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Two days after I’d been round to see Jim, he appeared at my front door. I asked him in for a cup of tea, and we sat there talking about dogs. My pack were playing in the garden and I asked them into the kitchen.
It was then that something uncanny happened.
As soon as he arrived in the house, Ben went straight over to Jim and sat down on the floor next to him. Within seconds, Jim was almost instinctively stroking Ben’s neck and head.
‘What’s his name?’ he asked.
‘That’s Ben,’ I said, deliberately avoiding going into any detail.
As we chatted, Jim kept stroking Ben. And the more he stroked him, the closer Ben snuggled up to him. It was a joy to behold.
Jim left after an hour or so, seeming to have enjoyed himself.
‘See you soon, Jan,’ he said as he headed off.
A couple of days later, Ellie, Tony and I were walking back from the school taxi drop-off. As we went past Jim’s house, he was in the window looking out and beckoned to me to wait.
‘Glad I caught you, Jan,’ he said, emerging from the front door. ‘I’ve given it a lot of thought and I think I’d like a dog.’
‘Oh, good for you,’ I said. ‘Have you decided on what breed you’d like?’
‘Well, if I could find a dog like your Ben, I’dbe delighted.’
Ellie shot me a look immediately, but she didn’t need to say anything.
‘Would you like Ben?’ I asked.
Jim was taken aback for a moment or two. ‘Well, I, er,’ he spluttered, not sure what to say.
Finally, I thought it was the right time to tell him Ben’s story. As I explained the situation, Jim’s face lit up.
‘Jan, I’d love to have him,’ he beamed.
Even then, I didn’t want to foist on Jim a dog that wasn’t right for him. So the moment I got home, I put Ben on a lead and walked him round to Jim’s house.
‘I’ll leave you two together for a couple of hours, to see how you get along here,’ I said. ‘I’ll be back to take Ben home later.’
I returned after I’d put the children to bed. I found Ben, snuggled up next to Jim’s armchair, looking every inch as if he was another piece of furniture.
‘So, Jan, could Ben stay?’ he asked simply, stroking Ben once more.
I thought he meant overnight, and so I explained that I didn’t think it would be good for Ben, especially as he’d just got over the upheaval of moving back from Sheffield.
‘Oh, not just for tonight. Can he stay for good?’ Jim said.
Ben was sitting at Jim’s feet now. The pair of them looked as if they were made for each other. I couldn’t help myself as the tears started rolling down my face.
‘Of course he can, Jim,’ I said, when I had eventually regained a little of my composure. ‘I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather he stayed.’
The transformation was miraculous. About a week after Ben had moved in with Jim, I met a lady in the village shop.
‘I haven’t seen Jim Moss for two years, now I’ve seen him every day this week,’ she said.
Almost immediately, Jim had become one of the familiar sights in the village, striding along with Ben on his lead. Once a week, he and Ben would walk four miles to the nearest market town, where Jim would pop into a pub for a couple of drinks, then do his shopping at the market and walk back home again. He was once more the man he had been before Amy’s death – only now it was he and Ben who were inseparable.
It was many months later that I finally got to have a proper talk with Jim. I saw him in the village and he invited me in for a cup of tea and a chat.
The atmosphere in the house had changed completely from when I had last been there. Before, it was clear that everything was pretty much as it had been when Amy was alive. The house looked as if a woman lived in it – there were knick-knacks and feminine touches everywhere. Now it was very different. Amy hadn’t been forgotten – her picture still dominated the living room, and the flowers were as fresh as ever – but the rest of the house now reflected Jim’s personality rather than hers. He had redecorated and bought new furniture. The knick-knacks had gone and another photograph took pride of place on Jim’s mantelpiece – a lovely portrait of Ben.
Jim was obviously in the mood to talk and, as the tea flowed, he explained how important Ben had been to him. He confirmed what had been obvious to all of us who knew him. For the first two years after Amy’s death, he’d been a lost soul.
‘I hadn’t been able to come to terms with losing Amy. I couldn’t let go of her because I was all alone,’ he said. Ben’s arrival had provided him with company – and the strength finally to let go.
