Born to Bark Read online

  Over the next few days I tried to reduce the tension between my wife and my dog as best I could. I even bought Flint a silly little doggy cap with the motto “Born to Bark” embroidered on it and a collar tag that said “Woof!” Joan was not amused.

  “Why didn’t you tell me all this before we got him?” she grumbled and turned away, muttering about “nice quiet dogs, like golden retrievers and Labs.” She then stopped and, hands on her hips, said, “Promise me that the next dog that you bring into this house will not be a terrier—will not be genetically programmed to bark—will not be anything more than a standard, quiet, unassuming dog!”

  There actually were a few times when Flint’s barking proved to be useful. Since Flint’s barking was communication—specifically an attempt to call his pack leader over to check to see if there was some threat—the easiest way to quiet him when he was barking at a window or a door was to get up, make a show of looking out at where he thought the problem was, and then give him a little pat.

  “Good watchdog,” I would tell him. I would then call him away, back to where I was sitting or working. Generally, he would calm down because the leader of his pack had indicated that there was no problem.

  One night, I was awakened by Flint’s barking and, as I normally did, I went to the bedroom window to see what he was barking at. Joan’s car was usually parked along the side of the house and in full view from the bedroom. When I looked down to the street, I saw a man with what looked like a screwdriver appearing to pry at the car door. I opened the window and shouted, “Get away from there! I’m calling the police!”

  The man immediately ran down the street.

  The next morning I checked Joan’s car. There were scratch marks on the door on the driver’s side, so it appeared that the man had been trying to open the car, no doubt to steal it.

  As I poured Joan a cup of coffee and told her what I’d seen, I asked, “Doesn’t Flint deserve a bit of thanks today? After all, his warning probably kept your car from being stolen last night.”

  Joan glanced at Flint, who had started wagging his tail at the sound of his name, then shook her head.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “Too many false alarms,” she replied.

  CHAPTER 12

  THE DEVIL IS IN THE DNA

  If you read the genetic code of a terrier it would say, “bark-eat-bark-dig-bark-chase-bark-grab-bark-hunt-bark-kill it (if it is little, furry, and moves quickly)-bark-growl-bark-tug-bark-shred-bark-ignore sounds from two-footed creatures-bark-bark …”

  Flint was clearly growing into his genes. He was not only barking more, his hunting instincts were beginning to emerge. Every terrier carries the genetic ability and desire to kill rats and other vermin. People who don’t know terriers tend to think that the most efficient rat killers are cats, who certainly are efficient at killing mice, which requires stealth and patience. Rats, however, are a different matter. Today’s modern cats are smaller on average than those that were first domesticated some 7,000 years ago, but even at their original size, adult rats were often too large and vicious for cats to handle. This fact ultimately encouraged the breeding of terriers to keep down the population of the larger rodents.

  Terriers are not stealthy in their hunting of vermin. Their technique simply involves sighting and chasing anything small that is moving swiftly. They dispatch their prey by grasping the rat or other small mammal by the neck and giving it one or two swift shakes to break its neck. In our relatively rodent-free cities today, it is difficult to appreciate just how efficient terriers can be at rat killing; however, back in the Victorian era, the terrier’s abilities were turned into a sport that attracted enthusiasts like the young girl who later would become Queen Victoria of England. In this type of “sporting event,” terriers and rats were placed in a pit to fight to the death. Side bets were often taken on the survival of dogs or rats, while other bets were taken on the amount of time that some of the better dogs might take to finish off a particular group of rodents. A number of records have survived describing some of the “superstars” of the sport. For instance, we know that one champion rat fighter was “Tiny,” a bull terrier who weighed only 5½ pounds. On one particular night he killed 50 rats (some of which were nearly as large as he) in 28 minutes and 5 seconds.

  Cairn terriers are no different from other terriers, and their desire to chase vermin, whether rats, mice, rabbits, or squirrels, is built in. Basically, any small thing that moved erratically could trigger Flint’s genetic programming to hunt.

  One morning Joan announced, “Flint has finally flipped out. Look at him.”

  As we turned to watch him, he made a mad dash across the room, stopped and stared at something, then dashed in another direction. I looked more carefully at what he was doing and noticed that he was pursuing some glints of light on the floor. I finally figured out that these moving flashes were coming from the sunlight reflecting off a large heart-shaped cut-crystal pendant that Joan was wearing around her neck. I had gotten her that bit of jewelry specifically because I liked the way it reflected light in many colors. Now, as the sunshine bounced off the crystal, it scattered into tiny points of light that randomly moved around the room, turning on Flint’s vermin-hunting behaviors. I pointed this out Joan, along with my version of Flint’s voice saying, “Hey, Mom, if it moves I’ll chase it!” The woman I love responded with a large theatrical sigh. Looking back and forth between me and my dog (who was still chasing miniature points of rainbow-colored light), she plaintively asked, “Do I have to now start taking the way Flint’s brain is wired into account before I get dressed in the morning?”

