Talking to Animals

by Jon Katz

  Temple Grandin visualizes livestock traveling through pens. Linda Tellington-Jones visualizes a healing process for horses. Veterinarians, trainers, handlers, farmers, and wildlife experts use visualization to communicate with animals in the wild, from chimpanzees to elephants.

  At its simplest, visualization is imagining what you want to happen. When Cesar Millan urges dog owners to “be the leader,” that is precisely what he is telling them. Think about the future you want for you and your dog, and picture it clearly in your mind. If we form clear and consistent images of our desired outcome in our heads, animals will absorb that from our own body language, attitude, and even smell.

  My first attempts at visualization were instinctive and primitive, and I was wary of even trying. I began, as always, with food. During those first few months, I put liver treats in my pocket; sometimes I gave Julius one, sometimes not. But he always paid attention to me, watching me as I began to walk. If he was calm around a dog, I threw him a treat. If he veered toward me and not the road, I tossed him another. If he lay quietly at my feet while I wrote, I tossed him another.

  And here’s the most interesting thing: if I wrote something penetrating or beautiful or thoughtful, I threw him several more. After a few months, he was sending me images and inspiration. I received them as impulses, beams of light, flashes of feeling.

  It didn’t really matter to Julius after a while whether I had treats. He associated them with me, accepted verbal praise happily, and it became completely instinctive and natural for him to stay close to me, to be calm. Sharing my workspace became his instinct. I noticed that the Apple “gong,” the soft bell that sounds when the computer starts up, was Julius’s cue to gather himself and settle down by my feet.

  On cold winter days I sometimes used Julius as a footstool, resting my feet on his big, soft belly. On dark days when writing was hardest for me, he brightened the room and the space, his presence and the sound of his breathing and sighing gave it a warm, even cozy, feeling. On warm and muggy days, I turned on the AC—Julius loved air-conditioning—and my writing space became a cave, a place of refuge insulated from the world beyond.

  Every morning, I imagined how our days together would go before they unfolded. I thought of our walks, our time together writing, his love of children, his calm around dogs, his wondrous temperament and generous spirit.

  Before we walked, I closed my eyes and cleared my head, moving into an almost meditative state. I saw an image of what I needed, what I wanted, and lo and behold, so it came to be.

  I got the dog I needed and wanted, the one I never imagined or knew existed. It was wonderful to me to feel this connection and think about it. At the time, I knew little about dogs, I avoided the growing shelves of dog books in the bookstore, I thought the dog love I saw often seemed excessive, overly emotional.

  My life with Julius was in my head and his. It was not about training or obedience, but something deeper. This process of communication is about intent, not obedience. What do we want? What do they want? How do we wish to live with our dogs? How can we show them?

  Dogs are one of the few species that have figured out how to live with humans, how to connect with them emotionally, to project loyalty and unconditional love. They have made themselves emotionally necessary to us, even if we no longer really need them in order to live.

  They—unlike raccoons, for example, or squirrels—have done this by grasping what we need and offering it to us. This makes them especially receptive to our intent. They want to please us. They want to know what we want from them. It is their instinct, their means of survival.

  As I’ve explained, food is not simply a treat or training tool for animals; it is the essence of life itself, their purpose and focus and instinct and drive. Animals live to eat. Dogs love us so much because we feed, care, shelter, and pay attention to them.

  At first I would instinctively toss Julius a treat whenever he was behaving like the dog I wanted or needed. Then I would reward him occasionally—both with food and praise. Then I repeatedly visualized what I wanted him to do. I sensed from the first that he received visual messages even when he could not understand the verbal ones.

  I would pause, gather myself, clear my head, and picture what I wished him to do. Stand quietly. Lie down in my office. Eat calmly. Approach children slowly and gently. Walk alongside my left knee.

  Sometimes, unfamiliar images would appear in my head, and I came to see that they were coming from Julius. This, I had learned, was how dogs talked to one another; this is how we were beginning to talk.