‘I hadn’t been able to grieve properly until I had him,’ he said. ‘When Ben arrived, I was able to start crying. He didn’t laugh at me for doing it, or stumble for the right words to console me. He just sidled up close and was there for me. That dog gave me a reason to live again,’ he told me. ‘Ben showed me my life wasn’t over.’
As so often happens, the dog had opened new doors for Jim. For some reason, people are more likely to strike up a conversation with someone who is walking a dog. And so it proved with Jim.
‘Ben has helped me make a lot of new friends,’ Jim explained. He told me his life was busier than it had ever been.
It was almost overwhelming to hear just how profound an effect this dog had had on Jim’s life.
Jim and Ben’s story has always remained with me, and it is an important one for a number of reasons. I am often asked to sum up what is so rewarding about having a dog. To be honest, it’s something I often find hard to put into words. On many an occasion I have used Jim’s story as the answer. To me, their story says more about the pleasures of owning a dog than any worthy, wordy statement. Jim and Ben were there for each other when it really mattered. And they rewarded each other with all the loyalty and love they could muster. I often think of the two of them walking down the country lanes together. If there’s an image of owner and dog in perfect harmony, then that’s it.
In the years that followed, as I delved deeper into our relationship with dogs, I came to realise he symbolised something more significant. Jim, as far as I was aware, wasn’t someone with experience of living with dogs. Yet, as I’d seen from the moment he and Ben had first met, he seemed to have a natural affinity, they seemed to trust and like him. When Ben had gone to live with him, they had built up a remarkably close bond. And again it seemed to have happened quite naturally. Jim never once came to me for any additional advice on looking after springers. I never heard of Jim attending any of the obedience classes that were popular in the area at the time. He just got on with it – with admirable results.
It was only years later, when I thought about that conversation with him, that it struck me what the key to his success must have been. It came to me when I remembered Jim with Amy all those years before. He had approached his relationship with Ben just as he had treated his marriage to Amy. When Amy had been alive, Jim had respected her. As he’d said himself, he hadn’t tried to change her, to mould her into something she was not. He had let her be herself – and she’d let him be himself.
Essentially, he had done the same thing with Ben. Jim had let his dog be himself and Ben had rewarded his master by allowing him to be himself at a time when he desperately needed to do so. With Ben around, Jim had finally felt free to cry openly and mourn. It was something so natural, yet at the same time so rare.
Of course, as we all know, relationships are not always this simple. Ordinary life can be much more complicated and demanding than this. People do have to change and make allowances for each other – and their dogs have to fit into their life as well. But within Jim and Ben’s story is an essential truth – something that has struck me as more and more important as the years have gone by: respect is the key to all great relationships.
FEELING THE FORCE (#ulink_9d0ebc9d-510c-5f82-a580-d0325e55b781)
The importance of drawing on the lessons of others (#ulink_9d0ebc9d-510c-5f82-a580-d0325e55b781)
Formulating the ideas that make up my method of communicating with dogs was a slow, almost imperceptible, invisible process. There was no real eureka moment, no apples fell from the trees. For years, usually without my realising it, people or events provided me with pieces in a giant jigsaw puzzle. Then one day I looked down to see that jigsaw complete.
The short version of the story is this. As my involvement in the dog world grew through the 1970s and 1980s, I had begun to harbour a deep distrust of traditional training methods. I attended – and even ran – my fair share of classes promoting these views, but I felt more and more that they were too aggressive, too reliant on the domination of the owner and the subjugation of the dog to his or her will. I felt there had to be another way.
The turning point came early in the 1990s, when fate conspired to take me by the hand. It was then that I saw a demonstration by the American ‘horse whisperer’ Monty Roberts. It was an inspiration to see the way he invited the horses to follow him of their own free will, using signals that the animals understood instinctively, rather than resorting to violence or aggressive behaviour of any sort. Monty and his ‘join up’ method set me thinking about whether it was possible to replicate this in dogs, to connect once more with the lost language that man and his best friend shared thousands of years ago.
While I had always been interested in dogs, by now I had begun to see them and their behaviour in a broader historical context, specifically in terms of their relationship with their ancient ancestor, the wolf.
