A
DOG’S
BEST FRIEND

The secrets that make gooddog owners great

JAN FENNELL

COPYRIGHT

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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsEntertainment 2004

Copyright © Jan Fennell and Fantasma Partnership 2004

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DEDICATION

For my grandchildren

Ceri-Ann, Bethan and Ben

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Dedication

Preface by Monty Roberts

Introduction

‘How Would You Feel?’

Why great owners put themselves in their dog’s place

The Ties That Bind

Why great owners understand man’s special relationship with dogs

‘What’s in it for Me?’

Why great owners work with, not against, their dogs

Our Mutual Friends

Why respect is the key to a great relationship with dogs

Feeling the Force

The importance of drawing on the lessons of others

Living in the Real World

Why great owners know their limits

Role Models

Why great owners lead by example

Second Among Equals

Why great owners always put their dogs first

Flexible Friends

Why great owners keep an open mind

When the Going Gets Tough

Why it pays to show courage under fire

The Great Healer

Why patience really is a virtue

A Dog is for Life

Why great owners understand the meaning of responsibility

99% Preparation

Why great owners think ahead

The Buck Stops Here

Why great owners always shoulder the blame

Happy Families

Why great owners are fun owners

Cometh the Hour

Why great owners rise to the occasion

The Best Dog Comes Home with Us

The importance of owning dogs for the right reasons

Better Happy than Rich

Why great owners understand the real value of dogs

Give a Dog a Good Name

Why great owners don’t pigeonhole their dogs

The Glass Half Full

Why great owners are positive owners

Sense and Sensibility

Why great owners never underestimate their dogs’ instincts

Separate Worlds

Why great owners accept that dogs are different

Letting Go

The importance of knowing when to say goodbye

In Sickness and in Health

When their dogs grow weak, great owners grow strong

Through Thick and Thin

How great owners show strength for their dog’s sake

Reaping the Rewards

Why you only get out what you put in

Breathing Space

The benefits of letting a dog be itself

A Dog’s Best Friend

Why great owners just want to give their dogs the best

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

PREFACE

I can’t remember a time in my life when there wasn’t a dog around and somebody trying to train him to do something. For 65 years or so, I have seen professional dog trainers work, watched amateur dog trainers work and observed as Western rancher-type people as they dealt with their canine assistants. I have seen dogs treated with profound brutality and have witnessed partnerships between dog and human that were as close as one could imagine.

In the early 1950’s, I became acquainted with a man who produced contract dog acts as a part of professional rodeos that were conducted throughout the United States. His name was Jay Sisler and he usually had a gang of border collies with one or two retired racing greyhounds thrown in. I recall that he had a few Australian Shepherds and sometimes an Aussie crossed with a border collie.

Jay Sisler loved his dogs and, probably more importantly, his dogs loved him. I recall times when he would work with a half a dozen dogs or so in one session. I would watch as each dog sat with eyes sparkling and feet prancing in place begging for the opportunity to be the next actor on his stage. Jay specialized in offbeat acts where dogs did things that people just didn’t expect to see.

I remember one night in 1955 when Mr. Sisler turned up at a popular old pub-style restaurant near my university. The proprietor knew about Jay and so allowed him to bring two dogs into the saloon portion of the building. I sat and watched as this man sipped a drink at the bar and then would simply say things in a normal tone of voice that he wanted the dogs to do, and, boy, did they do it!

Watching in utter amazement, I saw these dogs interact with one another and with patrons of the establishment. ‘Blue, go to sleep.’ he would say, and Blue would flatten himself in the middle of the saloon. ‘Freddy, take my jacket and cover Blue up. It’s going to get cold.’ And Freddy would do just that. ‘Now, Freddy, find me a pretty girl. Lead her over to have a drink with me.’ And this dog would circle the room and for all the world it seemed to me that he would pick the most attractive female, gently take her hand in his mouth and lead her to Jay’s side.

They walked tight ropes, sat up on one another’s shoulders, the same as trapeze artists would do. They danced and sang, rode horses, and one would even lead a donkey wherever Jay asked him to go. Sisler loved to create a situation where the Sheppard types would form obstacles over which the greyhound would jump, and those greyhounds could jump the moon. People were consistently left mesmerized by the awesome feats that Jay’s dogs could perform.

For me, it was far more how they did it than what they did. I never saw him strike a dog and I never even heard him raise his voice to one. I don’t know how he did his basic training but looking back on it with two doctorates in behavioural sciences I know how to assess that these dogs did it because they wanted to and because they loved to work with and for this man.

INTRODUCTION

When my book The Dog Listener was first published, I had no idea it would connect with such a wide audience. It is a source of constant pride to me that so many people have turned to the compassionate communication method advocated in its pages. By rejecting the aggressive and damaging ideas of the past, they have displayed the open-mindedness and, I like to think, intelligence that instantly separates the good owner from the bad one. They have made an important first step.

Perhaps the greatest lesson I have learned since the publication of that book (and its sequel, The Practical Dog Listener) is that people’s desire to improve the quality of the life they share with their dogs is limitless. The world, it seems, is full of owners dedicated to becoming the companions their dogs really deserve. I am always meeting people eager to deepen their knowledge still further, to develop into not just good owners but great ones.

