A Dog’s Best Friend: The Secrets that Make Good Dog Owners Great

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 (#ulink_3e6afec4-472b-5f9a-a14b-d4a01eaf8fe9)

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?’ (#ulink_368175dd-f352-54da-b9a7-e15858d5acb3)

Why great owners put themselves in their dog’s place (#ulink_368175dd-f352-54da-b9a7-e15858d5acb3)

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.