  Because Julius was a grounded and healthy dog bred to be with people and stay still for long periods, it was already his nature to stay close to me. In a sense, our walking and working together was a replica of the hunting experience Labs have been bred to undertake for hundreds of years.

  I am not a hunter, but the meaning of his behavior did not escape me. Were we out in the field, Julius would have naturally sat by my side for hours while I watched for ducks and geese. Lying at my feet while I typed, Julius was essentially doing the same thing. It was a behavior I could build on. Every dog has tendencies and behaviors we can build on, if we look for them and listen.

  We often seem to be at war with our animals; our culture sets it up that way. In our world, a good dog is a dog who abandons most of the natural behaviors of a dog—having sex a lot, digging holes in yards, running off after strange smells, eating revolting things, fighting with other dogs, chewing up garbage, pillows, and table legs, stealing food off counters. In the natural world, this is simply what dogs do. To us, this makes them “bad” dogs. We scold them, reprimand them, rub their noses in urine, swat them with newspapers, shout at them in words they don’t understand.

  Vets, trainers, behaviorists, and breeders will all tell you that dog training in America is a catastrophe, and an expensive one. Millions of people are spending a lot of money to learn about things they will never be able to do and that will most likely not work for them.

  A friend of mine was having lots of trouble walking a small dog—a Boston terrier—through the streets of Chicago, and to a dog park close to his apartment. The dog had arrived with a new partner, and was not originally his. This dog was battling him every step of the way, freaking out in the elevator, running in circles on the sidewalk, pulling and tugging at the leash. Walks were a nightmare, and an embarrassing one. In the dog park, the little dog nipped at people and ran in terror from the other dogs.

  My friend knew of my work, had met my dogs, and asked my advice. I told him there was a great failure of communication between him and the new dog in his life. He didn’t love this dog, I said, at least not yet. He and the dog were on different paths, leading different lives. I suggested he start communicating with his dog, listening to him. He was annoyed and uncomfortable with the dog’s behavior: that was the message the dog was getting, and the dog was talking back, saying loudly and clearly in his own language, “If you don’t like me, I don’t like you, I don’t have to do what you want, I don’t know what you want.”

  Most important, I said, you need to begin imagining how you want this dog to be with you—calm, quiet, responsive. My friend said he realized that he didn’t love the dog yet, and was annoyed by him. He understood this was his problem, not the dog’s. He’d always had big, easygoing dogs, never a dog quite like this. He admitted he had a stereotype of little dogs in his head; he thought they were yippy and annoying. Since that is what you expected, I said, that’s what you got.

  My friend calmed down and took things step by step. He stopped shushing the dog in the elevator, and instead let him get comfortable with the crowded space. He acknowledged his own impatience and stopped pulling and tugging at the leash; he stopped rushing the dog and urging him to pee and move along. He let the dog alone in the dog run to work out his social issues, find his place in the pecking order, figure out what he needed to make himself safe.

  In just a few weeks, a dramatic change occurred. The simple rea
lization that he was projecting all kinds of troubling images to his new dog altered the dynamic. Bit by bit, the dog calmed down. He was still yippy and more anxious than a Lab, but less disruptive each week.

  My friend came to appreciate the little dog’s intelligence and lively personality. As he relaxed, the people around him relaxed with the dog, and appreciated the dog more. The dog responded to this. He came to see his new environment as safe and interesting, and he began to forge a new relationship with my friend.

  “It is very different,” he told me after a few months. “Our walks are calm and easy. I’m liking him more. I will be loving him soon. I am a dog lover, after all.”

  Human behaviors block communication with dogs all the time. Many of us forget that they are animals, not children or people. We project our own emotions and neuroses onto them. We use words they do not understand. When we experience conflict with dogs, our heads are filled with unhelpful emotions—anxiety, frustration, anger. We do not have a clear image in our minds of how we wish them to be.