But what is it that makes a great owner? What are the qualities that distinguish these people from the rest? These are questions that I’m asked all the time and, if I’m honest, have often struggled to answer – to my own satisfaction at least.

I have met all kinds of owners in the course of my life and career. A few have been awful, unfit even to own a dog in my opinion, but most have been good, caring people, genuinely interested in making their dog’s life a happy one. Along the way, it has been my good fortune to have met people whose characters and abilities have elevated them above the rest, owners who have made a lasting impact on me, and about whom I’d use the word ‘great’ without hesitation.

It was while thinking about some of these people recently that the idea for this book was born. I had been asked for the umpteenth time what it is that makes a great owner, what separates them from the rest, when suddenly it occurred to me that if there is a simple answer to that question, then these exceptional people would be able to provide it. It struck me that if I shared their stories, explaining what they taught me and, in so doing, highlighting their strengths and qualities, then I might go a long way towards defining the kind of outstanding ownership to which so many people aspire.

It wasn’t long before I was drawing together memories of individuals who have impressed me, not only as owners and people but also as independent thinkers. As I moved on to analyse what it was each of them gave me, so this book took shape.

The owners who feature in these pages are a diverse bunch. Some are family members who sowed important seeds in my younger life, others are people who played a pivotal role in leading me to develop my method. Some have inspired me by example, others have helped me develop my methods or sharpen my thinking since I took my work out into the wider world. One or two have simply made me appreciate just how deep the well of human kindness runs when it comes to dogs.

Yet, for all their differences, they share one thing in common. Each of them has – or had – a special bond with man’s best friend. And each passed on to me something valuable about the way we live with dogs. By absorbing their lessons, I hope everyone can take that next step and become not just a good owner, but a great one.

Jan Fennell

North Lincolnshire, Spring 2004

‘HOW WOULD YOU FEEL?’
Why great owners put themselves in their dog’s place

Our attitude to dogs – and to the animal world in general – has gone through enormous changes in my lifetime. During my childhood in post-war London, most people would have treated the modern notion of animal rights and welfare with disdain. It would have brought me little but ridicule to espouse in public the sort of compassionate training ideas I do now.

Yet, even fifty or so years ago, these seemingly modern ideas were already alive and blossoming in places. I was lucky enough to grow up within a family who viewed our relationship with animals – and dogs in particular – in a way that was unusual for the time. Ours was a family of horse and dog lovers, and no one had a deeper affinity for both than my great-uncle Jim.

Uncle Jim was in his eighties when I was a little girl but was still a remarkable character. His colourful life included a spell with Buffalo Bill Cody’s world-famous Wild West Show, an experience that had provided him with an unusual attitude to animals. I remember him telling me about the time he spent with the troupe’s Native Americans. Their empathy with the show’s horses had a deep impact on him, so much so that he had an almost telepathic relationship with Kitty, the lovely little black pony which pulled his vegetable cart around the streets of Fulham, Hammersmith and West London in the 1950s.

Some of my earliest and warmest childhood memories are of Uncle Jim, laying down the reins, putting his arms around me and gently whispering, ‘Take us home, Kit.’ Sure enough, Kitty would pick her way through the streets, like a homing pigeon.

Looking back on it now, it was Uncle Jim and Kitty who first instilled in me the idea of animals and humans working together in harmony. Uncle Jim used to talk about the way his Native American colleagues told him to ‘breathe with the horse’. He and Kitty worked instinctively as a team. There was no coercion – they understood each other perfectly – and, as a result, their partnership seemed like the most natural thing in the world.

As a little girl I used to spend long hours sitting on the pony and trap with Uncle Jim. I saw many things that captured my imagination, but nothing quite so thought-provoking as what I witnessed outside, of all places, a pub one lunchtime.

Uncle Jim and his fellow street vendors lent real character to their area of London. They were a colourful collection of individuals, each on their pony and trap, clattering through the streets, living by a code that went back to an earlier age. One of their traditions was to meet up at various watering holes. It wasn’t hard to spot where they were gathered – neatly arranged ranks of horses and carts would form outside.

Jim and his friends would put nosebags and blankets on their horses, then pop inside for a couple of hard-earned pints. If I was with Jim, he’d always get me a glass of lemonade and a packet of crisps to eat out on the cart. I was quite happy there, particularly when a friend of Jim – a rag-and-bone man called Albie – left me in the company of his dog Danny.

Albie was famous for travelling everywhere with Danny. As most dogs were at that time, Danny was a crossbreed, or ‘multi-pedigree’ as I like to call them now. He would sit upright at Albie’s side, as if he was his eyes and ears, which given his master’s advancing years, sometimes he probably was.

One lunchtime, Albie and Jim arrived at the pub and were tending to their horses. Danny, as usual, had been put up on the trap with me.

Albie was very affectionate towards Danny, unusually so for the time. ‘You stay there now, there’s a good boy,’ he told his dog, ruffling his neck as he placed him on the seat next to me.

As Albie was doing this, another rag-and-bone man had pulled up alongside.

He had seen Albie talking to his dog like this and was shaking his head, as if in disbelief.

‘What the hell are you talking to the mutt for?’ he said, barely able to suppress a laugh. ‘You don’t ask a dog to do something. You tell him.’

