by Josh Dean
Sisler followed no established training philosophy; he made things up along the way. His idea was that dogs should be taught only one thing at a time, and slowly. He would work his dogs daily, but only for fifteen or so minutes at a time. There was no leash, no punishment—rather, he used praise and pancakes, prepared daily for his breakfast by his wife, Joy. Sisler himself wasn’t a breeder, but his dogs were so smart and adept at training that they were popular studs, and so they were all part of the breed’s founding stock.
Fortunately for posterity, someone uploaded outtakes of Sisler’s grainy old home movies from the 1950s to YouTube and, because there’d been no sound track, added in some Irish fife music plus pop-up comments that replace Sisler’s commentary, lost in the transfer. We see, among other nifty tricks, his dog Queenie “walk” across a field on her hind legs, three dogs jumping rope simultaneously (one in front of Sisler and two behind), two dogs on a teeter-totter, dogs pretending to have an injured leg, a dog doing a handstand, one dog standing on hind legs balancing atop another’s back, two dogs playing leapfrog, and—Sisler’s big closer in the rodeo act—two dogs balancing on hind legs atop a bar/broomstick that itself is balanced on Sisler’s belt buckle.
You’ll also see Sisler’s pet greyhound, which could jump as high as his shoulder and do forward rolls. Plus, all the dogs “tucking him in” under a sheet, then getting “into bed” themselves, and, finally, toward the end, an extended sequence of a monkey in a cowboy hat riding an Aussie that is racing around a course with jumps, in the snow.* I can’t say for certain that Sisler was the progenitor of this now-familiar but resolutely popular Internet meme of monkeys riding animals, but he had to have been one of the first. He even taught one dog to do laundry—which is impressive but something you’d want to resort only to in a pinch. The dog, lacking thumbs, has to use his mouth to do the work, and it’s awfully slow.
How smart is Jack, on the scale of dog intelligence? That depends how you define smarts. But you’ll rarely find a description of Australian shepherds that does not include the word “intelligent,” which surely stems from the dog’s purpose—in order to herd sheep, a job it is bred to do independently, an Aussie must be able to react quickly and make decisions on its own, without allowing for the input of humans. They’re also highly adept at following direction, as is immediately clear if you do happen to see one working cattle or sheep in conjunction with a human, and very willing to take orders. That makes them, theoretically, easy to train. And that, I believe, is what most people think of when they think of dog intelligence.
Jack’s vocabulary initially struck me as very impressive—by the time he turned two, it was approaching a hundred words, and that seemed like a lot, though I didn’t have much to compare it against. It had been more than a decade at this point since I’d lived with a dog, and the last one I’d lived with, the wild mixed-breed Whitney, was utterly untrained. So my baseline for dog obedience was pretty low.
Dogs are often said to have the mental capacity of a two-year-old child,* and if you use that comparison, a hundred words more or less seems about right. From two on, children build vocabulary at a frenetic rate, picking up an average of ten words a day throughout adolescence; according to studies, the average educated, English-speaking child in the United States will have a vocabulary of at least sixty thousand words by the end of high school.
Dogs plateau far sooner. A two-year-old dog is a mature dog—not at peak maturity in every breed, but the brain by that age is as developed as it will be. There are competing claims for all-time-smartest dog, as measured by breadth of vocabulary. For years it was thought to be a border collie in Switzerland named Rico, who knew more than two hundred specific toys by name and could retrieve them on command. The magazine Science studied Rico and found that his owners used operant conditioning—which is the fancy psychologist’s term for positive reinforcement—to train him. They would present the dog with a new toy, say its name, and allow Rico to play with it. They’d then add it to his quiver of toys and ask him to retrieve it. If he brought the right toy, he was given food; if not, he got bupkes.
Worried that Rico was benefiting from owner cues—what scientists call the “Clever Hans effect”*—researchers put the objects in a different room and found that, sure enough, Rico retrieved correctly nearly every time. They declared that his vocabulary was “comparable to that of language-trained apes, dolphins, sea lions, and parrots.”
Scientists attributed at least some of his aptitude for learning “novel words” to his herding nature (which provides high motivation, or “drive” as Aussie people like to say) and also the fact that “dogs appear to have been evolutionarily selected for attending to the communicative intentions of humans.” Layman’s translation: The ones that learn best were kept as pets and not used as ingredients for dinner.
A few years back, an even cleverer border collie surfaced, also in Europe. Betsy knew more than three hundred words, most of them names for toys. And, like Rico, she showed a remarkable ability to learn new words quickly. But Juliane Kaminski, a cognitive psychologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, wanted to use Betsy to test a more radical idea: that dogs had learned the particularly human ability to employ symbols, to let one object represent another. She asked Betsy’s owner to show the dog a picture of an object she’d never seen before (the example in a National Geographic article on the experiment is a “fuzzy, rainbow-colored Frisbee”) and then tell her to go find it in a room that held multiple toys. Betsy returned with the Frisbee.