  I know a man who is obsessed with getting his Lab to exercise. He has turned the dog into a ball addict. He says he wants the dog to be happy and fulfilled, but this approach is misguided. Chasing a ball is a hunting activity, I told him. In excess, it is neither fulfilling nor happy; it’s simply arousing. It’s not necessary for the dog; it’s necessary for the human to feel good about the dog. And it is good for pet stores who want to make money on accessories. For most of their long history with humans, dogs did not have or need balls or toys; they made do with the world around them.

  This distinction—joy versus arousal—is central in learning to understand our dogs and pets as animals. Dogs love pack activity and exercise, but very often, what people perceive as fun and play is actually a hunting behavior that they have inherited as the predatory descendants of wolves. A Lab chasing a ball is not playing; he or she is exhibiting prey drive. Too much ball chasing turns them into obsessive hunters, not happy playmates. There is a very fine line between arousal—what a predatory animal feels when its hunting instincts are kicked into overdrive—and relaxed playing. Many people don’t understand the difference.

  With my dogs, I’ve learned to restrict hunting activities. We “play” outside, for fifteen or twenty minutes at a stretch. We never play inside the house; that is a place for quiet.

  Dogs in the wild sit around or sleep for about fifteen to nineteen hours a day, like lions. They don’t need to be aroused all day with playgroups, balls, Frisbees, and human wrestling mates. Labs are wonderful dogs, bred to sit still in marshes all day, but many of the ones I see are obnoxious, aroused, and often out of control.

  Understanding the emotions of animals is also essential to understanding whether and how they might grieve. Dogs do not understand the concept of death. When their canine companions leave, they have no way of knowing if they are down the block, on a walk, at the vet, or dead. Because they are pack animals, they will very much notice when a member of the pack is gone, and can even become disoriented or lethargic, but I have learned to be cautious about ascribing those symptoms to human-style grieving, which can be long-lasting and devastating.

  Dogs are immensely adaptable. Thousands of dogs displaced by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 were rehomed all over the country, and hundreds of thousands of rescue animals are rehomed every year. Very few of them suffered from prolonged grief and lament. We love our dogs so much that we want them to be like us, but we are not always reading their behaviors correctly. They have emotions, but they do not have our emotions.

  I explained this to the man who thought physical exertion was the key to his Lab’s happiness, and I gave him a mental exercise: Instead of taking the dog out to play, imagine him lying quietly in the house while you go online or read a book. Imagine him doing nothing. Talk to him when he is still, not racing round. Close your eyes and signal him with images of peacefulness and companionship. Imagine the dog you really wish to have and show these images to him; he will receive them over time.

  Talking to our animals is possible, but not simple. Imagining what we want is a process in which the human consistently imagines and visualizes the behavior he seeks from his or her dog, and, over time, the dog senses it, understands it, and then internalizes it. This is what happened with Julius, who walked with me sans leash and never went into the street, approached children gently, and lay down at my feet quietly when I went to work. At first, these were learned behaviors, my hopes and intentions for the dog. Over time, they became his intentions and behaviors. That’s the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, when the process really works.

  In the spring of 2014, Maria, my second wife (we were married in 2008), and I decided to lamb, something I had done a half-dozen times before, but something we had never done together. A farmer brought one of his rams, and five months later, our six ewes began to give birth. While a few of the births were tricky, we had the most trouble with Ma, a sweet, old rescue sheep who struggled painfully in her labor.

  We love Ma. She’s big, ungainly, and clumsy, but unfailingly friendly and curious. We imagined her lamb would be great fun.

  I came out one morning and saw Ma lying on her side. Her water had broken but the lamb had not appeared in the birth canal. Ma’s breath was becoming irregular and there was some awful bloody fluid coming out of her uterus and her nose. I decided she should be put down immediately, not suffer any further.

  Maria was away. I called the local large animal vet and she came over quickly. She agreed with my assessment but suggested we try one more thing. She set up an IV drip for Ma with some antibiotics and glucose for energy.