I had discovered that wolf packs operate according to a strict hierarchy, with the Alpha pair as leaders and sole decision makers and the remainder of the pack ranked below according to a strict pecking order. Studying films and documentaries about wolves, I saw that the Alpha pair used four key moments in the day-to-day life of the pack to assert and sometimes reassert their authority. At mealtimes, for instance, they would always eat first. When it was time to go on the hunt, the Alpha pair would lead. At times of perceived danger, the Alphas would either withdraw the pack to safety or confront the threat on their behalf. And, finally, when the pack were reunited after a separation of some kind, the subordinates would pay the Alpha pair some kind of homage, licking frantically at their faces and carrying their bodies and tails lower than their leaders.
At the time, I had a pack of highly intelligent and responsive dogs sharing my life. As I studied the way they interacted more closely, I was surprised to see my own pack indulged in its share of ritualistic behaviour too. Like all dogs, they misbehaved here and there, but they also seemed to do so in a repetitive way, as if there was a pattern to it. As I watched them more closely, I saw striking similarities to the behaviour within the wolf packs. I realised my dogs became most agitated at mealtimes, as we prepared for our walks, when visitors arrived at the house and on my return from work in the evenings. What was more, they interacted with each other in a way that suggested there was a pecking order between them. For instance, my German shepherd, Sasha, seemed to carry herself in a more erect way, as if to keep a distance from the rest of the pack. At other times, she would interact with the rest of the pack, often licking them in a ritualised way. Clearly, the dog had been taken out of the wolf pack, but the wolf pack hadn’t been taken out of the dog. I began to see that my dogs were operating according to the same, hard-wired instincts as their ancestors. There was some kind of hierarchy within the pack and their behaviour was being coloured by it.
The real breakthrough came when I realised they were treating me as part of the pack. At the time, my dogs jumped up at me when I came home, pulled at the lead whenever we went out on a walk, and barked and became agitated when people appeared unexpectedly at the door. I began to wonder whether my dogs believed I too was part of their hierarchy – and whether they saw me as a subordinate member within our pack. Just because I saw myself as being the person responsible for looking after our domestic pack, it didn’t mean that they shared that view. Suddenly, all sorts of behaviour were explained. If my dogs believed they were responsible for me, for instance, the causes of separation anxiety became clear. It was no longer a case of a dog pining for its owner when they were not at home, but one of a frantic parent desperate because it had lost its child and had no idea whether it was safe or not. If there was a eureka moment, then that was the closest I’ve come to it.
From there I began to see that the key to changing my relationship with my dogs lay in removing the mantle of leadership from them and taking it on myself. What was particularly appealing about this was that if I could do this naturally, by using signals that they instinctively understood, they would relinquish this responsibility automatically, they would elect me leader of their own free will. There would be no need for violence, coercion or subjugation. The dogs would simply be listening to their instincts. What’s more, as long as I remained a convincing Alpha, they would follow my lead – again as their instincts told them to.
Slowly, falteringly at first, I began to put together a system of signals, to be used at the four key times so that I could establish myself as leader of my own domestic pack. When we reunited after a separation I made sure we did so on my terms and at a time of my choosing, as a leader would do. I did this by ignoring any attention-seeking, waiting until the dogs calmed down, then calling them to me. In a similar vein I made sure the dogs were calm before leading them out on our walks. At the same time, I began to take charge of situations when there was a perceived danger to the pack. Here, if the dogs barked or got excited at the sign of a visitor at the door, I simply thanked them for alerting me to the danger, thereby relieving them of the responsibility of worrying. Finally, I took charge of mealtimes, taking a mouthful of a snack before laying down the food for my dogs to eat. Again, the idea was that if I was in control of the food then I must be the leader of the domestic pack. Throughout the process, I underscored everything with positive reinforcement, using food rewards to help speed the message that if they did the right thing, good things happened.
It was like watching a minor miracle take place. Over the following weeks and months, I was able to watch as our levels of communication improved beyond all recognition. And their behaviour improved enormously too – as did my enjoyment of life with them. One thing led to another, and soon I found myself using my method to help other people overcome problems with their dogs. By the mid 1990s, I had taken my first tentative steps into full-time ‘troubleshooting’, with my own small business.