Albie didn’t take too kindly to this.

‘Is that right?’ he said. ‘So how do you expect good manners if you don’t show good manners?’

The other man looked nonplussed.

‘What are you on about?’ he said.

Albie indicated to me. ‘If I wanted young Janice here to do something, what do you think would be the best way to get her to do it? Ask her nicely or show her the back of my hand?’

The other man simply shook his head, as if to say Albie was soft in the head. They soon disappeared into the pub, where – presumably – the argument carried on.

On the surface this may seem a small moment, nothing much to write home about. But to me, at the age of five or six, it struck a powerful chord.

The London of those days was a difficult place to make a living. We were still getting over the effects of the Second World War – my mother and father had found it particularly hard to readjust to life after their wartime experiences. And life was generally hard at that time, so the notion that dogs were deserving of anyone’s time and effort was highly unusual. ‘It’s just a dog,’ was a commonplace expression. Yet here was someone defending a dog as if it were a person. It was something I had never heard before, but I soon discovered it wasn’t a unique view.

Another influential person in my childhood was my cousin Doreen. While I was younger, Doreen lived near us in West London with her family, but when I was ten or so, she moved to Welwyn Garden City, the utopian new community in Hertfordshire. We regularly visited them there, on Sundays, Bank Holidays and Christmas.

The move to the greener climes of Hertfordshire had an immediate impact on the family’s lifestyle. It wasn’t long before I discovered they had acquired a dog – a lovely, black and tan crossbreed puppy they named Tinker. Tinker belonged to the whole family, but early on it was clear that Doreen regarded him very much as her dog. Most of the time it was she who fed him and walked him. And she spent the most time playing with him.

He was not the first dog in the family – that was Bruce, a lovely white German shepherd one of my uncles had got from Battersea Dogs Home. The mistreatment he suffered still haunts me to this day. I will never forget the way my uncle would tease him by placing a bar of chocolate high on a table, leaving Bruce to salivate as he looked at it. From the outset, however, it was clear that Doreen had a very different attitude to dogs.

Their house was always full of people. The first time I went there my cousin Paul was playing with a friend. I remember they were in the garden throwing a ball around. As part of their entertainment they put the ball in front of Tinker’s face, then pulled it away again as he snapped to grab it. Paul had only done this a couple of times when Doreen appeared in the kitchen doorway. By coincidence, she happened to have a rolling pin in her hand. It made the sight of her all the more intimidating.

‘You can stop that right away, young man. I won’t have that,’ she said. ‘How would you like it if someone did that to you?’

The boy looked stunned, as I must have done. I had never heard anyone in the family defend a dog in that way before. But it wasn’t long before I heard it again.

A little later that same day, Doreen’s husband, Reg, appeared in the garden with a biscuit. Reg was fond of Tinker and would take him for walks, and the dog soon appeared at his side. ‘What’s the matter? Want a bit of this do you?’ he said playfully waving the biscuit around.

Doreen soon reappeared – this time without the rolling pin. He may have been the ‘man of the house’, but the same rules applied.

‘Reg, I won’t have you teasing him like that. It might be fun for you, but it’s not fun for the dog. How’d you like it?’

We all laughed, but I looked at Doreen’s face and saw she was utterly serious. From then on, I became fascinated by her relationship with her dog.

Doreen was a wonderful person and I always looked forward to seeing her, but the fact she had such a lovely dog made each visit even more special. Doreen was very strict about what we could and couldn’t do with her dog. Playing the retrieval games which Tinker enjoyed was fine. Taking him out for a walk without an adult, on the other hand, was not. ‘You’re not responsible enough to take a dog out,’ she said, which again was something new and radical for me. Back in the streets of West London, children routinely walked dogs.

Doreen was absolutely consistent in her approach, no matter who was involved. On one occasion, I remember my father and his brother, Doreen’s father, Fred, playing ‘piggy in the middle’ with a ball and Tinker as the increasingly agitated ‘piggy’. Doreen was upstairs, but the moment Tinker let out a distressed bark, she was bounding down the stairs.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she asked them – it didn’t matter that it was her father and uncle involved, two of the senior figures in the family.

My Dad put an arm around her and asked her to lighten up a little.

‘Come on, Doreen, you think more of that dog than you do of us,’ he said.

But she was adamant. ‘He’s my dog and I’m going to treat him my way and I’m not having it, Uncle Wal.’ And that was that.

On another occasion, her daughter Diane was trying to put a doll’s bonnet on Tinker. Again there was no argument.

‘Stop that, you have dolls for that,’ Doreen insisted. ‘The dog is not there for your entertainment.’

Looking back, I can see that Doreen’s approach worked. As Tinker grew up, I couldn’t help noticing how much calmer he was than all the other dogs I’d come across. There was no rushing around, no barking and jumping up. I remember asking her one day, ‘How come Tinker’s so happy, Doreen?’

‘Because I haven’t made him mixed up like so many other people do,’ she said. ‘Other people’s dogs are so anxious all the time. No wonder, given the way people tease them and treat them badly. All I do is give some consideration to how he’s feeling.’

