Chaser_Unlocking the Genius of the Dog Who Knows a Thousand Words

by John W. Pilley

  After Chaser and I played “fast fan” for a while, we all took a walk around the neighborhood. And then we rested for an hour before leaving for ABC in the black SUV. The now familiar seating to-do ensued until Chaser resigned herself to lying on the floor again.

  “You’ll only have to put up with this one more time today, Chaser,” I said. But she was ignoring me and everyone else again.

  At ABC’s studios on West Sixty-Sixth Street on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, we announced ourselves at the security desk. We figured we’d have to take Chaser upstairs to the ABC World News studio in a freight elevator.

  Only a couple of minutes later, however, a camera crew showed up and began shooting footage. Our entrance was being recorded, as we only learned much later, for a promotional clip for that evening’s news broadcast.

  Chaser was intrigued by the cameraman, who stepped backward and forward and all around her for good angles, like a dancer. She didn’t mind even when he brought the camera down right in front of her face for a tight close-up. She seemed to be thinking, “This is interesting. I want to know more about this game.”

  Or maybe she was just clicking into performance mode. In any case, she was alert and poised. Her posture was downright regal, I thought proudly.

  The producer of the segment, a petite woman with brown hair, strode up and greeted us warmly. She led the way to an escalator to the mezzanine, where we were to take a regular elevator up to the newsroom and studio.

  Escalators are not made for four-footed creatures. Chaser had certainly never been on one, and I thought I might have to pick her up in my arms. Hoping for the best, I plowed on with Chaser on the leash in front of me and the cameraman right behind. At the bottom step of the escalator I whispered, “Here we go, girl.” Chaser hesitated almost imperceptibly, and then mounted the moving steps as if she’d done so countless times.

  A few minutes later we got off the elevator on the newsroom floor and followed the producer’s direction to proceed down a hallway, now with the cameraman in front of Chaser and me. Up ahead I could see people standing where the hallway opened into an aisle of cubicles on both sides. The closer we got, the more people stood up and came into the aisle, or stuck their heads out from behind their cubicles, to get a glimpse of Chaser.

  Chaser responded with eagerness to meet them, and she was striding out ahead of me when Diane Sawyer came around a corner. She walked toward us down the hallway, as tall as the day is long and even more beautiful than on television. She extended her hand with a welcoming smile and said, “Hello, Professor. I’m Diane.”

  “Hey, Diane, it’s so good to meet you,” I said, shaking her hand.

  “It’s so great to meet you,” she said. Bending to pet Chaser, she added, “And to meet the fabulous Chaser, too.”

  Chaser’s regal poise was gone. She wiggled under Diane’s affectionate pets like the puppy she has always remained inside.

  After personally greeting everyone, including Aidan, Diane led us to a conference room, chatting with us and introducing us to a wide variety of colleagues along the way. It was impressive to see the positive spirit and serious sense of purpose of that group, and the mutual regard that Diane and her colleagues obviously shared.

  The conference room had water and dog treats as well as refreshments for our little entourage. Our bucket of toys was already open on the floor, brought there by a stagehand. Before I knew it Chaser had her favorite blue racquetball in her mouth and was dropping it at Diane’s feet.

  “You really could try to play a little harder to get, Chaser,” Deb said under her breath.

  Delighted, Diane tossed the ball to Chaser. Chaser gave it back to her for another toss. And another. And another.

  I gave Diane a brief demonstration of Chaser’s response to herding commands. And Chaser pawed and nosed KG, the purple rubber barbell, and then took it in her mouth as I instructed her to do so in succession. The mischievous squeaks she gave KG when she picked it up with her mouth were her own way of punctuating the conversation.

  Chaser was exhilarated in front of Diane and her colleagues. But she continued to listen and respond accurately to every command I gave her. I was so proud of her.

  Just then Neil deGrasse Tyson loomed in the doorway. There is something about his presence, classic and imposing yet friendly, that reminds me of someone like Gregory Peck.

  “Helloooo, Chaser,” Neil said in his resonant baritone.