It was an exhilarating period in my life. What made it all the more exciting was the way it crystallised some of the important lessons I’d been given earlier in my life. I began to see that in my earlier life I had been given many pointers as to the way ahead. Encounters I had forgotten in the past suddenly began to take on new meanings. The respect I already felt for those wise voices of my youth now grew deeper than ever.
I saw, for instance, the wisdom of old heads such as my Uncle Jim and how right he was in believing we should go along with an animal’s instincts, and to trust its nature to show us the right way to do things. By adopting this philosophy with my own dogs, I had been shown the way ahead. I understood the significance of what Jim Moss had taught me about respecting your dog – and the rewards that flowed from that. I saw too the importance of my cousin Doreen’s idea that dogs have feelings.
At the root of my new-found thinking about how best to get dogs to comply with my wishes, was the idea of dogs’ innate selfishness, the ‘What’s in It for Me’ principle, as illustrated by Uncle George as he persuaded Rex to stay off his rose beds. Now, here I was using the idea that it is far better to work with the dog than against it, using positive reinforcement to underline key messages.
I had gleaned so much from listening and watching other people and their dogs. But as I began to use my new-found knowledge, I was certain there was plenty more to learn, both from the present and the past. And I wasn’t wrong.
LIVING IN THE REAL WORLD (#ulink_42b78bc7-f0a7-578c-ab8b-aab635eede0d)
Why great owners know their limits (#ulink_42b78bc7-f0a7-578c-ab8b-aab635eede0d)
It goes without saying that most owners want the best for their dogs. It is the most natural thing in the world to want to provide your pet with as happy, contented and fulfilling a life as you possibly can. Yet life, as we all know, is never that straightforward. We have our dreams but real life has a habit of getting in the way of them and when that happens, we are faced with some stark choices.
In my view, the way owners respond to the realities of dog ownership defines them as clearly as anything else. The really great owners I’ve met have all had a strong sense of the limitations they face. I have come across many outstanding people in this respect, but few were more impressive than Terry and Sandra, a couple I met at the very beginning of my career as a ‘dog listener’.
Terry and Sandra lived in a village near the Humber Bridge, a short drive from my home back in the 1990s, the small town of Winterton, in North Lincolnshire. They had been having severe problems with their crossbred dog Guinness and had heard of me from friends in the area. ‘We’re very concerned about him,’ Terry said when he telephoned me. ‘If we can’t improve his behaviour we’re afraid it’s going to end badly.’
When I went to visit them, I was still working full time for the local social services department. I had formulated my method and had helped a few people improve their dogs’ behaviour, but the idea of doing it professionally had not really occurred to me. My encounter with Guinness almost persuaded me to give up before I’d really started.
Terry and Sandra had got Guinness from a rescue centre, where he’d arrived as one of three abandoned puppies. When he first moved in at the age of ten weeks, he had been lively but manageable. Now, at the age of two and a half, Guinness was a giant of a dog. He must have weighed ten stone and was so massive you could have put a saddle on him. He was one of the most obvious examples of an Alpha Male dog I had ever encountered. No one was going to tell him what to do.
Terry and Sandra reeled off incident after incident in which Guinness had refused to listen to them. If they told him to sit, he would stand there looking at them with disdain written all over his face. If they told him to leave a room he would stand firm. When he was younger, Terry had been able physically to remove him. He was now so big and powerful, even that option was no longer available.
He was equally stubborn when he wanted something from them. Guinness would routinely take hold of Terry or Sandra’s trouser leg or shirtsleeve and try to drag them in the direction of whatever it was he wanted. Their protests were usually in vain and both had got used to caving in.
They had both owned dogs in the past and knew this was a situation that just couldn’t go on. But nothing they did seemed to help. Guinness had been taken to training classes locally but he had grabbed the trainer’s arm with such force they were told he was ‘too stupid’ to be trained. Terry and Sandra were loving owners and they thought the world of Guinness. But he was already aggressive towards strangers, squaring up to them and barking loudly in their faces and their concern was that this defiance was leading in only one direction.
‘It’s only a matter of time before he does something worse – and that will be the end of him,’ Terry told me.
