Stanley Coren - Born to Bark: My Adventures with an Irrepressible and Unforgettable Dog

ALSO BY STANLEY COREN
Why Does My Dog Act That Way?
How Dogs Think
How to Speak Dog
The Pawprints of History
The Intelligence of Dogs
Sleep Thieves
The Left-Hander Syndrome
What Do Dogs Know (with Janet Walker)
Why We Love the Dogs We Do
The Modern Dog

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First Free Press hardcover edition November 2010

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Coren, Stanley.
Born to bark: my adventures with an irrepressible and
unforgettable dog/Stanley Coren.
p.cm.
Includes index.
1. Cairn terrierBiography. 2. Coren, Stanley. I. Title.
SF429.C3C67 2010
636.7550929dc22 2010013608

ISBN 978-1-4391-8920-7
ISBN 978-1-4391-8922-1 (ebook)

This book is dedicated to my wife Joan, and to Flint and Wiz,
who I hope are waiting for me somewhere.

Born to Bark

For Christmas the woman who would become my wife bought me a doga little terrier. The next year her Christmas gift to me was a shotgun. Most of the people in my family believe that those two gifts were not unrelated.

The dogs name was Flint. He was an oversized Cairn terrier, mostly gray with black pricked ears and a black mask. Weighing about 23 pounds and standing something over 13 inches at the shoulder, he looked for all the world like a jumbo version of Toto in the original film version of The Wizard of Oz. For thirteen years he was my dearly beloved companion, and for thirteen years he and my wife were at war with each other.

I was trained as a researcher and a psychologist; however, Flint was a key that unlocked for me a way of looking at canine behavior and human relationships with dogs. Some people consider me to be an expert on dog behavior and the bond that humans have with their dogs. If the opinion of those people is correct, then I must admit that my primary education came from growing up around dogs and watching and interacting with them. My university-level education came from my research and study of the scientific literature on how dogs think, but my postgraduate training was the result of living with Flint. It was Flint who taught me how to watch dogs and the reactions that they cause in the human world that they live in. He also introduced me to the world of Dog People, some of whom may be fanatical, loony, and misguided, but most of whom are empathetic, caring, and dedicated to their canine companions. Many of these Dog People became my friends and the source of much of the pleasure that I have experienced over the years.

My lifes activities are divided between two different environments. The first is the ordered and structured world of the university, scientific research, data, and research publications. It is a world populated with many staid, serious, and predictable people and equally predictable and structured situations. My other living space is the chaotic world of dogs, dog training, and dog competitions. This world is populated by dog owners, trainers, handlers, judges, and competitors, many with strange or unique ideas. It is also filled with dogs of every variety and temperament, some well trained, steady, and friendly, and others that have been allowed basically to run wild in their human habitat. The canine universe seems to be driven more by emotions than logic, so apparently random things may happen. As Flint soon taught me, often the best response to such unpredictable events is a sense of humor. Going back and forth between these two worlds is much like looking at a Hollywood feature film where the director is trying to give you a glimpse of the workings of the mind of a schizophrenic, alternating between ordered reality and delusional fantasy.

Flint became a part of both of those lives. He soon showed me that I had a lot more to learn about dogs and that there were some clear holes in my knowledge of how dogs think. However, there were even more holes in my understanding of the nature of the bond that humans have with dogsor, as in my wifes case, the bond we may not have with a particular dog.

Let me start by giving you a bit of history about myself before that canine whirlwind arrived on the scene. Dogs have been the signposts that have marked the various stages in my lifes journey. For as long as I can remember there was always a dog in my home. The first dog of my memory is a beagle named Skipper, but there was at least one dog earlier than that. I have seen photos of me rolling around on the ground with Rex, who was a husky-type dog, either a Malamute or a Siberian husky. If we can read anything from the few photos we had, I dearly loved that dog and, according to my mother, he adored me. One photograph provides some evidence of why our bond was so strong. In it I am sitting next to Rex and I am happily chewing on a dog biscuit. My mother claimed that in that photo Rex was looking at me with great love and affection, but it appears to me that he was looking at the dog treat and hoping that something edible was about to happen for him.

One day, when I was around eight or nine years of age, my mother and her sister, my Aunt Sylvia, were having coffee together and looking at some old family snapshots. As they sat chatting and laughing at the black-and-white images, the page turned to reveal that particular picture of Rex and me. Sylvia was appalled.

Chesna, that is disgusting! my aunt said, and immediately went into the lecturing mode that she used when she felt that she needed to instruct someone and bring them to her own moral and intellectual high ground, Stanley is chewing on a dog biscuit. Its unsanitary. Its unhealthy! Its nearly child abuse!

Sylvia, its just a dog biscuit, my mother gently replied. The first time I gave Stan a biscuit to give to Rex, he started to chew on it himself. I dont think that he much liked the taste, but he liked the fact that Rex would hang around him until he finally gave him what remained of the treat. After that, Stan wouldnt go anyplace without a dog treat in his pocket, and Rex would never be more than an arms length away from him. Thats what saved Stanleys life.