It was an attitude that was an extension of Doreen herself. She was the warmest, kindest person in my family. She was also someone who committed herself one hundred per cent to anything she did. To everybody else, ‘a dog was just a dog’. But to Doreen it was a living creature, with feelings, with a soul.

As Tinker’s training developed, so too did Doreen’s ideas. She used food rewards in a way I’d never seen anyone do before. For instance: ‘Tinker’s not going to do the right thing for nothing,’ she’d say. ‘He’s not stupid.’

My Uncle Fred would often see this and tell her she was spoiling him and turning him into a softie. ‘The dog should do it because you say so,’ he’d say.

She’d shoot him a look and reply: ‘You wouldn’t.’

As a young girl, sitting there on the fringes of all this, I remember thinking what common sense it sounded. But it was a long time before I understood what Albie and Doreen had instinctively sensed: that a dog was going to respond better if it was shown some respect and consideration, that you were going to have a better relationship by empathising with it, by trying to understand how it might feel to be in its position. It was a lesson worth waiting to learn.

THE TIES THAT BIND
Why great owners understand man’s special relationship with dogs

Like everything else nowadays, people have a tendency to overcomplicate their relationship with their dogs. Too often, I think, we forget that ours is a simple partnership that dates back tens of thousands of years, to the time when our ancestors first domesticated the wolf, Canis lupus, to create the dog, Canis familiaris. Back then, man and dog were bound by a deep and instinctive understanding of each other’s needs and nature. Man provided security, sanctuary, food and warmth; the dog provided its superior senses and hunting abilities. They shared a form of language and understood each other perfectly. They were a team, working intuitively together – and very successfully.

During the course of the millennia since then, man and dog have drifted apart. In the main, we have become strangers – rather than the best friends we like to call ourselves.

It has only been in recent years that I have begun to understand man’s special relationship with the dog, to unravel fully the nature of the language the two species once shared instinctively. That such special relationships existed, however, was something I’d learnt to appreciate a lot earlier.

Two chance meetings during my childhood loom large in the memory in this respect. The owners were very different, but both sowed significant seeds.

Sometimes the most influential encounters are also the briefest. So it proved during a summer’s camping holiday in Exmoor and Lorna Doone country back in the 1960s. I was with my parents and the first dog I’d ever been able to call my own, Shane – a beautiful tricoloured collie my father had bought at a kennels near Heathrow.

My father loved discovering country pubs and one lunchtime went to a beautiful one near the village of Oar – a picturesque spot, with views over the moor. It was a gorgeous day and we sat outside on benches. Shane found himself a comfortable spot under a tree, where he was soon quietly snoozing.

The pub was a magnet for locals and tourists alike. The local sheep market had been on that morning, so that afternoon the place was crammed with farmers and shepherds. Their Land Rovers and trailers filled the car park. It was a very friendly place. People would say hello as they went in and one or two of the farmers stopped to admire Shane. ‘That’s a lovely dog,’ one of them said, giving Shane’s neck a friendly ruffle.

Most of the farmers arrived alone, but one turned up with a lovely looking Border collie. I don’t remember the farmer’s name, but I do recall the dog’s – she was called Tina.

There was something about their relationship that struck me straight away. Tina looked at her owner with a focus and intensity that seemed unusual. I remember noticing that he barely needed to give her an instruction before she did exactly what he wanted. As he headed into the pub, for instance, he just said ‘stay’ and she was down on all fours, sitting passively on the grass.

The pair seemed to have a great understanding of each other. When he emerged again, he had a pint of beer and a clean ashtray, which he placed on the grass next to Tina. He then poured a small splash of beer into the tray. Tina was soon slurping happily away. What a perfect pair they made, I thought to myself.

With people arriving all the time, the tables were filling up fast. Soon the table next to ours was taken by a group of half a dozen or so farmers, including Tina’s owner. The air was soon heavy with farming talk – everything from lamb prices at that morning’s market to the quality of that year’s crops and the weather. They were soon engaging us in conversation as well.

‘So where did you get this handsome boy?’ one of them asked me.

I explained that we had got him from a kennels in West London.

The farmer told me he too had a Border collie.

‘So where’s he today then?’ I asked, surprised at his absence.

‘Oh, he’s a working dog. He stays on the farm where he belongs,’ he replied.

Tina’s owner was sitting opposite this man. I looked at him and said: ‘You’ve got your dog with you. You don’t agree, do you?’

‘No, I don’t, young lady,’ he said with a wink.

His friends were soon rolling their eyes heavenward. ‘Oh, here we go,’ said one.

Almost immediately, the other five farmers were taking it in turns to explain their difference of opinion over Tina. Each of them had collies, but each of them had left them back in their kennels on their respective farms. They simply didn’t believe that a working dog should be included in a farmer’s social life.

‘He’s made that dog too soft,’ one said, pointing at Tina.

‘She even goes in the house with him,’ said another.

Tina’s owner didn’t seem perturbed by this. He’d clearly heard it all before. But when everyone had had their say, he turned to me and explained his side of the argument.

‘The way I see it, Tina works hard for me every day. She does everything I ask of her and there’s nothing wrong with her switching off and enjoying herself with me every now and again,’ he said.