The success I had helping other people with their dogs had given me some confidence that I could help. My method was based on the idea that dogs’ problems stem from their mistaken belief that they are the leader of their domestic pack and that their owners contribute to this by behaving as if they are indeed subordinate members of that pack. The only way to correct this was by getting the owner to replace the dog at the head of the domestic hierarchy by means of a bloodless coup, using a visual language the dog can understand to get the message across. This was something that would be implemented gradually at the four key moments in the pack’s daily routine – when they reunited after separation, at times of perceived danger, at mealtimes and when out on the walk. I would begin the process myself during my visit, but after that it would be up to the owner to keep it going over the days, weeks, months (and even years!) ahead.
There was no question in my mind that Guinness saw himself as leader. Even when speaking to Terry on the phone, I had immediately known what the disdainful look he described was all about. It was Guinness’ way of saying: ‘Excuse me, who are you, telling me what to do?’ The way he gave me a similar look when I arrived at the house only confirmed this.
After I’d explained what I wanted to do, we began the difficult job of ‘trading places’, relieving Guinness of the job of leader and installing Terry and Sandra in his place. This was easier said than done.
We began by simply ignoring him, as an Alpha would naturally dismiss a subordinate in its pack in order to assert itself. Guinness clearly wasn’t going to have this and he began doing what he could to get our attention. First, he began tugging at Terry’s trousers. When I asked Terry to block him from doing this, he then started barking in their faces, licking their hands, doing anything he could think of to get their attention. When he saw they were ignoring him, he pulled his bed from another room and placed it in the middle of the living room, only to have Sandra remove it immediately at my request.
Dogs are extremely smart and it was a measure of how intelligent Guinness was and how hard he was thinking about things, that a lot of this behaviour was completely new to Terry and Sandra. The key was, not to acknowledge this. Every nerve end in their bodies was telling them to acknowledge him and tell him off, but – encouraged by me – they stuck at it and refused to recognise any of this. This went on for almost an hour, during which time Guinness grew, if anything, even more determined. After a while Terry and Sandra were finding it really hard so I suggested we move to another room. No sooner had we shut the door behind us than Guinness was pulling at the door handle and trying to get in.
It was very hard work, but after an hour and a half, our perseverance paid off and Guinness became noticeably calmer. By the time I left the house the attention-seeking behaviour had ceased. I knew there was a long way to go, but I was hopeful they’d made a good start.
I left them to it, but asked them to stay in touch if there were difficulties. Over the course of the following week, I heard from them on a daily basis. Guinness had calmed down a little and was behaving less manically when they ignored him. But problems arose whenever they went to reward him.
Terry loved playing with Guinness. To him there was nothing more fun than lying on the floor and treating his dog to a bit of rough-and-tumble wrestling or throwing a stick around in the park. But these were precisely the sort of signals that had to be avoided. As I told Terry, Guinness couldn’t play the game until he knew the rules. And he was showing no signs of understanding them, nor would he while Terry was effectively paying homage to Guinness as leader. He had made progress, but the reality was that Guinness’ leadership instincts were so powerful, it only needed the slightest false signal for him to forget all he’d been taught and to resume power once more. Any sign of the old affection or warmth from Terry or Sandra sent Guinness into a real flip. He would jump up, begin barking and generally revert to his old ways almost immediately. It was as if he was a deposed political leader, unable to accept his removal from power and desperate to take over again.
Terry understood that he had to adopt a colder, more detached manner with Guinness, but he was finding it hard to do so. ‘It seems so formal. I want to play with him, I want to show him I love him,’ he said.
This was a comment I heard a lot. For most people, ruffling a dog’s coat or giving him a squeeze is one of the most natural and instinctive acts in the world. I knew this only too well for myself. Yet I also knew how important it was to remain in control, to display the aloof, slightly detached demeanour of the leader of the pack. So my response to this had already become well established. ‘I know how natural it feels to show love to a dog, and you are not going to stop doing that. You’re just going to channel it in another way, turn that affection in a different direction,’ I told Terry.
Terry understood the risks if he didn’t stick to the method. ‘It’s tough, but I’ll persevere,’ he said.
It was probably three months or so before I heard from them again. This time Terry and Sandra sounded much more positive. They were making great progress, Guinness was going out for long walks, he was behaving much better around visitors and – most importantly of all – he was doing what Terry and Sandra asked of him.
They had learned to reward him in a matter-of-fact way, with a ‘good lad’ and a stroke of the head rather than the ruffles and cuddles of the past. It was a sacrifice worth making, they said.
