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  Scott did not appear to be distressed by the lack of public recognition of his accomplishments. I once was with him at a meeting of the International Behavior Genetics Association in Boulder, Colorado, when somebody asked if he was bothered about his lack of renown outside of scientific circles. He casually explained, “So much of what I’ve done has become accepted as ‘common knowledge.’ No one realizes that someone had to document such basic facts as when puppies first open their eyes. Someone had to be the first to notice that the social behaviors of pups around people or other dogs don’t come fully packaged in their genes, but that the pups have to learn how to interact with others. It’s actually gratifying that so many people are familiar with my results today, even if they don’t know who first recorded them.”

  That’s the way science works. Sometimes your name is lost if your results are too widely and well accepted. Usually, it is the people who are clever enough to apply fundamental research to common problems who tend to get most of the credit. The best known name in dog socialization has become Ian Dunbar, a veterinarian with a doctorate in psychology, who has turned such research findings into practical procedures. While I chatted with Dunbar at a meeting in Saskatoon, he reminisced, “I can still picture myself sitting in the library at the Royal Veterinary College of London and reading Genetics and the Social Behavior of the Dog, by Scott and Fuller. It caught me and I thought, ‘That’s the kind of work that I want to do.’ I wouldn’t be who I am today if it weren’t for Scott.”

  Dunbar went on to establish guidelines for socializing puppies and to introduce the concept of puppy kindergarten classes, which are all about socializing rather than training very young dogs. He recommends that every puppy should meet at least 200 different people and be exposed to at least 50 distinct places by the time it is 6 months of age. I intended to follow his advice and intensively socialize Flint.

  The essence of my plan to socialize Flint was to take him to work with me at the university. I already had the agreement of my department head Peter Suedfeld (whom I had designated as my puppy’s godfather). I set up my office to accommodate the puppy with a wire kennel crate, which I wedged between the side of my desk and the wall to provide a “den,” and which also allowed me to leave him there when I was out of the office teaching, at meetings, or in the lab. I threw a large beach towel over the tiny two-cushion purple sofa in my office to keep it free of dog hairs. A water bowl in the corner finished the modifications.

  In a recent survey, the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association, a nonprofit organization that conducts an annual survey on a variety of topics associated with pet ownership in the United States, reported that 1 out of 5 large companies allows pets in the workplace and that it seems to produce tangible benefits. Workers seem happier and are less stressed, more cooperative, and there is even a marked decrease in absenteeism in companies where pets come to work with their owners.

  Taking Flint with me was a daily confirmation of the positive effects of dogs at work. Walking into the psychology building and stopping at the departmental office and mail room on the way to my own office became a social occasion. People would smile at the sight of the gray puppy beside me. Others would come over and fuss over him. For the first time in all of my years at the university, I got to know virtually all of the graduate students in my department, as they would veer away from whatever route they were walking to say hello to Flint.

  Being the effervescent terrier that he was, Flint was not one to remain still and unresponsive. He would dance around and jump up to greet people that he liked, so he occasionally left some muddy footprints on clothing. Being a dog, he was also always on the lookout for something to eat, so one day when a female graduate student put her mug of coffee down on the floor when she knelt down to pat the little dog, he marched over to it and stuck his tongue into the hot liquid. It was too hot, and he gave a slight yelp and jumped back, dumping the mug over and pouring the coffee onto the floor. The cold floor quickly cooled the coffee so that now he could safely drink it, and he mopped the floor dry with his tongue. From that day on, if someone put a mug of hot liquid on the floor near him, he would knock it over with his paw or nose and then drink the cooled fluid from the ground (unless it was on a carpet which, of course, defeated his strategy).

  Once, while visiting the departmental office, Flint found a sandwich that one of the secretaries had left in her open-topped purse on the floor. The sandwich was nearly gone when I reached him, so of course I felt compelled to buy another for her. However, from then on, when I entered the office I would announce, “All food off of the floor! The scavenger has arrived.” Everyone was good-natured about it, and the secretaries still greeted the shaggy gray dog with smiles.