As the sun shone and the beer flowed, the conversation continued. It wasn’t aggressive – there were lots of smiles and winks – but there was no doubting that everyone was absolutely serious about their positions within the argument. It was one of those situations where no one was going to give ground. Tina’s owner was quite calm and relaxed about it all. The other five farmers were more agitated, but they weren’t yielding an inch, either. Everyone agreed to disagree.

At one point, as the argument continued, someone mentioned the fact that Tina competed very successfully in the local sheepdog trials. When I asked the other farmers whether their dogs competed, they all answered ‘yes’. ‘Tina’s got a knack for it though, and she usually wins,’ one of them grudgingly admitted.

‘So what about your dog then, young lady?’ one of the farmers asked, trying to deflect the subject for a while. ‘Do you work him at all?’

‘Oh no, he’s a pet,’ I said.

‘I hope you don’t mind me saying, but I don’t think collies should be pets,’ one of the farmers said. ‘Their instinct is to herd and work, not sit around in a house all day.’

Until now my father had sat there, quietly chatting to my mother, but this comment clearly annoyed him and he couldn’t let it pass. By now both Shane and Tina were sprawled out under the shade of the trees, relishing the afternoon sun and oblivious to the fuss. My father pointed at them and said, ‘Look at those two. Does either of them look like they’re being mistreated?’

Although it was a good line and got a good laugh, it brought the conversation to a close. The farmers had soon set off on their way back to their farms, but the memory of that argument lingered for a long time afterwards.

I had admired the way the farmer had stuck to his guns. He had been doing what he felt was right and no amount of criticism or ribbing from his colleagues was going to change that opinion. But what stuck in my mind more, was the natural way he and Tina had had with each other. When I saw people out walking their pets, struggling to get along, I would wonder why it was that the farmer and his dog had such a perfect partnership in comparison.

Now, of course, I can see that theirs was a relationship deep-rooted in shared instincts and mutual understanding that dates back millennia. They represented a tradition and dependency that barely survives. I now understand that it was no coincidence that Tina’s owner was more successful in sheepdog trials than the other shepherds. The bond between the two was so strong, they must have been a formidable pair to watch at work.

Evidence of this natural, intuitive bond between man and dog was thin on the ground in the London of my youth. People tended to take their dogs for granted. They got on with their lives and the dogs got on with theirs. On the street where I lived, several dogs were allowed to roam freely. Provided they didn’t misbehave, life went on. If they did step out of line, the punishment meted out could be harsh.

In the wake of my encounter with the farmer, I occasionally came across owners with similarly unusual attitudes. It was one such person who provided me with another insight to store away for later in my life.

One morning I was walking Shane in a local park with my father. At the far corner of the park, we saw a collection of lorries and caravans. It was early autumn and the first fair of the season had arrived in our neck of the woods.

As we got closer to the mini-village that had sprung up there, we were suddenly aware of a rather large, black German shepherd. In those days – as now – German shepherds had an undeserved reputation for being aggressive and occasionally violent. As this one came out and looked at us, my father instinctively drew Shane back and put him back on the lead. But it was soon obvious he had no cause for concern. It was as if there was an invisible barrier there – the German shepherd took two steps towards us then stopped. I was confused as to why it had done this, but soon it was clear it had responded to its owner, a rather scruffy looking figure who was soon walking towards us.

‘Morning, lovely day, isn’t it?’ he said.

‘Morning, yes, smashing,’ my father replied. ‘I was just looking at your dog. Have you got him on an invisible line or something?’ he joked. ‘I’ve never seen one of them so well behaved.’

The man turned round to look at his dog, still standing perfectly still.

‘Oh, he just knows his boundaries – all my dogs do,’ he smiled.

My father had a keen interest in dogs too and got chatting to the man. It turned out he had half a dozen or so dogs, mainly for guarding the valuables that he and his family took with them as they travelled the country with the fair.

He talked about how he trained them, then got each of them to specialise in different tasks around the fair. ‘You want them to frighten the right people,’ he said, at one point, gesturing to me. ‘They’re no use to me if they scare little girls away from my rides.’

It was clear that this was someone who knew a lot about dogs. ‘Do you mind if I ask you a question?’ I said nervously.

‘Not at all, young lady, fire away,’ he said, smiling.

In recent weeks, one problem had been obsessing me above all others. It had all begun with a prank played by a kid called Ronnie in Rowallan Road in Fulham, where I lived at the time.

The most popular toy of the day was a thing called a ‘cracker’ – a triangular piece of cardboard with a piece of paper folded inside it. It looked innocuous enough, but when you flicked this thing it made a really sharp cracking noise.

I was walking down Rowallan Road with Shane one day when Ronnie jumped out and let out this huge crack. It made me jump, but it sent Shane into the most terrible spin. It was the beginning of a nervous streak that had grown progressively worse. It was now so bad that he even became agitated at the sound of rain rapping on the windows outside. Bonfire night was still some way off, but it had already become a date to dread as far as I was concerned.

I had tried all sorts of things, but mainly reassuring Shane with a cuddle. It had somehow made matters worse rather than better. Here was someone who clearly understood dogs more deeply than I did. What was there to lose in asking?

‘How do the dogs cope with the noise? What with all the squeals and whoops coming from the rides, it must be frightening for them?’

