Bones Would Rain from the Sky: Deepening Our Relationships with Dogs

by Suzanne Clothier

  human will inevitably guess that an imitation of the trainer's behavior is expected. were While dogs are an allomimetic species, meaning that they will imitate the behavior of others, dogs tend to reserve this for actions that are natural and enjoyable to them-digging, for example, as many gardening enthusiasts have learned to their dismay when Fido decides to "help" with the planting.) Trainers must somehow shape and encourage that behavior without offering an example. The "dogs" are free to act precisely like an off-leash dog-if bored, they may wander away; if threatened, they are free to yelp or growl (no biting allowed). Quickly, participants discover one basic truth about communication: It is most successful when the words you use are ones that both understand. Faced with "Grape!" or "Carrot" or "Rutabaga" (one that inexplicably shows up frequently), the "dogs" are often very, very confused. Diligently, they search the trainer's face and gestures for clues as to whether "Apple" is a command or is meant to dissuade or is offered as praise. The word itself has no meaning; it is the full context of body language that gives the word meaning, just as our real four-legged dogs come to understand "Good dog" as praise and "Stay" to mean don't move. At the same time, trainers frustrated by the "dog's" lack of appropriate response resort to the technique used by tourists the world over- in the face of a listener's confusion, they often just repeat the word at increasing volume. Volume, while impressive, never equals clarity.

  Trainers find themselves having trouble remembering just what they are trying to communicate, mixing up their words so that they're praising when they meant to give a command or vice versa. As many have complained, "This is much easier when I know what I mean!" From the trainers' point of view, the behavior is one they can easily envision, but they discover that communicating that via a nonsensical language is not easy. Of course, when we know what we mean in using a word, we often slip into the assumption that the listener-our dog-also does. "Heel" and "Down" are just as nonsensical to a dog as "Peach!" Successful communication requires that we understand the listener's state of mind, their level of understanding and, past that, the information in their minds. The information left out of our communications is what Tor N0rretranders in his book The User Illusion calls exformation, and it is as critical a part of communication as what we actually do say. As Norretranders notes, "Information is not very interesting. The interesting thing about a message is what happens before it is formulated and after it has been received." When I ask my dog Grizzly, "Where is your bumper?" there is a tremendous amount of unspoken information that I know he already possesses. "Bumper" is simply the key that evokes the response I want, but it works only because he has learned a great deal about a bright orange plastic tube with little knobs and a ratty rope. In his mind's eye (and undoubtedly his mind's nose) there springs up not only his internal representation of the thing itself but quite possibly the memory and anticipation of all the pleasurable experiences that go with it. To a dog who does not have all that information, asking "Where is your bumper?" is as meaningless a message as "Where is Timbuktu?" There is no difference in Grizzly's response to the word bumper than in my friend Wendy's response if I say, "Let's go get some ice cream!" I do not need to spell out for her that this will require that we put on our shoes, locate some money, walk out to the truck, drive five miles or so to our favorite ice cream stand, stand in line, decide on our flavor or style of cone, pay the cashier and then begin eating. I also do not need to tell her that ice cream is the sweet, very cold, creamy shapeless stuff that comes in many colors and flavors. The mere words ice cream evoke all that in her mind, and her mouth begins to water, and she's out the door before I am. If she were an alien who just arrived on a spaceship, we'd have to have quite a lengthy conversation in order to convey the exformation, all left out of but still contained in the phrase "Let's go get some ice cream!" This is one of the big problems we have when working with dogs or other animals. When we utter a word as command or direction, we bring to that word a great deal of exformation. Because we are usually quite clear in our minds about what we intend to communicate, we forget that what is in the listener's mind will affect to a great deal what the ultimate

  response to our communication may be. On a frequent basis, we experience a bit of the dog's puzzlement when another person says to us, "Hand me that thingamajig." The purely nonsensical word offers us no meaningful information, because no clear image or sensation is evoked. For our dogs, English or any other human language is a nonsensical one, and only experience helps them understand what we mean when we utter any word. Training is a way of developing our ability to communicate with our dogs (though like many of our conversations with other humans, sometimes it's much more to the dog than with him right-brace . When we train, we are inventing our own mutual language so that when we say "ball" or "stay" or "come," we can excite within the dog's mind the images, sensations or even scents that we intend to. For his part, the dog learns ways to excite within us what he intends-thus, a meaningful bump of his nose against a doorknob creates in our minds an indication that he needs to go out, and if he is a puppy, we may have vivid images of what our carpeting will look like if we ignore this message. It's safe to say that one of the most common failures of communication is that we take much for granted and forget how much exformation there is in even a simple request. In our mind, there may be a very complete home movie about what we mean when we say "Sit" or "Stay" or "No." But if we haven't made sure that the dog has also seen and understands that home movie, we're going to have problems. We'll be frustrated, and the dog will be too. We are, quite often, asking our dogs for that thingamajig, and they make the best guesses they can based on what we have taught them. A common response to Fruits and Veggies is a deeply empathetic understanding of how dogs feel on the receiving end of what we are trying to communicate. Many participants report being seriously confused, and they appreciate that "Potato" is as meaningless as "Sit" may be to a dog. As one woman noted, "No wonder my dogs look confused." Others figure out what each word means, but when asked just a few minutes later to perform Mango, Peach and Kiwi, often confuse which

