot more than that some 60 years later, but it was still affordable.

  Lawrence once again volunteered to help me move my belongings to my new residence. I think that I assured him that this would be the last time his services would be needed. The next day Joan visited me there. She sat on a high stool in the doorway of my new little kitchen while I unpacked my dishes and cookware. She was sipping red wine from a coffee cup. She laughed when I told to her that the coffee cup was really a stemless wineglass that would doubtless be extremely fashionable in the future. She would spend many hours over many days on that stool talking, while I fussed around cooking dinner. I liked the idea of having her there in my home and began to think that I wanted her to be there all of the time. Clearly, I was falling in love.

  Not too long after that, I asked Joan if she wanted to live with me. She had graduated from the university and was now working as a first grade teacher. She had been caring for her daughter Karen, but Kari had finished school and now had a job and a boyfriend with whom she was living. That meant that there was really nothing to keep Joan from joining me. A week or two later she parked her old orange Ford Mustang with its black racing stripe next to my house. She unpacked her rocking chair, sewing machine, some clothing, and a few boxes of books. Those were the only possessions that she cared about, and that was all that she ever brought into the house—except for the love that she carried with her.

  Too quickly it was the end of August and both Joan and I would be starting our new teaching year in a few weeks. There was just one more task I had to finish before the end of the summer—to fence the backyard. As Joan helped me build the fence, she and I chatted happily about the dog that I would get. During her marriage she had had two dogs: a dachshund named Max and later a Shetland sheepdog named Dusty. As I had felt about Feldspar, she believed that those dogs really belonged to her children, especially her daughter, Kari, who was fond of animals and had a good rapport with them. When it came to the dogs, Joan’s job had simply been routine maintenance, and her bond with them had not been very strong. Truth be told, she liked sporting dogs—big sporting dogs like Labrador retrievers, the kinds of dogs she’d grown up around. But she understood that I would be selecting the dog, and perhaps a big dog would overwhelm this small house.

  As we finished the fence and tested the gate latch, she asked, “So now are we ready for a dog?”

  I certainly was, or thought that I was. Joan didn’t know that she would soon be sharing her life with a hurricane—not one surrounded by gray clouds, but one enveloped in gray fur. Before this year ended, life in my little house would change.

  CHAPTER 8

  THE NEW PUPPY

  It was time for a new start. I had my little house, the woman I loved was living with me in that house, and my work was under reasonable control. I now needed a dog.

  I knew that I wanted a Cairn terrier. A clinical psychologist might have suggested that a new start would require a new and different breed of dog so that I would have no bad memories associated with my previous life. But in my mind the pup that I was getting was to replace Feldspar, only this time the dog would be mine.

  Even before Feldspar, I had an emotional connection to Cairn terriers. I suppose it began when I was still a child and saw Toto in my favorite film, The Wizard of Oz. Some say that the film starred Judy Garland, as the orphan adventurer Dorothy, but every child knows that the real star is Toto, a gray brindle Cairn terrier. If you doubt me, let me refer to a colleague of mine in the Film and Theatre Department, who did the hard number-crunching and found that Toto is in more scenes and has more screen time than Judy Garland does (although Judy has more close-ups). Dorothy also addresses more lines to Toto than to anyone else in the film. The fact that the state of Kansas features prominently in the original story recently led a resident of Wichita, Kansas, to start a movement to make the Cairn terrier the state’s official dog. Notice that no one has suggested that Judy Garland be the official actress of Kansas.

  Toto was really a dog named Terry who belonged to the famous dog trainer Carl Spitz. She was brought to his dog training school by her owners, who felt that she was uncontrollable and needed training. The owners never returned for the dog, so Spitz trained Toto along with his other acting dogs, and she went on to star in 10 Hollywood films including Bright Eyes with Shirley Temple.

  Toto was a valued member of the Wizard of Oz cast and was paid a weekly salary of $125. In comparison, the little people who sang and danced as the Munchkins received only $50 a week. However, like most stars, or at least like most Cairn terriers, Toto had her quirks and terrierlike outbursts. During the cornfield scene when Dorothy meets the Scarecrow for the first time, the shooting had to be stopped while Toto was reprimanded by director Victor Fleming for trying to chew on the costume of Ray Bolger, who was playing the Scarecrow. Carl Spitz explained to Fleming that the straw around the Scarecrow’s legs was flopping around so loosely that it was irresistible for a terrier. Something moving erratically on or near the ground triggers the genetic predisposition in a terrier and tells its brain, “Here is a thing that must be chased.” A quick costume repair was needed to tighten the pieces of straw at Toto’s eye level so they would be less appealing. While the crew waited for the costume modification, the director fumed, “Must dogs be just as temperamental as actors?”

  In a second incident, an actor playing one of the witch’s guards stepped on Toto’s paw. At first everyone feared that it was broken, but it was only bruised. To give her a bit of rest, however, they decided to use a stuffed toy, the same shape and size as a Cairn terrier, to stand in for lighting and camera checks. The moment that Toto saw her replacement, she leapt off her chair and raced across the set with teeth bared and began to rip her stuffed double to pieces. The director Fleming sighed and asked, “Must dogs be as jealous and insecure as actors?”

  As a child I loved the way that Toto scampered around Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion as they danced down the yellow brick road, but it was that scene where Judy Garland sings “Over the Rainbow” to Toto that was the clincher. It would be wonderful—heavenly—to have a dog who gazed so lovingly at me when I talked to him.

  So, whether to replace Feldspar or to find my own version of Toto, I was getting a Cairn terrier. I had recently learned about the Melita line of Cairns, which had been established by the late Mrs. L. M. Wood, who lived in nearby Victoria, British Columbia. Her dogs were quite handsome, and she had bred them to have a milder, more sociable temperament than most terriers do. She would not breed any animal that showed aggressive tendencies, since her dogs lived together in large open kennel areas and fighting could not be tolerated. Because Mrs. Wood had died only a few years earlier, and her dogs had been so successful in the show ring, it was relatively easy to still find dogs that were only one generation away from the Melita line. I eventually discovered a litter of pups that would be available for pickup the second week of December.

  Joannie decided to present the new dog as her Christmas gift to me. She and I were not yet married, and she felt morally obligated to contribute something toward our living expenses
. As a teacher, she was at the bottom-rung starting salary and was still paying off debts associated with her education and things that her kids needed or wanted but her husband would not cover. I refused her offers to pay what she called her “room and board.” Even though I was still paying child support and alimony, as well as a mortgage, I was earning enough for both of us to live on (albeit modestly), and believed that she would feel happier and less stressed if she had fewer drains on her financial reserves. Still it bothered her that she did not appear to be contributing to our household, and although the dog would be an expensive gift, she wanted to buy it. She put her arms around me and whispered in my ear, “I know how good that dog will make you feel, and I want to know that I’m part of making you happy.”

  We couldn’t have known that the new dog would become a high point of my life and a low point of hers.

  A few weeks later we took the ferry to Vancouver Island to pick up the pup. The breeder was a pleasant older woman named Margaret who had been breeding Cairn terriers for more than four decades. Margaret offered us mugs of sweet mint tea and explained that the new litter had been small, only three puppies, and she had already reserved a female to keep for herself. I looked at the two remaining pups, a gray brindle and a brown brindle, and knelt down and began to get to know them better. Their mother, an almost black dog with a bit of light gray brindling, had a good temperament; she appeared to be friendly, self-confident, and independent as she bustled around her pups and then explored the visitors before settling down for a nap. A dog’s temperament is under a strong genetic control, and pups will usually grow up to be their sire or their dam or something in between in personality.