Chaser_Unlocking the Genius of the Dog Who Knows a Thousand Words

by John W. Pilley

  “Find Darwin,” Neil repeated one more time. Chaser tilted her head at him again, and then slowly walked behind the couch. She hesitated over the toys for several seconds, but then the camera showed her coming around the couch with Darwin in her mouth. Neil’s delight at that delighted her, and she wagged her tail exultantly.

  In voice-over Neil said, “I can’t believe it. Chaser’s never seen that doll before. Yet somehow, she made the connection that the word she’d never heard before went with the one toy she didn’t recognize.”

  The segment ended soon after this, but we kept watching the program. I found the other segments fascinating too, and the profile of Irene Pepperberg’s relationship with the parrot Alex, who had recently died, was very moving.

  What a day it had been! Taking Chaser out for a last brief walk, I reflected on how lucky we were to have people like Matt Lauer, Diane Sawyer, and Neil deGrasse Tyson introduce her to America. In their own distinctive ways, they had each genuinely extended themselves to Chaser. In response, Chaser had adapted herself marvelously to each of them. Her interactions with Matt, Diane, and Neil demonstrated the abundant emotional and social intelligence that both sides must have for the dog-human relationship—and communication—to blossom to the full.

  A couple of days later, Sally, Chaser, and I returned to Spartanburg. It was time to get back to our normal lives. And Chaser and I needed to get on with her learning.

  15

  Chaser Goes to Washington

  CHASER WAS A hit on television. But our next public challenge was demonstrating her learning for a potentially much more critical audience of scientists.

  Back home in Spartanburg, Sally and I were glad to pick up our normal routines with Chaser. The media kept calling and e-mailing with requests for interviews and appearances. We politely declined them all, with the exception of a BBC Super Smart Animals program that gave us another opportunity to document Chaser’s learning under rigorous conditions. Sally and Chaser resumed their daily walks with the Ya-Yas, and Chaser and I resumed our language learning research.

  Chaser was glad to be home and doing our usual things, too. Nicholas Wade nailed it in his article on Chaser in the New York Times when he wrote, “Border collies are working dogs. They have a reputation for smartness, and they are highly motivated. They are bred to herd sheep indefatigably all day long. Absent that task, they must be given something else to do or they go stir crazy.” For Chaser, the hours we spent each day working on language cognition tasks with her toys were the equivalent of time spent in the pasture herding sheep. The media appearances took Chaser away from the work and work-related play she needed for her quality of life. And they took me away from the work and play I needed for my quality of life, too.

  In March the American Psychological Association, the main professional organization of scientists and clinicians in psychology, invited Alliston and me to give one of several plenary addresses at the association’s 2011 annual convention in August in Washington, D.C. Alliston and I both felt honored by the invitation to present Chaser’s learning at the APA convention, especially in a plenary address open to all attendees.

  Unfortunately, Alliston had a conflicting commitment and couldn’t accept the invitation. It would have been fun to share the moment with him. But I was delighted to accept the APA’s invitation on my own, and excited about presenting Chaser’s learning to an audience composed mostly of scientists.

  It was going to take some work to prepare a talk that was equal to the occasion of a plenary address at the APA, however. Since I’d retired from teaching, scientific presentations had gone from slide projectors to digital “slide decks” assembled with PowerPoint or Keynote. On Debbie’s advice I bought a MacBook Pro laptop, and she, Jay, and Robin all became my technical advisors and coaches in preparing a series of Keynote slides and video clips to illustrate my talk, which I eventually titled “Chaser and Her Toys: What a Dog Teaches Us About Cognition.”

  As I prepared the presentation, Chaser and I dived into extending her language understanding with regard to syntax (the grammatical structure of a sentence) and semantics (the meaning of the sentence). “Take ball to Frisbee” and “take Frisbee to ball” have the same syntax: a verb, a direct object, and an indirect object. Switching the places of “ball” and “Frisbee” gives them opposite meanings, however, and that’s an example of semantics.