  Chaser wiggled over to Neil and rubbed herself against his knees to receive his full-body pets. Finished cuddling, she showed him a toy they could play with, and he obliged while still managing to say hello to everyone in turn.

  We brainstormed briefly about how the segment might go, but I saw that with two master communicators like Diane and Neil it was best just to set them going and let them develop the segment. What didn’t work would be cut before it was broadcast.

  The segment producer said we should go over to the set. Chaser and Aidan brought up the rear. Aidan was holding her leash in one hand, but he was resting the other hand on the top of her haunches, something that was possible only because they had been puppies together, so to speak, and had complete trust in each other. The hallway suddenly widened like a river delta, open offices on both sides emptying into the arena-like set of ABC World News. People were busy working throughout the high-tech space, oblivious to us.

  We stopped there to wait for Diane, and Aidan became entranced by the spectacle all around him. He dropped Chaser’s leash and walked forward a few steps, as if into a wondrous book or video game. Diane came onto the set, and Aidan self-consciously retreated to my side, not wanting to be anywhere he shouldn’t. Seeing this, Diane beckoned to Aidan. She held out her hand to him and said, “Aidan, let me show you our prompter.”

  She took him by the hand and led him over behind her on-air desk, where she had him try reading the prompts off the monitors. Seeing Aidan relax and smile under her tutelage in Newscasting 101, I had no doubt that she would work the same magic with Chaser.

  Diane and Neil briefly rehearsed their on-camera interactions, sitting on two sleek modern stools. They planned to talk about Chaser’s achievements in between clips from Nova scienceNow, and to end the segment with a demonstration of her performing a language task in response to a command from Diane. I was relieved that I didn’t have to appear on camera, but I still had a few butterflies on Chaser’s behalf.

  Diane wanted to see if Chaser would respond to her commands. Diane, Neil, and I pulled various toys out of the bucket, discussing their names and photogenic qualities. Very serious stuff.

  We chose half a dozen toys, avoiding those Chaser retrieved on the Today Show. One of the toys Diane, Neil, and I picked out was her ABC stuffed block. When we’d put the toys into the plastic tub early that morning in Brooklyn, it was Aidan who’d said, “Here, Pop-Pop, let’s take ABC.” I was so nervous at the time that the coincidence of the toy’s and the television network’s names didn’t occur to me. It was only now that I realized the significance of the toy’s name for where we were—and Aidan’s cleverness in suggesting we bring it.

  Neil and I explained to Diane that all she had to do was tell Chaser what object to find. With the stools taken away, Diane and Neil knelt down on either side of the blue tub. Chaser popped to attention as Diane called her name. She tilted her head and locked her gaze on Diane’s face.

  Diane said, “Chaser, find Flipflopper.”

  Chaser immediately picked up Flipflopper, a Frisbee made of cloth, and brought it over. Diane threw her arms up into the air, then put her hands to the sides of her head and said, “Unbelievable!”

  When it was time to record the segment, the lights went up with Diane and Neil on their stools. Chaser was at their feet among several toys, where I had given her a single command to stay. I hoped she would.

  The moment Diane and Neil began to talk, they had Chaser’s attention. After about thirty seconds, she lowered her head between her paws, but remained in a relaxed st
ate of readiness. Every now and then she closed her eyes briefly as Neil spoke about the latest findings on animal intelligence and showed clips, mostly but not all including Chaser, from that night’s Nova scienceNow.

  It was a long wait for Chaser, who at one point raised her head and curled into a slight “C” to look over at me. I held my hand straight up and down, palm out, and mouthed, “Stay.”

  Almost three minutes into the three-minute-and-fifty-three-second segment Diane said, “Okay, I think we all want to see . . .”

  Neil finished the sentence for her: “. . . a demonstration.”

  Chaser straightened herself out but remained lying down even as Diane and Neil abandoned their stools and knelt down beside her.

  When Neil said, “Chaser,” however, she immediately got to her feet. She turned around to face him and hear him say, “Find Goose.” She pivoted around to scan the toys, took a quick step to find and pick up Goose, then pivoted back around and took a quick return step in front of Neil, squeaking the toy at him.