‘No, love, none of my dogs are afraid of noises,’ he said. ‘I just leave them to it.’

‘What do you mean?’ I said, a bit confused.

‘Well, there’s nothing to fear, is there? We all know that. So if we behave as if there’s nothing to fear, they’ll get the message eventually.’

I thought perhaps he had a point, so I decided I’d try his advice out the next time it rained. I didn’t have to wait long. A few nights later, there was a particularly heavy downpour. Shane went into a funk as usual – but this time I tried to resist the urge to cuddle him. I carried on reading and playing records in my room as if nothing was happening, trying desperately to relay the message that there was nothing to fear.

At the age of fifteen, you expect everything to happen in an instant. As far as I could see my behaviour was having next to no effect on Shane, who was now cowering under my bed. I loved Shane so much, I couldn’t bear the sight of him distressed. Soon he was cuddled up alongside me on top of the bed, shivering as the winds drove the rain against the window pane with even greater intensity.

Hindsight is, of course, a marvellous thing. Now I know I was doing the complete opposite of what I should have been doing. More than anything else Shane needed to be assured there was nothing wrong. And he needed to be assured by a figure in whom he had absolute trust and confidence. Instead, I had made two cardinal errors. First, I had been inconsistent, changing my mind about how to deal with the situation and giving poor Shane mixed signals in the process. Then, when I came to cuddle him, I had confirmed his worst fears – the rain was something to feel threatened by and to hide from after all. My intentions had been good, but in the end I had only added to his anxiety.

Eventually I would see the wisdom of the words of the man from the fair. The ideas he implanted in my mind would grow into one of the fundamental building blocks of my method. But if only I’d been old – and wise – enough to have understood them at the time, Shane’s life might have been a slightly happier one.

‘WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME?’
Why great owners work with, not against, their dogs

Dogs operate according to a simple rule – the ‘What’s in It for Me?’ principle. In essence, any owner wanting to get willing cooperation from their dog has to work on the understanding that it – like them – works according to fundamentally selfish instincts. It is not going to do something unless there is a tangible benefit from doing so. This was something I first glimpsed with my cousin Doreen and her attitude to Tinker. But it was another forward-thinking member of the family who taught me how productive this idea could really be.

My Uncle George was the oldest of my father’s five siblings and he lived with my Aunt Ellen at their home in West London, near Heathrow Airport. We visited them often and I always looked forward to the trip, again mainly because it meant I could spend time with a dog – in this case their black and tan crossbreed, Rex.

Rex was a mixture of all sorts of breeds – he probably had some German shepherd in him somewhere – and had a curly tail, big pointy ears and a slightly foxy look. He was a hugely affectionate dog and always made a beeline for me when I visited George and Ellen. While the rest of the family chatted away, I’d sit out in the garden, stroking him or playing ball.

George was in his late fifties by then, retired from his job as a lorry driver. He was a straightforward, down-to-earth man and his relationship with his dog was absolutely typical of the period. They were very relaxed with each other. Rex would sit by Uncle George’s feet most of the time and would go out with him every morning to get the newspaper. There were no big shows of affection or emotion, but that was the way in those days. As for training, I don’t think the idea had ever occurred to him.

Rex was a happy dog and I have no doubt George cared for him deeply too, but he did have one habit that drove George round the bend. On a regular basis, he would go into the garden and begin digging ferociously around the large flower beds, and the roses in particular. George wasn’t best pleased with this, to say the least. He and Ellen were very proud of their garden, and spent long hours tending it. Their lawn was immaculate, as smooth as a billiard table, but their roses were their pride and joy.

They were not a generation to analyse things in depth, so there was little discussion about the reason for Rex’s behaviour. Whether he was marking territory or simply digging for a hidden bone, they were not interested. All that concerned them was how this was going to be stopped.

George had tried all sorts of things. He had shouted at the dog, and at one point thrown his slipper at him out of frustration. On one occasion, he confessed, he had given Rex ‘a good kick up the backside’. But nothing had worked. People had made all sorts of suggestions and my dad had suggested he build a fence around the rose beds, but George had rejected that.

Ellen, to her credit, tried to defuse the situation. At times, there was an echo of my cousin Doreen’s caring philosophy in her comments. ‘Don’t blame the dog,’ she said on one occasion. ‘It’s only in our eyes that he’s doing bad. He doesn’t know any different.’

This did little to ease George’s frustration – all he could do was curse Rex every time he attacked his roses.

Then, one summer, the solution presented itself in the most unlikely form of Freddie, one of George’s nephews (and my cousins). Freddie was three and the son of George’s and my father’s sister, Mary Ann (known to everyone as Sis). Just as no one referred to Sis by her real name, so we all called Freddie by his nickname – Sticky Fingers. Sis was very relaxed in her parenting and she allowed Freddie to eat as many sweets as he liked. As a result, he constantly had his hands in the sweet jars that sat on everyone’s sideboards in those days. What was really unpleasant was the way he would remove half-eaten sweets or bits of chocolate from his mouth and save them for later. By the time he had left someone’s house after a visit, there were bits of sweet or chocolate stuck to the floor, carpet, furniture – everywhere. It was a particularly unpleasant habit.