It was about a year later that I saw them next. I happened to be in their village and thought I’d pop in. Terry answered the door and was soon joined by Guinness, who approached him in a very controlled, self-disciplined way. When I asked how they were getting on I sensed a hint of sadness in his voice.
‘We’re OK,’ Terry said.
I was still uncertain of where I was going with my method – if anywhere – and I really needed the feedback.
‘Please tell me if you’re not convinced we’ve done the right thing or if it’s not worked. I need to know,’ I said.
‘Oh no, it’s worked, Guinness is a different dog these days,’ Terry said. ‘What breaks my heart is that I can’t get close to him.’
Terry called him over, stroked his head and said ‘good boy’. ‘That’s as much as we can do without him going back to his old ways,’ he said.
As ever, they had not been short of advice from friends and family. Many had said they were wrong to adopt such a ‘way out’ method. But whenever anyone had sounded off, Terry had challenged them to do better.
He had simply let them call Guinness over, shower him with cuddles and then watch him revert to his former, uncontrollable self. On one occasion, his brother had criticised what Terry was doing as ‘cruel’.
‘I told him he was free to have a go, but within ten seconds Guinness had jumped at him, knocked him over and pinned him to the floor,’ Terry said. ‘It was the only way I could get the message through to them,’ he told me with a resigned smile.
There were consolations. Terry and Sandra loved walking and were now able to go on long rambles with Guinness. He was now very responsive to their requests and behaved impeccably when he came into contact with other people or dogs, allowing Terry and Sandra to relax and enjoy themselves much more when they were out together.
‘I still have to stop myself picking up a stick and throwing it though,’ Terry said, the regret unmistakeable in his voice. ‘But I accept it. I know it will set him back into his old ways. Nobody else is going to do this for him, it’s our responsibility and it’s up to us to look after him.’
In some ways theirs is a sad story. Even now, years later, and armed with much more experience and knowledge, I honestly don’t think there would have been an alternative solution to Guinness’ problems. He was such a powerful dog, the signals required to get the message through to him had to be powerful and unequivocal too. He needed to be managed very carefully.
Yet, theirs is also an inspirational story, one that has stayed with me over the years. In really difficult circumstances, Terry and Sandra did something of which they could be very proud. They had wanted something else from their dog, but they’d accepted the reality – it wasn’t possible. Rather than abandoning him, they’d been big enough and brave enough to accept these limitations and build their life with him on that basis. I’m sure they both learned something in doing so. It certainly taught me something priceless.
When I first ventured out into the world with my ideas about how to improve our relationship with dogs, my greatest concern was that I was in a minority. I had been unsure whether many people shared my passionate feelings for dogs and anyone actually cared for them the same way. I had seen more than my share of bad owners. More worrying in a way, I knew there were many, many people to whom their dog was a minor priority, something to be enjoyed as long as it didn’t require too much effort or thought.
The method I had evolved was simple, yet it required a great deal of thought and hard work. Since I had begun working with owners, I had become assailed by doubts. Was I living in cloud cuckoo land? Would I find many owners willing to put in that graft and make the sacrifice sometimes necessary to make their relationship with their dog work? Terry and Sandra provided me with my answer. At a time when I needed to see it, they showed me that there were people in the world who were prepared to go as far as necessary, and to live within whatever limitations necessary to make their pet happy. It was a humbling – but also hugely encouraging – lesson. And I’m always grateful to them for having provided it.
ROLE MODELS (#ulink_965c882b-56d4-5b5d-88f8-c31a7a720bbc)
Why great owners lead by example (#ulink_965c882b-56d4-5b5d-88f8-c31a7a720bbc)
The more I developed my ideas, the more I realised how important it is to project the right kind of leadership. Through studying wolves and working with my own dogs, I had learned that dogs don’t associate leadership with ranting and raving, bullying and dictating or even overt affection. Instead, natural leaders seemed to demonstrate calmness, consistency and decisiveness. As I developed these principles, I realised that I had seen them applied before by another inspiring owner.
Throughout my life I have met people whose ideas about our relationship with dogs have influenced me almost subliminally. I have not felt their full impact until long after the event.