  Diane and Neil both laughed, and Diane asked Neil, “Can I do this one?” She looked toward Chaser, who was looking all around the set and wagging her tail. Diane said, “Chaser,” but she continued to look around the set. Diane said a little more firmly, “Chaser,” and she turned to look at her with full attention. Diane said, “Find ABC.”

  Chaser sauntered over to the square cloth toy with the letters A, B, and C on its sides, grabbed it in her mouth, and turned to shake it at Diane, who said, “You did it! ABC! You did it!”

  Diane looked at the camera and told viewers about that night’s “truly remarkable” Nova scienceNow. Meanwhile, Chaser had plucked Goose out of the blue tub and was squeaking it, hoping to initiate a play session after successfully accomplishing her appointed language tasks. Spreading her arms in a gesture that embraced both Chaser and viewers, Diane concluded the segment—and assuming no breaking news required a change of plans, that night’s broadcast—by saying, “And to you and your brilliant dogs at home, good night.”

  A few minutes later we all reconvened in the conference room. Unprompted, Diane and Neil both quickly wrote and signed personal notes to Aidan, who received them with a mixture of awe, gratitude, and delight. And then it was time for us to leave.

  Going back out through the newsroom, Chaser was once again the happy center of attention. She wiggled and tail-wagged around the room to receive hugs and praise from as many people as possible.

  The black SUV was waiting for us on West Sixty-Sixth Street. We all started piling into the vehicle, and before I knew it Chaser was sitting on the first row of seats behind the driver.

  I gently said, “Get down, girl.” She ignored me and looked in the other direction.

  “Come on, Chase,” I said. “You’ve got to get down.”

  She slunk down to the floor, and then climbed right back up on the seat.

  “No, Chaser,” I said. “On the floor!”

  She grunted discontentedly, stood up on the seat, turned to face the window, and sat back down. I sat beside her and tried to nudge her down.

  She wouldn’t budge. So I gently tried to lift her off the seat toward the floor. I felt her move and thought she was going to get on the floor, but instead she threw all her weight against the back of the seat.

  I couldn’t bring myself to peel her off the seat after all she had done that day. She might have been oohed and aahed at and fussed over. But she had also put up with a lot of stress, especially being repeatedly denied play with her toys after she’d completed language tasks involving them. She had performed brilliantly. She had a right to be a cranky diva and want to sit on the seat as she normally did in our own car.

  All the same, I felt helpless about there not being enough seats for everyone. I wondered if I should sit on the floor.

  Julia graciously solved the problem, saying that she really should take a cab to her hotel and get some rest before a very early plane flight the next morning. I would happily have ridden on the floor in order for Julia to have dinner with us. But I didn’t want to argue if she actually needed to prepare for her trip home from New York. We exchanged hugs, congratulations, and goodbyes, and then she departed in a cab.

  Our stalwart driver took Sally, Debbie, me, and a sleeping Aidan and Chaser back to Brooklyn. We were all worn out, but it wasn’t bedtime yet. First we had to watch the appearance on Today, which Jay had ready on the digital video recorder. When the segment reached the point where I said, “SpongeBob’s not out there,” I felt a rush of embarrassment over my mistake. But then it occurred to me that there could not be a better example of Chaser’s performing a language task with no cuing from me. While I thought she was failing in front of my eyes, she was actually succeeding in front of millions of eyes much sharper than mine.

  We were able to watch ABC World News at its normal East Coast time. The segment with Chaser closed the broadcast, Debbie quipped, like the headline act at an all-star concert. She knelt on the floor to give Chaser a hug and said, “Who’s a rock star?”

  I was elated about Chaser’s performance on both programs. I was also thoroughly intrigued by the brief clip that Today aired from the “How Smart Are Dogs?” segment of that night’s Nova scienceNow, and by the longer clips that ABC World News aired. There were still two hours before Nova scienceNow. In the meantime we ordered Indian food. And of course Chaser had to have a walk and some play time, as well as her own dinner.