  Chaser’s performance in the take-nose-paw tests showed she could handle two elements of syntax, a verb and a direct object. Our next goal was to add a third element of syntax, an indirect object, as in “take ball to Frisbee.” If Chaser could “take ball to Frisbee” and then “take Frisbee to ball,” she would show an understanding of semantics as well as syntax.

  I also wanted to see if Chaser’s language and concept learning so far would enable her to match to sample and to learn by direct imitation of me. Matching to sample meant showing Chaser an object without naming it and asking her to find one just like it. The task may appear simple, but success requires drawing a mental inference or formulating an abstract concept, such as “he wants me to find what I now see.”

  Learning by direct imitation, performing whatever physical actions someone else performs, is also a much more complicated problem than it may seem. Imitation learning requires the mental awareness that the individual modeling the behavior wants you to copy it. This is an aspect of what is known as theory of mind: the awareness that another individual has a point of view different from your own. Believing that animals do not have a theory of mind, many scientists continue to insist that animals cannot imitate, and that what looks like imitation may only be instinctual behavior being triggered in different ways. Yet evidence is pouring in of imitation among species as diverse as bonobos and crows. I thought that if Chaser could learn new behaviors by imitating my actions, it might greatly accelerate her ability to learn complex new behaviors in the future.

  August arrived on the heels of a brutally hot July with sweltering temperatures and no break in the weather in sight. We left for the APA convention very early on the first Thursday in August, and I waited until the last second to load Chaser into the car, after the trunk was packed and the inside was cooled off with the air conditioner on high. The trunk was full, because after spending Thursday night to Saturday in Washington, D.C., where Deb, Jay, and Aidan were meeting us, we were continuing north to spend a couple of weeks with them in Brooklyn.

  Sally was already in the front passenger seat with her seat belt on when I brought Chaser out of the house. She stopped several feet away as I held the rear car door open. Experience told her the car was uncomfortably hot.

  “Hoop, Chase,” I said, giving her the usual signal to jump up onto something, whether it was a bed, the couch, or the back seat of our car. No matter how I repeated or elaborated that command, however, she refused to budge.

  “Come on, girl,” I said. “We’re going on a trip.”

  She stood her ground, eyes meeting mine with her ears back. The look on her face seemed to plead, “We don’t really need to go on a trip, do we? Let’s stay home where it’s nice and cool.”

  I asked her again to get in the car, putting a little more force into my words. She didn’t move an inch.

  I went over to her and said, “You want me to help you?” With that I awkwardly lifted and shoved her into the back seat, inadvertently twisting her hind legs in the process. She quickly righted herself and plopped down on the opposite side of the seat.

  Three hours later we stopped to rest and play with Chaser. “Hoop, Chaser,” I said when it was time to get back in the car. But again she ignored that signal and my repetitions of it.

  The last thing I wanted to do was to try to push and lift her into the car again. But finally I walked over to her saying, “You want me to help—” Before I could finish saying “help” she jumped into the car onto the back seat, where she turned around and looked at me warily.

  When we were back on the highway, it slowly dawned on me that my
clumsy attempt to get her into the car earlier that morning might have planted the idea in her mind that “You want me to help you?” meant “I’m gonna twist your hind legs now.” When we stopped again, we went through the same rigamarole until I said, “You want me to help—,” at which point she hopped into the car. I poured on the praise and petted her to help build a positive association on top of her aversive memory of being pushed uncomfortably into the car.

  After a little more than six hours of driving we arrived at the Westin Washington, D.C., City Center on M Street, about a mile from the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, where the APA was holding its convention. I was eager to get over to the convention center and get a flavor of what was going on. I had never joined the APA during my career as a psychology professor—they made me a member for the year because of my plenary address—and I had never been to the annual convention. I also wanted to make sure that I had everything I needed to plug my computer into the convention center’s audio-visual system and show my Keynote presentation.