  Occasionally, when I was working in my office, faculty members, staff, and students would wander by just to say hello to Flint. He thus became socialized to virtually every type of human being and became remarkably friendly and controlled in the presence of strangers. Our wandering around campus had also let him become familiar with a variety of different places, and so he became quite unflappable.

  Flint was also a comfort to me. Whenever I felt a bit stressed or pressured, I would run my hand over his dense coat as he lay on the little sofa. Touching him eased my mind, which was the same result that I had experienced from every dog that had gone before him. The power of dogs for healing sore minds became even more salient to me one Saint Valentine’s Day.

  I was working on the statistics for a scientific report when I heard a tap at my door. I looked up, and one of our clinical psychology students, Jan, was standing there. A pleasant girl who had grown up in Ontario, which is where her family still lived, Jan liked Flint and had told me a little about her family life and growing up with a series of dogs, several of which had been small terriers. On this day her face looked puffy and her eyes were red, as though she had a cold or had been crying.

  “Hi, Jan,” I said. “What’s up? You look like you’re a bit under the weather?”

  “I was wondering if I could spend a little time with Flint this morning,” she said quietly, and rubbed at one eye with her hand. “My boyfriend is leaving me. Could you believe that he’d tell me that on Valentine’s Day?”

  Jan bit her lower lip and looked down at the floor. “Anyway, when I was home and had problems, I would sit with my dog and talk to her until I felt better. This time my dog is two thousand miles away, and I was wondering if I could just spend a little time with Flint?”

  Flint, heartbreak therapy.

  “Sure,” I said, and she crossed the office and dropped heavily onto my little purple sofa next to Flint. She swept my puppy up into her arms like a teddy bear and pressed her face against his fur. I continued talking to her as though I expected that she might be listening—which I doubted, “I haven’t taught him to speak yet, but he’s a good listener—trained in Rogerian Therapy. [Carl Rogers was a clinical psychologist who introduced a method of therapy which involves, at least for the early stages, a lot of listening and very little speaking on the part of the therapist.] Anyway, I have a couple of errands to run, so I’ll leave you here. When you want to go just pull my office door closed if I haven’t returned yet.”

  I grabbed my empty coffee cup and left the office, quietly closing the door behind me. I wandered down to the mail room and then with a handful of unopened envelopes went into our little lounge, which had a coffee urn. After about 20 minutes I had gone through my mail and finished my cup of coffee. As I stepped back into the hall, Jan approached me. Her eyes were still red, but she was visibly less tense.

  She put her arms around me and gave me a gentle hug while whispering in my ear, “He is a good therapist. Thank you.”

  As I watched her leave, I thought to myself, “Not only has bringing Flint to work socialized him, but it has also certified him as a clinical psychologist. How’s that for early dog training?”

  CHAPTER 10

  PRIMARY SCHOOL

  Whether it’s fate, destin
y, karma, chance, or predestination, certain events at some times in our lives seem to foreshadow later ones. Events separated by thousands of miles and decades of time often appear to be connected. Of course, as a scientist, I recognize that sometimes things are linked by random chance with no real connection or bond beyond accident or happenstance. But in the intimacy of my own thoughts, a fluke or a matter of luck can cause me to wonder about cosmic influences. And so it was when I decided to begin to train Flint formally.

  Dog obedience classes are almost a necessity if you really want a well-trained dog. It is certainly possible to train a dog to respond to basic commands at home, simply using a book as a guide, but classes with multiple people and dogs work better. Class not only continues to socialize your dog, it also teaches the dog that, even when many things are going on in his environment, (including the presence of other dogs), his master is still in control of his behavior.