  word goes with what action-even though they clearly understand the three behaviors they were taught. You can see them sorting through the behaviors, trying to remember which word goes with what action; they are often wrong. Real dogs of course have the same problem, though if they mix up commands, for example offering a down when they are asked to sit, they may be viewed as disobedient instead of simply confused or unsure. We often expect our dogs to learn and perform with far greater alacrity and precision than we are capable of ourselves. One man who had been working with a woman who used a lot of physical guidance and actually moved his body in specific ways discovered that he was increasingly angry about being handled while being told "Raspberry." He did not understand what she wanted, and he disliked her attempts to force him into the position, however gently. Suddenly, he understood why some of the dogs he had worked with had twisted out of his hands or even growled-he had thought they were just being stubborn or had bad temperaments. Even years after the seminar, he still remembers his confusion and resentment. Before ever laying hands on a dog or trying to teach them something new, he thinks, "Raspberry" and is careful and considerate in his communications. But one of the most important messages people carry away from this exercise is an understanding that they began the game with assumptions about the willingness and intelligence of their "dogs." Every participant starts the exercise with the belief (conscious or not] that their dog is willing, cooperative and intelligent. No one looks at their partner and thinks, "Oh, a sneaker-wearing pants-and-shirt type. I know they can be stubborn." No one assumes that a lack of response is due to stupidity, dominance, submission or a desire to deliberately defy. Real dogs, however, are not universally extended the assumption that they are willing, intelligent and cooperative. More than one student has walked into training class on the first night and told me, "This dog is stupid." They know this, of course, not because they've tried diligently to educate the dog but
because the dog has failed to automatically become Lassie. The most important goal any instructor has is to open her eyes to just how willing and cooperative and intelligent dogs are when we are able to communicate effectively with them. Our assumptions and expectations about dogs can lead

  us down the path to pure frustration for both dog and trainer. But unlike the "dogs" in the Fruits and Veggies game, our real dogs can't offer us feedback in English about how they felt or where we went wrong. But they do tell us-over and over again-using the eloquent language of Dog. Learning how to understand them requires time, practice, study and a desire to know more. Most of all, we must first believe that the animals have something to say. It's strange how difficult that first step can be, though we already know from our human relationships that half of successful communication lies in our willingness to hear what someone else has to say. At work in every episode of Lassie was the understanding that this dog had something to say, and folks who knew her well regarded her communications as meaningful. This simple assumption-that something important can be transmitted from the dog to us-is an essential key to the understanding we are seeking. In Kinship with All Life, . Allen Boone ponders the many stumbling blocks within himself that prevented him from connecting with the dog Strongheart. He realizes that the problems of communication were founded in his assumptions and ideas about animals, not in the animal itself: "And one of the most arrogant of these ideas was the conceit that while I ... was fully qualified to communicate certain important thoughts down to animals, the animals . . . were able to communicate little of real value up to me." While we might wish for a real-life Dr. Doolittle to help us talk to the animals, we don't need one. We simply need to learn what Dr. Doolittle knew all along-the animals have something to say. Dog training places a heavy emphasis on communicating to the dog, and not necessarily with the dog. Though we spend a lot of time working to make our dogs responsive to what we have to say, a better approach might be to follow the advice of Saint Francis of Assisi: "Seek first to understand; then to be understood."

  pigs in pokes Listening means an awareness, an openness to learning something new about another person . . . listening with the intent to learn is an approach to a different type of conversation. elizabeth deboi.d