  We’d all been up since five a.m., and it was nine p.m. when we crowded into the little family room off the kitchen to watch Nova scienceNow’s “How Smart Are Animals?” program. Aidan curled up on the couch and quickly fell asleep. Chaser was oblivious to the television, but excited to be with everyone, including Jay. Although she respected her buddy Aidan’s need for sleep, she interrupted the rest of us with her ball throughout the program.

  After the excitement of the day, including seeing clips from the program on Today and ABC World News, I had a sense of anticlimax waiting for Nova scienceNow to start. But almost immediately I found myself watching with fascination, as if it portrayed a whole different family and their dog.

  Written, produced, and directed by Julia Cort, the segment with Chaser, “How Smart Are Dogs?,” was the first and longest part of the program (there were also segments on dolphins, octopi and cuttlefish, and Alex the parrot and his owner and trainer Irene Pepperberg).

  All the footage with Chaser was shot at our home in the living room and backyard. I’d emphasized to every journalist I spoke to that Chaser was not just a research animal but a member of the Pilley family, and this footage really conveyed that beautifully. I was also happy to see that a few scenes in our backyard, showing Chaser going through her little agility course and catching a Frisbee, captured a flavor of our play together. Neil joined right into that play, and the program brought back how immediately and genuinely he forged a connection with Chaser.

  With regard to Chaser’s learning, the segment first showed all 1,022 of Chaser’s named toys piled in the backyard. I took her into the house and upstairs to my study, with no view of the backyard, while Neil randomly picked nine toys. He put them behind the couch in the living room, and then called Chaser downstairs.

  She retrieved the nine objects correctly in rapid succession. And her body language and expression as she listened to Neil displayed her utter confidence and complete command of her vocabulary. I felt grateful for how vividly the program captured that, as well as how it duplicated my experimental procedures, with Chaser unable to see anything in the living room while she was waiting upstairs in my study.

  Following this came footage of the evolutionary anthropologist Brian Hare at Duke University and the psychologist Clive Wynne at Wolf Park in Indiana, with each of them offering perspective on the social intelligence of dogs. Then it was back to our living room in Spartanburg to see Chaser demonstrate her ability to learn by exclusion. Sitting on our somewhat frayed couch, Neil said, “Let’s see what [Chaser] does when we
challenge her with a new toy she’s never seen or heard the name of.” Then he held up a toy and said, “I smuggled this into your house. It’s a Charles Darwin doll.” The doll looked very much like Charles Darwin in old age, bald on the top of his head but with a long fringe of white hair and a white beard.

  While Chaser waited upstairs, Neil and I had put Darwin behind the couch with seven of Chaser’s toys. Neil looked at the camera and said, “Okay, so [we] put seven toys behind the couch, plus Darwin. Chaser’s never seen Darwin, hasn’t even ever heard the name ‘Darwin.’ So we’re going to see if she picks out Darwin by inference.”

  Neil called Chaser back, and the program showed her scurrying down the stairs, obviously eager to have more fun with him. First he asked her to find two of the named toys that were already in her flock of surrogate sheep, Sugar and Crawdad. With the same confidence as before she quickly retrieved them on command. It delighted her that Neil raised the pitch of his baritone voice to squeak “Excellent!” like a cartoon character after each retrieval.

  Neil said, “Okay, here it comes, a name she’s never heard before.” Then he turned to Chaser and told her, “Find Darwin.”

  In contrast to the previous retrievals, Chaser cocked her head and looked intently at Neil when she heard “Darwin.” After that slight pause she walked behind the couch. The cameras then showed her walking uncertainly around the toys behind the couch, and finally coming to a standstill directly over Darwin. Neil said in voice-over, “So, while searching for the other toys, Chaser knew exactly which one to pick up right away. Now, she seems to have to think about which one might be Darwin. . . . She takes so long, I call her back.”

  When Neil called Chaser, she came to the side of the couch and turned her head to look at him. He said, “Find Darwin.” She looked at him for a second, then shifted her gaze to the front of the living room and then back to him, all with the same quizzical expression on her face.