  Now, before a sensitive, feeling reader gets bent out of shape by my use of the word master in this context, I think that an explanation is in order. My dogs are my companions and friends, but for a dog to be civilized and under control, the relationship between the dog and his owner cannot be equal. When you tell a dog to “sit” or “come,” you expect the dog to execute those commands. It is not a matter of equals discussing alternate courses of action. “Come” means that the dog is supposed to return to you. It is not a request that the dog can choose to evaluate and then decide whether or not he wants to respond to you or whether something else is more interesting. The old-fashioned word master works in describing this relationship, since one individual (the master) gives the commands and another (the dog) responds to them. Other words describing this relationship don’t seem to work as well. Referring to a dog and his “general,” or a dog and his “boss,” or a dog and his “king” sound silly and inappropriate. So until someone gives me a term that works better, I will stick with the traditional master.

  By the time he was 4 months old, Flint had found his voice. One day, I spoke to him and for the first time gave an answer in his voice. It imitated that of Bert Lahr, the actor who played the cowardly lion in The Wizard of Oz. I asked Flint, “Do you want to go to school now?” and answered myself with a “Lemme at it. I’ve never been so ready!” My imitation of Lahr’s voice was so bad that it made me laugh, and that in turn excited Flint, who then danced around as if he had actually said the words.

  Locally, the Vancouver Dog Obedience Training Club was highly recommended, and several dogs trained in that club had gone on to become top competitors in national dog obedience competitions. The classes were held in a church, in a large room that also served as a children’s day care center. Although I had called ahead to preregister Flint in the beginners’ class I did not know much about the club and certainly had no idea that I would ultimately come to be associated with it for more than 30 years. I eventually learned that I also had a sort of karmic link to its past.

  The Vancouver Dog Obedience Training Club (which we usually call “The Club”) is a nonprofit dog training club that has no officers and no written constitution or set of bylaws. It gives classes for dogs and owners at all skill levels. All of the instructors are unpaid volunteers who have earned titles for their dogs in national kennel club competitions. Some have even placed in the top 10 of national rankings for dog obedience competitors. Each instructor has full control over his or her classes and decides on the methods of instruction that he or she feels work best. Three or four instructors may be present at each class, and they are always willing to step in to help a student who needs more personalized instruction. They also often playfully provide their own viewpoints and suggestions from the sidelines, which keeps the classes light and informal.

  The club actually owes its existence to a housewife named Jean Lyle who had become interested in showing purebred dogs in 1948. Her boxer hadn’t been doing very well in the show ring, so she had decided to try her out in obedience competition. Since there were no obedience classes around at the time, she ended up using Blanche Saunders’s Training You to Train Your Dog, the same book that I had started training dogs with when I was 9 or 10 years of age. A few other people who wanted to train their dogs for competition joined with her. Each had a copy of the book, and they shared equipment and tried to support each other. Other people found out that they were training dogs and asked if they would be willing to run some beginners’ dog classes for pet owners.

  Jean found out that Blanche Saunders would be doing some workshops and judging a series of shows in Washington State in May 1952, so Jean wrote to her and invited her to Vancouver to show them how to run an obedience class. Saunders agreed and arrived with a car full of jumps and other obedience equipment as well as some of her poodles to use as demonstration dogs.

  Jean told me, “She was a great teacher and a real showman, but at the same time she was gentle and reserved. I remember that at one point she stopped and looked at us and said, ‘We know a lot more about dog behavior and dog training than has ever been known before—but we have only scratched the surface. I would like to come back in fifty years and see how much more we will have learned about dogs and training then.’”

  Shirley Welsh, my first instructor in the club, was a nurse whose infectious humor and friendliness made her a valued asset in a clinical setting as well as in training classes. In another unexpected connection, I later learned that Shirley and my Joannie had been longtime friends and their children had grown up together.