  A WHILE AGO, I READ AN ON-LINE DISCUSSION between a concerned dog owner and a professional dog trainer. After describing the dog's behavior in detail, the owner asked for specific advice on how to use a particular training technique. The trainer answered at some length, which prompted the dog owner to ask if it was important to try to figure out why the dog might be feeling the need to act in such a way. The trainer's response was essentially that what the dog was feeling was not really important; only what he was doing mattered. This in and of itself is reasonable advice. But then the trainer went on to modify this by noting that it was not possible to ever really know what another being was thinking or feeling, and so we shouldn't even guess. She admitted that perhaps "some" trainers with a real gift for reading body language might be able to make a pretty educated guess and be right most of the time, but most dog owners couldn't (and, it seemed implied, shouldn't bother to) develop that degree of skill. After all, the trainer concluded, if we do guess, "What if we're wrong?" What if we're wrong? So what if we are? Will the seventh veil of the temple rend because we've misunderstood another being? Will the stars fall from the heavens because we thought a dog (or a person or any other living being) meant one thing when actually they meant something else? This trainer's response made me intensely sad. Within the context of a trusting, loving relationship, we needn't be afraid to guess if our guesses spring from loving curiosity and an honest desire to know. If we are wrong, then we have a chance to learn. To my way of thinking, the ongoing process of learning to understand another being is a key point of any relationship, delightful, astounding and valuable beyond description, eclipsed only by the value in learning to understand ourselves. To me, a relationship is a journey into uncharted territories quite unlike the familiar convoluted trails of my own mind. Such a journey requires that I be willing to try-even stumble down-new trails. Within a loving relationship, there is no need for fearful caution, only respectful consideration. With each new person or animal I embrace into my life, I begin a journey with no clear map of where to go and what to say but nonetheless

  excited by the possibilities that lay ahead. Although it is said that every journey begins with a single step, reaching outward to another being is not so much a step as a leap of faith. Agnes de Mille noted that "living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. . . . We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark." To a certain degree, communication is a lifelong series of guesses. After all, one never really can know another's precise thoughts or experience their exact feelings. But we want to try, and we hope desperately that others will care enough to try to understand us. On the purest level, communication is our attempt to leap across the chasm that divides us from other minds, other ways of thinking and feeling, other ways of knowing and seeing and understanding the world we share. From the very moment we can conceive of Other, we begin a lifelong process of reaching out, past the boundary of our own skin, searching for the connections that in many ways help define who we are. We communicate because the world within us is not enough; without others, we are incomplete. Only through what we learn in our most profound relationships can we find the completeness in ourselves. To the extent that we're trapped in our bodies and cannot even begin to communicate more than a tiny fraction of the internal, lightning-fast torrent of our thoughts and feelings, it could be said that all of us constitute "a pig in a poke." Those looking on from outside the "poke" (sack) can only guess based on the gyrations and squeals precisely what might be happening to the "pig" inside. Quiet, for example, could be ominous. The pig might be dead, or merely sleeping, or waiting in silent frustration. Squealing could be pain, anger, or even a particularly loud dream. How then could we possibly know what was going on in that poke? We guess. How well we guess will depend on a number of factors. One is simply this-are we truly curious about the pig in the poke? If we don't really care one way or another about what might or might not be happening with that pig in the poke, we will not devote the energy required to satisfy our curiosity. Another factor is experience-have we ever dealt with a pig in a poke before? Obviously, a first time Poker is going to have a different set of guesses than someone who deals with pigs in pokes

  all the time. Most important, though, is this: How much empathy do we bring to the situation? We can see the pig in a poke in a number of ways. One view is the purely mechanical: the pig is contained, thus we can do what we like with him, though we do wish he'd stop squealing. Another option is the pragmatic approach: We feel badly that the pig is contained, but we can't waste time dreaming up better ways to transport a pig from point A to point . We treat him fairly, expect he'll get over it, and we do wish he'd stop squealing. There is also the empathetic approach: We try to imagine how it might be inside that poke, how we might make this easier on the pig, wonder about possibly better ways to transport pigs- and we do wish he'd stop squealing. The empathetic approach is, without question, sometimes very time- consuming. It requires that we work in slow, careful ways, going past merely treating an animal fairly as we achieve our goals and moving into working with that animal as a partner. It also requires a willingness to see the world from the animal's point of view, followed by a thoughtful contemplation of that perspective. Empathy shapes our view so that the other's perspective is included as part of our consideration; deeply felt, this may shift our own perspective and our goals considerably. The empathetic approach is the only one that allows dynamic quality of connection; without empathy, we are merely driving toward our own goals no matter how that may affect the other. Intimacy is not possible on such a one-way street. Although it requires more from us, in the end I think the results and the relationships possible when we work from an empathetic point of view far outweigh any drawbacks. />