When Kimberly first hired Heather, she wanted to be sure her new handler appreciated the aptitude of this special animal. She typed up and printed out a sheet with a few important notes. For instance, that he was “100% housebroken,” he “does not chew other than some toys and he has never taken food,” and “he loves empty bottles and will steal caps, but he doesn’t eat them, he just chews them to pieces.” Most important, “He’s very routine and loves to be with people.” She finished by noting that he has “a pretty big vocabulary, and I thought if you were familiar with it, it could make your time with him easier or more enjoyable.” The following dictionary of Jack’s terms was attached. (It has since expanded greatly, by the way.)
VOCABULARY
* * *
The ever-growing list (as of September 2011)
SIT
BISCUIT
DOWN
SHAKE (will do both paws)
STAND
HIGH FIVE (both)
STAND UP
TOUCH
COME
OFF
HERE
UP
STAY
YES
WAIT
FIND
SETTLE
LEASH
LEAVE IT
TREADMILL
GIVE
BIKE
WATCH
RIDE
WITH ME
WALK
KISS
OVER
HUG
PLACE
IN
TARGET
OUT
TABLE
OUTSIDE
TURNAROUND
POTTY
TWIRL
GO PEE
HANDSTAND
BIG POTTY
BACKUP
HUNGRY
FOOT UP
BREAKFAST
ALL ON
DINNER
OUT
SCOOBY
JUMP
TUNNEL
GO
TIRE
WHERE
WEAVE
EASY
UPSTAIRS
GET READY
DOWNSTAIRS
TELL ME
FRAME
QUIET
BACK
KENNEL UP
HOLD
SUMMER
TOYS
* * *
Toys : Most toys come and go, and Jack can learn the name of a new toy very quickly, sometimes
in a matter of minutes—especially if he likes it a lot.
FRISBEE—the all-time favorite.
DUCK
BALL
ROPE
BABY
CHICKEN
TIRE
BURGER
BOTTLE
SANTA
FROG
HOMER
MONKEY
She added this note: “I never fight him or take a toy. He will put it in your hand if you ask him to GIVE and you don’t participate in his teasing you to take it he will nicely give it.”
* * *
One final interesting thing about Jack’s intelligence is that he doesn’t require reward in order to learn additional tasks or words. He seems to have the ability—indeed, the desire—to do it for praise alone, for the simple satisfaction of proving his own smarts. Given my recent interactions on the playground circuit, I’d say Jack is at least as bright as the average two-year-old. Which one of these animals possesses more enthusiasm, on the other hand, remains up for debate.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
New Paltz
* * *
All dogs smile, which is to say their faces become pleasant and relaxed, with ears low, eyes half shut, lips soft and parted, and chin high. This is a dog smile.
—ELIZABETH MARSHALL THOMAS, The Hidden Life of Dogs
* * *
Ludwigs, Pennsylvania, hadn’t been an especially large show, but in comparison, the Wallkill Kennel Club’s show in New Paltz, New York, was a middling affair. A mere 574 dogs and their human attendants had set upon the grounds of the Ulster County Fairgrounds, in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains. I arrived a few minutes before Jack was to enter the ring with a small group of Aussies, including just three specials, and Heather looked a trifle annoyed with me. “Maybe you should stay away,” she said as I approached the setup. “He’s a little wild.” It was not a surprising request at this point, but it wasn’t just because she didn’t want me to get Jack riled up. Someone else had already achieved that result. “The rottie’s in season.”
More temptation was not what young Jack needed, and yet he was now sharing a truck for the weekend with a rottweiler bitch in heat.
I slinked away and picked a spot behind some people in the ring’s most distant corner. Kimberly wasn’t able to make the show, and when I’d spoken to her on the drive up, she was still fretting over the state of his coat, but neither patchy fur nor rampaging hormones were enough to dissuade the day’s judge, who worked swiftly in the thickening summer heat and picked Jack over the small field that notably included Bentley, the blue merle he hadn’t beaten in months.
I met Heather just outside the ring and asked her if my hiding place had been adequate or if Jack had noticed me while he was in the ring. She flared her nostrils, squinted her eyes, and made a little nod of her head that I interpreted as “Follow me.” Once out of earshot of the ring and the judge, she stopped. “Never ask me if he saw you.” Okay, I said, confused. To intentionally signal a dog from outside the ring, she explained, is a trick known as “double handling” and is illegal, though oft deployed. “Discreetly,” she said. She understood that in my case I actually meant that I was trying to avoid Jack’s glance, not capture it, but the point of double handling is that some handlers use friends or associates positioned strategically in order to get an inattentive dog to look in a specific direction (straight ahead during the stack, for instance) or to use toys or lures to excite an otherwise lethargic animal.
Nowhere is this handling trickery more brazenly deployed than at a German shepherd specialty show, I learned, where it is a common sight to see people running around the outside of a ring, flagrantly signaling dogs by clanging a cowbell. In Germany double handing is such an ingrained component of shepherd shows that organizers have given up trying to deter it and instead will now set up, using ropes, a second ring outside the actual competition ring to allow room for all the running and whistling without fear that the whistlers might run into and over spectators. In American all-breed shows, on the other hand, double handling is a bit stealthier. But, as is the case with chalking and other grooming fixes that are technically frowned upon, Heather admitted, “Everyone does it.”