  Flint was one of the few dogs that I have owned who spontaneously watched television. You can get dogs to watch televised images, but you have to attend to certain details. To be most effective you have to lower the TV set so that it is about at the dog’s eye level and use images that are shot from the a dog’s point of view—say, a foot or two from the ground. Images taken from a dog’s eye level that have a lot of motion can capture a dog’s attention, especially if the soundtrack contains lots of exciting sounds. I recently created a series of videos with these characteristics designed for dogs to watch. The dogs do seem to enjoy them, but the videos don’t make a whole lot of sense or have much entertainment value for humans viewing them.

  Most dogs tend to ignore TV images designed for human viewing, but Flint was in hyperdrive all the time, always scanning the environment for something that moved and might be chaseable. My spunky dog first became interested in television when I was watching a program called The Littlest Hobo, a low-budget series about a German shepherd who wandered around the countryside befriending various people and getting them out of trouble through his heroism and cleverness. Then, like an errant knight, after each good deed Hobo would wander away looking for his next adventure.

  Flint spontaneously watched television.

  Flint’s attention was immediately captured by this dog moving across the TV screen. He stood up on his hind legs, as he often did at the windows to watch other dogs go by. When Hobo disappeared from the screen, Flint would get closer and look slantwise in the direction that the dog had gone, trying to catch a glimpse of the disappearing furry star. From then on, he would always check the TV screen as he passed. If a dog or another animal were visible, he would often stop to watch; sometimes his tail would tremble as he studied the images, sometimes he would let loose an excited whimper or a quick bark.

  None of this caused any problems until the attack of the giant rats. A film whose title I don’t remember involved scenes in which rats were occupying an abandoned structure or tunnel. When close-ups of the rats filled the TV screen, Flint froze. A low territorial growl started, and he began to quiver with excitement. At that moment in the movie, the rats became frightened, massed together, and dashed madly toward the camera and past the hero of the film. As the rodents swarmed, with all of the accompanying frantic rat sounds, Flint could contain himself no longer. He launched himself
off the sofa and attacked the wooden stand on which the television stood. Growling, barking, slashing, chewing—desperately trying to grab the table leg and shake it to death. In moments the wooden leg was gouged and splintered, the rat squeals stopped, and the rodents were gone. Flint backed off and looked up. He snorted once or twice, and then with tail erect and legs stiff, proudly walked out of the room, pausing only once to glance quickly at the screen to make sure that his job of saving us from the onslaught of vermin had been well done and was truly finished. “And stay away!” his voice said.

  At first I chuckled at his fury, but once I saw the savage gouges he left on the wooden television stand, I stopped laughing and rotated the TV stand so that the damaged leg was against the wall where it would not be visible. I really didn’t want to have to explain this new episode of genetically generated terrier behavior to Joan. Over the next several days I surreptitiously sanded, stained, and varnished the chewed piece of furniture, and Joan never noticed the initial damage or the subsequent repair. Flint watched me at work and that silly voice assured me “Those rats aren’t coming back, but if they do I’ll finish the job this time.”

  Later that winter I got to see more of Flint’s terrier hunting behavior. It doesn’t often snow to any significant degree in Vancouver, but that particular winter we had a massive snowfall that piled up to nearly 2 feet. I dragged a snow shovel up from our basement and opened the front door of the house with the idea of clearing snow from the stairs and walkway. As I opened the door Flint dashed past me and disappeared into a drift of snow. For a moment he stopped, startled, then glanced back at me and started to dig.

  Flint rapidly threw plumes of white behind him as he dug a tunnel through the snow. In total defiance of the known laws of physics and engineering, the snow did not cave in on Flint during his excavation. He simply disappeared into the snowbank, leaving an open channel behind him. I could mark his progress by the sound of his intermittent barks and his heavy breathing which, muffled by the snow, sounded like the distant chugging of an old-fashioned steam engine. Minutes later, a foot or two in front of the trunk of a pine tree, his head popped up through the snow, looking for all the world as if he were part of a Whack-a-Mole–type carnival game.

  At just that moment a woman and her young daughter came by, trudging through the snow. The little girl, dressed in puffy pink winter clothes, caught sight of Flint’s head rising through the snow. She started to laugh, with a high-pitched attractive little-girl laugh sounding like the tinkling of crystal. At the same time she pointed her pink-clad little arm at Flint. The woman contrasted sharply from her child both in terms of the gloomy look on her face and somber, colorless clothing she wore—dark coat, dark scarf, and dark knitted cap. But she clutched a brightly colored purse that had two rows of large, multicolored, woolly fringes gathered in bunches at its top and bottom.

  By the time her mother looked where the girl was pointing, Flint had already disappeared back under the snow. This time there was virtually no evidence of his presence or progress through the snow except for the faint sound of that invisible steam engine. He was probably moving toward these pedestrians, because Flint always found the sound of laughter—especially that of children—irresistible. Whenever people gathered he would single out and hover around the people who giggled and guffawed the most. Sure enough, only moments later, Flint’s head popped up again, only about 2 feet from the mother and daughter. The girl burst out in a loud peal of laughter, but the mother seemed not to know what to make of Flint’s snow-covered head, pointy ears, dark eyes, and black nose suddenly emerging in front of her. She yelped in alarm and held out her purse defensively in front of her.