  Training an exuberant Cairn terrier pup can be exhausting and, if you lack a sense of humor, frustrating. For the first 2 weeks or so, Flint was a little whirlwind, twirling at the end of my leash. Being surrounded by so many dogs and so much activity revved him up. He wanted to touch noses and play with all the dogs in the class. One of his classmates, a large black Newfoundland dog named Admiral, generally ignored Flint until one day Flint walked under the big dog, looked up at his belly, and barked at him. Admiral’s response was to quickly drop into a down position. Flint was not fast enough to get completely out of the way, so when Admiral hit the floor, he landed on Flint’s leash a short distance from where it attached to his collar. It pulled Flint to the floor where he lay flat, looking much like the pelt of an otter that had been stretched out to dry. Flint struggled for a moment to get up, but quickly gave up and lay there helplessly.

  Shirley observed the scene and announced to me, “You might learn something from this. Admiral has no problem teaching Flint the down command.”

  Actually, Admiral had taught Flint to go down very effectively. Now whenever Flint and Admiral would meet, Flint would automatically drop into a down position for a few moments and the cowardly lion voice would announce, “Yes sir! If you want me down, I’m down,” much to the class’s amusement.

  I wanted to teach Flint the basic commands that would allow him to live in civilized society, but I also wanted to learn applied dog training. So I did not mention that I was a psychologist and a professor at the university because I did not want any of the instructors to be looking over their shoulders at the “professional.” I was at the club to learn from them.

  My years as a researcher have taught me that many intelligent and well-educated specialists understand high-level theories but have great difficulty applying them to practical problems. The classic example is the brilliant mathematician Albert Einstein, whose checkbook was always out of balance because of simple addition and subtraction errors. A highly respected chemist I know can’t follow a recipe well enough to bake a cake. I also know a successful developmental psychologist whose young children are totally out of control, and there is another psychologist who specialized in conflict resolution but who suffered the embarrassment of having his neighbors call the police because an argument with his wife had gotten too loud. Since I wanted to know the practical steps that brought the club’s dogs to their high levels of performance, and not a theoretical discourse on how they should be trained, I kept my mouth shut, observed, and follo
wed instructions.

  I was particularly interested in watching the two Barbaras, two senior instructors in the club, to see how they worked with different breeds of dogs. Barbara Baker seemed to have a magic touch when training terriers. She trained her Staffordshire bull terrier, Mori, to perform obedience exercises with such precision that she would ultimately rise to become the fifth-ranked dog in all of Canada, well ahead of many border collies and golden retrievers who are acknowledged to be brighter, more trainable breeds. Barbara’s young Staffordshire puppy Nutmeg seemed to watch the proceedings as closely as I did. Nutmeg would later surpass her housemate by becoming the number-three dog in the country. Barbara Merkley worked with her little Shetland sheepdog Noel, who darted from one exercise to the next and seemed to have an almost psychic ability to divine exactly what Barb wanted her to do. These dogs worked with such a happy enthusiasm that I wanted them to be role models for Flint.

  Since the early writings of Blanche Saunders, some advances had been made in training, but the dogs were still wearing metal slip collars that tightened around their throats when you pulled the leash, and dog training, especially for the basic commands, still involved physically manipulating the dogs into the required positions. The command to sit was followed by a tug up on the leash while you pushed down on the dog’s rear with your other hand. Once the dog was in a sitting position, you said, “Good dog,” which was supposed to be the reward. The wonder is that this actually worked—at least for some dogs—but it was not working well with Flint. Practicing at home, I would try to place him into a sit and he would fight back, popping back into a standing position the moment my hand was off him. Watching me work with Flint looked more like a wrestling match than a training session.

  This was before today’s era of positive dog training, which involves lots of food rewards, so it took me a while to stumble upon the real teaching value of food. Flint loved to eat and, if I had let him have all the food he wanted, he would have ballooned into a very chubby terrier. One day, I was offering him a treat and noticed that his head and body were following every movement of that treat and my hand. As an experiment, I passed my hand and the treat over his head. In order to keep sight of it Flint raised his head, rocked backward, and assumed a sitting position. I had an epiphany! Instead of continuing the tug-and-pull technique, I could use food to lure Flint into a sit.