Around lunchtime black clouds rumbled in over the Shawangunk cliffs that loom over the hippie hamlet and brought a torrential downpour of the type that could ruin a bichon’s perm. It blew through with high winds but no lightning, causing only a half-hour delay during which the show’s handlers didn’t even bother to stop blow-drying their dogs. Jack, meanwhile, was going nuts—drooling madly outside the group ring—and when Heather left him for me to watch on a friend’s grooming table (which, being raised off the ground, at least kept him stationary), he repeatedly managed to get his head stuck to the metal grooming pole because of a new and stronger magnet that Kimberly was using in his ear correctors.
Jack is, I told Heather upon her return, the world’s spazziest show dog.
“That should be your book title,” she said.
It might be the subtitle, I replied.
A bit after 2:00 P.M., the ring steward called the Herding dogs into the group ring, and Jack and Heather fell in line behind a blue merle collie and two spots ahead of Roy, the bearded collie handled by Cliff Steele that was having one hell of a year. He seemed to win every show I attended. The judge paid Jack some close attention, hesitating extra long as he paused to give him one last visual study on his final walk-by, but no dice. The Herding Group 1 went to Roy. That freaking beardie was shaggily lolling his way across the circuit, piling up medals.
As Jack was the only one of their dogs to qualify for the groups, Heather and Kevin were finished early, with a whole afternoon ahead of them. I suggested we celebrate this rare moment of downtime by having a beer, and Heather shook her head. “We don’t drink at shows,” she said. “I’m responsible for people’s animals.” This is something I didn’t know about Heather (or Kevin), but I did understand her rationale. “Believe me,” she added, “not everyone feels the same way.”
So most handlers drink?
“Oh, yeah.” And the way she said it implied that this wasn’t all they were doing.
Weed?
“Yep. I’m so naïve, though.” Heather explained that now she’s regularly spying other handlers, who shall remain nameless, sneaking off the show grounds to “get high,” but that for years she was totally oblivious to the fact. She said she finally caught on a couple years into her full-time life on the circuit when Kevin pointed out a group wandering into the woods and said, “What do you think they’re doing out there?” Kevin knew exactly what they were doing out there. His wife, however, was somewhat scandalized by the news.
She patted me on the shoulder. “So there you go—keep an eye out for people walking into the woods.”
Day two of the Hudson Valley Cluster brought more people, more dogs, and far better weather. Having taken along the family for a weekend in the country, I spent the night at a nearby inn and arrived at the show plenty early, with ample time to let Jack bounce and vibrate and otherwise get past the greeting stage of his excitement curve.
A new owner, showing his Nova Scotia duck-tolling retriever for the first time, noticed Jack licking my face from the grooming table and asked Heather what seemed like an obvious question: How is the temperament of this friendly, handsome dog?
“Good,” Heather answered. “Too good.”
What did she mean by “too good”? the man wondered. This sounded counterintuitive.
“It means he wants to jump all over you and show it,” she said, and gave an example of how this isn’t a positive thing in the context of his job as show dog. In the previous day’s breed ring, the judge finished his inspection and said, sweetly, “Aren’t you a handsome boy?”
“That’s all it takes for Jack,” Heather said. “But you can’t tell a judge not to talk to him.”
He’s a show dog in spite of himself, I chimed in, and realized that, too, might work as a subtitle
.
“Oh, boy. Last night was fun,” Heather said, meaning that it was not fun at all. The rottie was now “in full standing heat,” which meant she was biologically primed to be bred. This is hardly the kind of thing any male dog can ignore, and so it wasn’t just Jack who’d been agitated. “Nacho was howling all night, too. Then Trader started in. All three boys were going nuts. At one point I thought, ‘Am I ever getting to sleep?’”
Jack’s fate on this day lay in the hands of Mr. Victor Clemente, a man in rectangular metal-framed glasses with a ring of gray hair and a wisp of bangs that fell onto his forehead.
Two dogs who’d been beating Jack lately were entered—Bentley and Player, a nice, sturdy blue merle with a pretty face and a thick coat. The more I saw Jack around other Aussies, the more I realized that he always stands out (in most cases it’s fair to say that he leaps out). If you’re a judge looking for the “perfect” Aussie, you might opt for a typey black tri, and that often happens. Structurally, Jack is sound—he is a textbook Aussie—but the first thing you notice about him is that he looks unique. And I imagine some judges are drawn to that while others shy away, opting for a perfect black tri instead.
What was also increasingly clear was that none of the other Aussies gave off the electricity that Jack did, which was—again—both bad and good. All around the ring, the other Aussies were calmly relaxing. I watched Jessica Plourde bait Bentley playfully, allowing him to jump around and enjoy himself; it’s something Heather would never dare do with Jack.