  Of all of the things the woman could have done, this was probably the one thing most likely to trigger the final step of Flint’s dig-hunt-kill sequence of behavior. The fringes flapped vigorously in the winter breeze. The woman’s high-pitched squeal could well have sounded to him like a frightened or wounded rodent. In any event, Flint launched himself from the snowbank toward the purse as if he had been hurled by a catapult, arcing up in the perfect trajectory to reach his target. The instant he made contact with the purse, the woman dropped it and turned to clutch at her daughter protectively. I watched in horror while Flint “killed” the fringed monster by whipping it back and forth in his mouth. As he did, the contents of the purse flew out and disappeared in the high snow.

  When I got over my original astonishment, I shouted at the top of my voice, “No! Stop it! Get away!” and dashed toward my little dog. As I hurtled down the steps, I lost my footing and toppled forward into a large snowdrift.

  Because I do not usually yell at my dogs or charge angrily toward them, Flint was taken aback by my behavior and broke out of his frenzy. In his mind, I must have looked as if I had just gone berserk, and he most likely concluded that the safest place for him might be the interior of the house. As I toppled forward I caught a glimpse of a grayish object scooting past me toward the stairs and into the open front door.

  The woman had turned away to gather in her daughter and had not seen Flint’s exit. To her it seemed that I had dashed forward to save her from the attack of some monster. She looked around fearfully.

  “What was that thing?” she asked in a shaky voice.

  It dawned upon me that she had probably not gotten a clear view of Flint during the incident. He’d poked his head out of the snow for only a second before leaping at the purse, and she had immediately dropped it and turned away toward her daughter.

  I struggled out of the shabby indentation I had left in the snow, which appeared much like a bad attempt at a snow angel, and started helping her retrieve the contents of the purse. The purse itself was undamaged and no one was hurt but me. Later that day I would find that my impact with the snowy ground had left me with a long, painful bruise down my body. I was worried that if I admitted that the whole distressing situation had been caused by my little terrier, I would soon see an animal control officer on my doorstep. But just then the little girl solved the problem.

  “It was a raccoon, Mommy,” she said. “I saw his pointy ears and he was all gray except his face, which was mostly black. My teacher says that we should stay away from them because the ones that live in the city aren’t afraid of people anymore and they might bite.”

  The mother nodded, as if accepting that explanation, and thanked me for chasing the animal away.

  “I’m glad no one was hurt,” was all I said as I picked up her car keys and some cosmetics for her. A few minutes later she and the little girl in pink were safely trudging down the street again.

  I returned to the house, where Flint was sound asleep in his crate, and poured myself a hot cup of coffee with a slug of whisky. I sat down to warm my hands on the cup as I sipped and gratefully felt it warm my belly and relax my muscles a bit. At that moment, Joan appeared.

  “I thought that you were going to shovel snow,” she said.

  “I was,” I replied. “However, I just learned that an applied genetics experiment that I am fond of has the potential to go dangerously awry.”

  “I didn’t know that you were doing genetic research again.”

  “I’m not,” I said. “I just watched the results of someone else’s genetic manipulations.”

  Flint’s head was resting on his front paws and I could imagine an artist adorning that image with a halo of complete innocence, but Flint opened his eyes just a crack and his voice in my head completed my thoughts: “The devil is in the DNA.”

  CHAPTER 13

  HUNTER AND HERO

  Joan and I had been living together for a few years by now. It was a good and comfortable relationship. That is not to say that we never had any friction. Two people living together for any period of time without having an occasional spat suggests a lack of spirit and independent thinking that would not be admired even in sheep. Flint was the cause of more of Joan’s harsh words than any other single source, but she recognized my feelings for him and would usually end any
dispute over him with her by-now-traditional, “Well, he’s your dog!”

  Late one afternoon, my friend Peter and I were sitting in the Faculty Club with some male colleagues sipping scotch and musing about life. Somehow the conversation turned to our personal lives and the merits and shortcomings of our wives, lovers, and the concept of marriage.

  One of the people in the group was the well-respected personality theorist Jerry Wiggins. Someone turned to him and commented, “Well, Jerry, you should know a lot about marriage. After all, you’ve been married four times.”

  Jerry laughed. “I suppose that marriage is just one of those things that you have to keep doing until you get it right.” He took another sip from his drink and then added philosophically, “Marriage is a lot like a circus. It is not as colorful and as exciting as is represented in the advertising, but there is still enough pleasure to be had to justify the cost of admission.”

  At that moment Peter leaned over to me and said, “Well, Stan, your Joannie is a good, sweet person. She certainly deserves a good husband. Maybe you should marry her before she finds one!”

  It was a light conversation, but it left me thinking. Joan craved stability, tradition, and conventionality. She had difficulty describing our relationship to other people, and she would be much happier if we were married, since the role of “wife” is more easily understood and accepted than the role of “woman living with …” Joan’s mother was still alive, as were both of my parents, and they all seemed to expect that sooner or later Joan and I would get married. Because of the hurtful nature of my divorce I had been avoiding remarrying, but my more rational side knew that neither of us was inclined to be anywhere else.

  One evening Flint was resting next to me and I turned to him and said, “I’ve been thinking about getting married again.”