He was only three, but I can remember the family having a mini council of war about his behaviour. My mother was very house-proud and wouldn’t have him anywhere near her home. And, slowly but surely, other family members were conveniently forgetting to invite Sis and Fred to family events too.

‘It’s not nice for Sis. We should tell her,’ someone said.

‘But who? I don’t fancy it,’ someone else responded.

It was my father who emerged as the unlikely saviour of the day. One weekend, quite out of the blue, Sis, Fred and Freddie turned up on the doorstep of our home in Fulham. I could almost feel my mother’s blood pressure rising as they made their way into her immaculate living room. Immediately, Freddie spotted our sweet jar and dived in, as was his wont. My father could see my mother panicking and wove her away to make a cup of tea. ‘I’ll keep an eye on Freddie, love,’ he said reassuringly.

Sure enough, within a minute or two Freddie had removed a half-eaten sweet from his mouth. He was about to leave it on a chair when my father moved into action. As Freddie searched for the right spot to deposit the sticky toffee, my father took it off him and promptly deposited it in a nearby bin.

He chose his words carefully. ‘If you take it out of your mouth, Freddie, it goes in the bin and you can’t have it back,’ he said with a smile. He didn’t want to chastise him – just get his message across.

Predictably, it didn’t sink in immediately. At the sight of his sweet being thrown away, Freddie burst out crying and ran off to Sis. When my father explained what had happened, she looked a little embarrassed and had no option but to accept what he said. ‘Be a good boy, Freddie, and listen to your Uncle Wal,’ she said.

It wasn’t long before Freddie was back in the sweet jar. Soon, he was once more reaching to take the sweet out of his mouth. And once more my father moved towards him with his arm outstretched. ‘Is that one going in the bin too, Freddie?’ he asked.

‘No,’ Freddie replied before popping the sweet back in his mouth.

It carried on like this for the hour or so Sis and Fred remained with us, my father spending every minute watching Freddie like a hawk. Each time he went to take a sweet from his mouth my father intercepted him. By the time they were ready to leave the penny had dropped. Freddie was still eating sweets – but he was finishing each one before going on to the next.

My father thought this was a real triumph. When we next went over to George and Ellen’s a week or so later, he took great pride in proclaiming he had ‘cured Freddie’, then telling the story in great detail.

‘He got the message soon enough,’ he said. ‘He saw what would happen if he did the wrong thing.’

Everyone in the family thought it was the funniest thing ever.

‘Why did nobody think of doing that before?’ my Aunt Ellen giggled. ‘It’s so obvious.’

The only one who wasn’t laughing was Uncle George, whom I remember vividly sitting nodding away to himself.

‘You’ve given me an idea there, Wal,’ he said after a while. ‘I might try that with Rex.’

I don’t think anyone was quite sure what he meant. But it became clear when we next went back to their house. This time it was George who was wearing the triumphant expression.

‘I’ve sorted out Rex’s habit of digging up the rose bed,’ he told my father, before going on to explain what had been going on since our last visit.

My father’s success with Sticky Fingers Freddie had lit a light bulb in George’s head. He decided that Rex needed to learn a similar lesson – and immediately set about providing it.

George had been sitting in the garden one evening that week when he’d seen Rex digging away in the rose bed once more. Immediately he’d walked over to him, grabbed him by the collar and marched him unceremoniously into the house, where he’d deposited him in the utility room.

‘I left him in there to have a think about it for half an hour or so,’ he said.

Rex had whined a little, but George had ignored it.

When George opened the utility room door, he found Rex lying there with a sheepish look on his face. Released back into the garden again, he wandered around aimlessly for a while, shooting George the odd glance. A few minutes later, George popped back into the kitchen to talk to Ellen. When he returned he found Rex scratching away in the flower beds again. Without saying a word, he marched over, took Rex by the collar and repeated the operation, this time leaving the dog in the utility room for a few minutes more.

‘I didn’t raise my voice to him or get rough at all. I just did it.’

That had been a couple of weeks ago. Today, as we sat in the garden, Rex was playing with me and the other children as usual. At one stage, the ball he was retrieving ran into the rose beds. He was about to set foot on the soil when he saw George make a move as if to get up. He moved away immediately.

George was clearly feeling chuffed with himself. But then, late in the afternoon, he noticed Rex digging away again – only this time in the compost heap at the far end of the garden. He got up out of his chair but got no reaction. ‘What am I going to do now?’ he asked Ellen.

‘Well, he’s obviously learned something and I’d rather he dug there than in the rose bed,’ she said. ‘Leave him for now.’

This seemed to please George. George admitted to my father that he didn’t enjoy meting out physical punishment. ‘I didn’t like hurting him,’ he said. As the afternoon wore on Rex came over to lie at George’s feet as usual. ‘We understand each other now, don’t we, mate,’ he said ruffling his coat.

George and Rex went on to live a long and happy life together. They were close anyway, but afterwards they seemed even greater pals, happier than ever in each other’s company.

People are not born good dog owners; they need to learn to adapt, to show some thought. Sometimes they also need to admit when they’ve gone wrong. To my mind, what was remarkable about Uncle George was that he admitted he was failing with Rex. Rather than taking it out on the dog, as so many owners of that generation would have done, he applied his mind and came up with another approach.

