Born to Bark: My Adventures with an Irrepressible and Unforgettable Dog
Stanley Coren
Language: English
Pages: 320
ISBN: 1439189218
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
"For Christmas the woman who would become my wife bought me a dog—a little terrier. The next year her Christmas gift to me was a shotgun. Most of the people in my family believe that those two gifts were not unrelated."
So begins Born to Bark, the charming new memoir by psychologist and beloved dog expert Stan Coren of his relationship with an irrepressible gray Cairn terrier named Flint. Stan immediately loved the pup for his friendly nature and indefatigable spirit, though his wife soon found the dog’s unpredictable exuberance difficult to deal with, to say the least.
Even though Flint drove Stan’s wife up the wall, he became the joy of Stan’s life. The key to unlocking this psychologist-author’s way of looking at dog behavior, Flint also became the inspiration behind Coren’s classic, The Intelligence of Dogs. Undeterred by Flint’s irrepressible behavior (and by the breeder’s warning that he might be untrainable), Coren set out to prove that his furry companion could pass muster with the best of them. He persevered in training the unruly dog and even ventured into the competitive circles of obedience trials in dog shows, where Flint eventually made canine history as the highest-scoring Cairn terrier in obedience competition up to that time. (Stan chose not to tell his wife that the highest-ranking obedience dog of that year, a border collie, earned a total score that was fifty times higher.)
The longest-running popular expert on human-dog bonding, Coren has enlivened his respected books and theories about dogs with accounts of his own experiences in training, living with, loving, and trying to understand them. A consummate storyteller, Coren now tells the wry, poignant, goofy, and good-hearted tale of his life with the dog who (in the words of his own book titles) taught him How to Speak Dog and How Dogs Think and whose antics made him ask Why Does My Dog Act That Way? Illustrated with Coren’s own delightful line drawings and photos, and interwoven with his heartfelt anecdotes of other beloved dogs from his earlier life, Born to Bark is an irresistible good dog/bad dog tale of this extraordinary, willful pooch and his profound impact on his master’s insights into canine behavior as a research psychologist and on his outlook on life as a whole.
and in his hound voice says, “Flint was different, wasn’t he, Dad?” Darby is the only dog that has ever called me “Dad.” He has a typical hound nature, soft, sociable, and as difficult to train as Flint was—not because he is as independent and innovative as Flint was, but rather because events going on inside his sensitive nose are far more important than the lessons I may try to teach him. Dancer is much more trainable. He loves to work and he calls me “Boss.” “Oh yes,” I say. “Flint taught me
then—just to make sure that he knows that he’s caged—you take away half of his floor space. Maybe you should have gotten a parakeet, rather than a dog. How long does this caging thing go on?” she asked. “Maybe until he is around 6 months old. At least he should be in his kennel when we go to bed. After that, we can leave the door to the crate open and see if he is clean overnight.” I could see that she was not buying into my reasoning, but she let the matter go with what would become a frequent
away!” his voice said. At first I chuckled at his fury, but once I saw the savage gouges he left on the wooden television stand, I stopped laughing and rotated the TV stand so that the damaged leg was against the wall where it would not be visible. I really didn’t want to have to explain this new episode of genetically generated terrier behavior to Joan. Over the next several days I surreptitiously sanded, stained, and varnished the chewed piece of furniture, and Joan never noticed the initial
each time she was next to a table that she was able to grab and prevent herself from falling. I discovered that Flint was doing the untying one day when I wandered out to the kitchen to refill our coffee cups and on returning noticed Flint lying on his belly under the table and very gently pulling at Joannie’s shoelace. My immediate urge was to stop him with a loud, “Flint, no!” but that would have alerted Joan to his latest example of misbehavior. So instead I simply mentioned to her that her
them.” “That’s why I only buy used toys,” I said. I had found a store run by a local charity that had a big bin of used plush toys that sold for two or four for a dollar (depending upon their size), so that watching Flint destroy them in his game of “serial killer” caused little economic pain. Wizard, however, was different. He did not play with toys, but rather collected them. If you tossed a toy for him, he would run after it, but when he reached it he would often turn around and return to me