  Sally and I decided we should walk from the hotel, thinking it would be a chance for all of us to stretch our legs after being cooped up in the car for so long. After twenty minutes and several wrong turns, we were melting with sweat and barely halfway there. My laptop felt heavy in my briefcase, which fortunately had a shoulder strap. The temperature was in the upper nineties with oppressive humidity. Spartanburg is in the foothills of the Appalachians, and the hot weather we were now experiencing was even worse than what we’d been having at home.

  Forty-five minutes after setting out, we finally reached the immense convention center. We practically seeped into the entrance area, blessing the cool air. A security guard immediately said, “You can’t bring that dog in here.”

  I was trying to formulate a parched response when we heard a woman say, “That’s okay.” It was Candy Won, the APA’s meeting director and the person who had conveyed the invitation to Alliston and me. She happened to be walking by when she spotted Chaser, and she was coming over to greet us when the security guard spoke. Candy graciously waited while Sally and I drank deep at the water fountains and filled up a portable bowl for Chaser to lap up every drop of. Then she walked us through the registration process and arranged for a volunteer to guide us around the convention center.

  In addition to my plenary address, Candy and I had arranged for Chaser and me to give four thirty-minute demonstrations. Two demonstrations were scheduled for after the address on Friday afternoon, and two for Saturday morning. At my request the volunteer guide took us to see the rooms where I would give the address and the demonstrations. An audio-visual technician was meeting us in the room for the plenary address, so that I could make sure my Keynote presentation was ready to go. As we made our way through the convention throngs, people frequently stopped us to exclaim over Chaser and pet her, to her great delight, and say they were coming to the address and demonstrations.

  The lecture hall looked imposing to me from the entrance. A four-foot-high stage ran across the front of the room with steps at either end. A long table on the right side of the stage had room for eight panelists all facing the audience. At the left was a podium, and above the main part of the stage hung a huge screen to display a speaker’s slides or video.

  I asked our guide how many people the hall seated. “A little over four hundred,” he said. “The halls for the plenary addresses are all the same size. But as you’ve just seen, people are really buzzing about yours. Everyone’s curious about Chaser.”

  I focused on the task at hand and forged through a quick rehearsal pretty easily. The tech was a great help, and it reassured me to see my Keynote slides and video clips pop onto the hall’s big screen. I was feeling good about my preparation as Sally, Chaser, and I slowly walked back to the hotel in the oppressive heat. It didn’t occur to us to try to take a cab with Chaser, but at least we knew the way now.

  Our timing was perfect, however. We arrived just as Deb, Jay, and Aidan drove up to the hotel entrance. After they checked into the hotel and got settled in their room, it was time for dinner. I begged off joining everyone and asked them to bring me something back. I wanted to rehearse my presentation a few more times, even though I felt pretty good about it. Deb had shared her and Jay’s experience that the technical aspects of an event that are outside their control as musicians, the sound and the lights and so on, easily and commonly go wrong. The key to dealing with technical glitches when, rather than if, they happened was to be on top of your material and confident enough to navigate the inevitable bumps and bobbles. I wanted to heed Deb’s words of wisdom.

  Fifteen minutes later I felt like one of my students who meant to stay in the dorm and study but kept thinking that all his or her friends were out having fun. I’d had about enough of rehearsing and wished I had gone to dinner with everyone.

  Sally called just then and asked what I wanted her to bring me back for dinner. They were only a couple of blocks away, and I hurriedly put on my shoes to go join them. Chaser stood up on the bed, where I’d invited her to get, and looked expectantly at me with her head tilted sideways, hoping that I was taking her with me.

  I told her I’d be back. She responded by wagging her tail, jumping down off the bed toward me, and again locking eyes with me and giving me her “can’t I go, please?” look. Feeling a twinge of guilt, I said, “No, girl, Pop-Pop will be back.”

  Chaser turned around and jumped back on the bed, flopping herself down in an excellent approximation of a teenage girl’s pout. She heaved a dramatic diva’s sigh as she lowered her head to her paws. Standing at the open door, I repeated, “I’ll be back, girl.” She shot me another glance, almost rolling her eyes, and seemed to breathe another deep sigh as she settled down for a comfortable doze.