Like my father, he was an uneducated man. He had left school at twelve, forced by the economic realities of the time to earn a living to help his family. Yet he’d been smart enough to work this situation out and come up with a successful non-violent solution.

It was a long time before I fully understood what he’d tapped into. Eventually I came to see that he had been using positive association to get the message across to Rex. But it was only when I fully understood the true, underlying nature of that positive association that the power of that method really struck me.

Now I understand that as pack-dwelling animals, dogs instinctively see safety in numbers, that they like to work as a member of a team. To be excluded from a pack, as Rex was, is the ultimate punishment to most dogs. In the wild, it can effectively be a death sentence. So to threaten a dog with banishment from a pack, as George had done, is a tool that can produce quite remarkable results.

It was among the most important lessons I have ever been given. And for that, I will always be grateful to dear old Uncle George.

OUR MUTUAL FRIENDS
Why respect is the key to a great relationship with dogs

As most of us know from personal experience, no relationship is ever simple or straightforward. Life, with all its uncertainties, has an unpleasant habit of making sure that difficult times are never far away. For this reason, every relationship needs a few fundamental qualities if it is going to survive all that life has to throw at it.

It was a man called Jim Moss who made me see that this applies as much to our relationship with our dogs as it does to those with our fellow humans. Thirty years ago, in his own quiet way, Jim taught me that the key to any successful relationship can be summed up in one simple word: respect.

Jim and his wife Amy were the most devoted couple you could ever have hoped to meet. I met them in the 1970s, when, with my then husband and two young children, I left London for the Lincolnshire village of Firsby. It was a small, tight-knit community and Jim and Amy were among its most popular figures. A retired couple, both were keen gardeners and walkers, but their greatest passion in life was each other.

You never saw Jim without Amy, or vice versa. They went everywhere together, did everything together. They were also the most polite, kind-hearted people – salt-of-the-earth sorts who’d do anything to help. Everyone thought the world of them.

Occasionally, I would drop in to see them and have a cup of tea. I remember once the conversation got around to marriage – and the secret of their success. ‘We didn’t try and change each other, did we, love?’ Jim said, matter-of-factly. Amy just smiled at him and said, ‘No, we didn’t, did we?’

When the village heard the terrible news that Amy had been diagnosed with cancer at the relatively young age of sixty, a real sense of shock passed through us. We were even more shaken when, within a few short weeks, she died.

The village rallied round Jim, doing the best it could to help him. But, in truth, there was little we could do. In the weeks and months following Amy’s death, it was as if he had disappeared.

While Amy was alive, he had been a familiar face walking up and down the road, always ready for a chat. Now he suddenly became invisible. He was no longer seen in the shop, the church or the pub. I walked past Jim’s house on an almost daily basis, taking my children, Tony and Ellie, to and from the stop where the school taxi collected and dropped them off. The curtains were always drawn. There was never a sound, even of a radio or television. The only sign that Jim was still living there was the garden. Nobody ever saw him out in the garden, yet its lawns were perfectly manicured, its blooms fit for the Chelsea Flower Show. He must be gardening at night or at crack of dawn, we concluded.

One afternoon, during the summer holidays, a couple of years after Amy’s death, Ellie arrived home full of beans.

‘I’ve been talking to Mr Moss,’ she said.

I knew that a child can sometimes be a healing influence on people who are nursing a terrible loss. Their innocence is an antidote to the despair. I was quietly pleased that Ellie had made contact with Jim so left her to it.

A few days later the subject came up again.

‘Mr Moss is such a nice man,’ Ellie announced. ‘I told him that he needed a dog.’

‘Why did you do that?’ I wondered.

‘He’s sad living on his own, isn’t he? Nobody should be alone.’

A few days later, Ellie came in to announce that Mr Moss had come round to her idea.

‘He’d like a dog and wants to talk to you about it,’ she said.

The next day I popped round to see him.

He came to the door and ushered me in. It only took a second to see how terribly he was missing Amy. The house was immaculate, everything sparkled as if it was new. A large photograph of Amy had taken pride of place in the living room. Standing next to it was a vase of fresh flowers from the garden.

‘Is my daughter badgering you to get a dog?’ I asked him.

‘No, no,’ he said. ‘In fact, I think she might be right, I do need a dog.’ At that time, I had a half dozen dogs, mainly English springer spaniels. ‘I’ve seen you with your lovely springers and they seem such good dogs.’

We talked about the pros and cons of owning a dog. He understood that it was a big responsibility. I knew he was a cautious man and wasn’t going to take any rash decisions. I invited him round to my house, to spend some time with my dogs and see if he got on with them.

‘That would be nice,’ he said. ‘I’ll pop round later in the week.’

As it happened, my pack had recently expanded. I’d sold one of my springer spaniels, Ben, to a couple from Sheffield a year earlier. They’d been delighted with him, but then they’d had some bad luck. The husband had a terrible fall and broke his back. They rang me to tell me they could no longer provide him with the active life he needed.

‘Would you have him back?’ they asked.

I agreed immediately, but I knew I couldn’t keep him long term and would have to find a good, new home for him.

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
The importance of drawing on the lessons of others

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
Why great owners know their limits

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.

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