  The vet left, and Ma revived for a few hours, then began to struggle again. I started to call the vet back, then stopped, and stood still for a while. I cleared my head of anxiety and images of Ma dying. I sat down on the ground with her. I was quiet for a few minutes, and then I imagined her giving birth, saw her lamb’s head emerge under her tail, saw her gathering her strength for a push that would bring her baby into the world.

  I waited—I don’t know for how long—but when I looked down, I saw the lamb’s hooves beginning to emerge. I put on my surgical gloves, reached into the uterine canal, got a good grip, and pulled. From the other end, I felt Ma pushing and groaning. Suddenly, the lamb slid right out and onto the ground.

  It was a startling and beautiful sight; it seemed miraculous to me. The lamb slithered out, covered in amniotic fluid, its eyes closed. The ewe frantically licked away the film from her baby’s eyes and mouth, so it could see and breathe. For five minutes, the lamb struggled to balance and shivered, until it finally stood up. Red watched closely. When the lamb stood up, all of us took a breath—dog, mother, and human.

  Poor Ma could barely breathe, but she struggled to her feet and began licking her lamb, cleaning him up, bonding with his smell.

  I called the vet and told her what had happened. “There was no way that baby came out by himself,” she said. “Whatever you told her, she heard and believed.”

  I think Ma did hear me. I sent her a powerful and very distinct image of a lamb moving through the birth canal and out into the world. Ma had answered me in the Pole Barn that day. But she didn’t just listen, she told me things. She told me that she wished to live, she wished to have her baby, she did not wish to be euthanized. What I saw in my head, what I heard from Ma—all of it came to be, right in front of me.

  It was one of the most wondrous experiences of my life to see that baby open his eyes, struggle to stand; to see Ma clean and comfort him, and bring him to life. I stood to take a breath, but then saw something moving in Ma’s stomach. I reached in and pulled out a female lamb. She had twins in there.

  I am able to talk to animals like Ma because I respect them. I don’t simply see them as piteous and dependent beings. I see them as sentient, with a consciousness and will of their own. Ma is not my ward; she is one of my partners on the earth. We were in that barn together, sharing in one of the seminal experiences of l
ife. And we got through it together.

  I didn’t have to wonder if Ma wanted to have her baby, or could. All I had to do was ask and listen.

  Two years after Julius came into my life, I went back to the breeder in Ramsey and brought Stanley home. He was a Lab from the same place I got Julius. He was as intuitive, loving, accepting, and easy around my work as Julius. He walked just as closely and calmly, and loved everyone he saw just as much. From Julius and Stanley, I learned that the value of a good breeder is that I could select a dog inclined to live with me in the way I needed, rather than setting myself up to be in conflict with my dog, which was the case with so many other people I knew.

  Julius and Stanley were the first to teach me that there was, in fact, a way to a wiser and more mystical understanding of animals. We didn’t talk in words and human narratives, but we talked all the time. I learned I had a gift for getting dogs to understand what I needed, and another for understanding what they were needing and feeling.

  In 2000, these two dogs and I undertook our greatest adventure, and communication was a big part of it. I bought a cabin on the top of a hill in the Upstate New York town of Jackson. I spent a year on that mountaintop with Julius and Stanley. My time there gave me the strength and clarity to begin a great change in my life, to act upon a determination to live a life of meaning and spiritual depth.

  At the time, I was approaching fifty, and my life was about to change in almost every conceivable way. I was unhappy with my life in New Jersey, and my first wife and I had begun to drift apart. Increasingly I was drawn to the country, pulled by the idea of learning more about animals and writing about them. I found them healing and challenging, and I had a deepening spiritual connection with them.

  Up on the mountain, I wrote my first book about dogs, A Dog Year, and the focus of my life began to change, though I had no idea how much. Animals led the way for me. They were the magical helpers Joseph Campbell describes when he writes about the pilgrim setting out on the hero journey. You get lost, wander into a dark place, and sometimes, if you are lucky, you are found and guided.