  When we returned about an hour later, Chaser gave soft little “Hurry up” woofs as I fumbled with the electronic key. Once I had the door open I had to find her leash, but I saw that the message light was blinking on the phone. There were two messages requesting an interview from a journalist named Sharon Jayson, who had left two messages earlier in the day and whose number I had already scrawled on a copy of USA Today.

  As Deb and I searched for Chaser’s leash, I mentioned that the same woman had called four times. Chaser wanted to get outside and was following at my heels as I hunted for the missing leash.

  “Well, who is she?” Deb asked, looking under the bed.

  Fishing through Chaser’s toys and growing more irritated about her missing leash, I said, “I don’t know, I don’t want to be speaking to reporters.”

  Deb calmly replied, “Well, give me her number and I’ll call her back.” I passed Deb the copy of USA Today on which I’d written Sharon Jayson’s phone number.

  Deb hung up the phone just as I found Chaser’s leash in my briefcase. Chaser immediately grabbed a Frisbee and headed for the door as soon as I pulled out her leash. “Did you talk to Sharon Jayson?” I asked Deb.

  “Yep,” Deb said. “Her deadline is right after your talk, so she wanted to check some facts first.”

  “Well, it’s good you called her back. It could have been awkward to run into her tomorrow. Did she say what publication?”

  “Yep,” Deb said. “USA Today.”

  The next day came quickly. At five a.m. Chaser and I left Sally sleeping in our room to go for a walk and some play. The previous evening we’d played with a Frisbee for a while in a small courtyard next to the hotel and in a triangular green space with benches on the other side of M Street. But the weather remained stifling hot.

  I closed the hotel room door softly and turned around to walk to the elevators with Chaser. But she had dropped her small cream-colored polyester Frisbee, named Snow, by our room door and trotted down the hall to wait for a throw.

  It hit me that this was a precisely analogous situation to our walking outside onto our front porch at home in Spartanburg. Chaser’s modus operandi there is to drop her ball or Frisbee on the porch and then proceed ou
t onto the front lawn to await a throw.

  I smiled to myself at the cleverness of all dogs, and not least of all Chaser, when it comes to inveigling people into playing and interacting with them. I picked up Snow, intending to carry it with me to the elevator, but when I had the Frisbee in my hand I couldn’t resist sailing it down the hall to Chaser. She caught it in the air, brought it within a few feet of me, and then raced back down the hall.

  Oh, well, I thought, why not have a few throws here before we go out into the heat and humidity? Chaser seemed to be in no rush to get outside to do her business. And although she’d discovered a full-throated bark at the Today Show and employed it every once in a while out of excitement or frustration, she remained a rather quiet dog who preferred to vocalize with soft woofs. Her woofs only turned to barks if the woofs failed to draw our attention.

  We played in the thickly carpeted hall for about twenty minutes, and then Chaser went to the elevators and woofed, softly, that it was time to go outside. Reentering the hotel ten minutes later, we both were grateful for the air conditioning. Getting out of the elevator on our floor, I turned to head to our room, but Chaser was pointing herself in the other direction.

  “It’s this way, girl,” I said. “Or did I make a mistake?”

  I checked the room number signs on the hotel corridor wall. No, I was right and Chaser was wrong, and that puzzled me.

  “Come on, Chase,” I said. But she still looked reluctantly in the other direction. Only then I remembered that Debbie, Jay, and Aidan’s room was down that way.

  “Do you want to see Aidan?” I asked. Chaser and Aidan had had a great time playing together the night before.

  Chaser wagged her tail vigorously on hearing Aidan’s name. Mystery solved: Chaser and I were both right. But it was still only six a.m.

  “We’ll see Aidan later. Come on now,” I told Chaser, but she kept looking down the corridor. So I did what I always did when I wanted to end a play session without disappointing Chaser, and said, “Let’s go see Nanny.” At the sound of “Nanny”—it could just as well have been “Sally”—Chaser wheeled around and began trotting briskly toward our room. Following her, I had to laugh at myself, recalling my once telling Wayne West and his fellow Border collie trainers that their dogs didn’t understand personal names.