“Okay. Mommy and I have discussed this, and because this is so special and may never happen again, we want to let you go.”
“Really?” she exclaimed.
“This is important to you?” I asked.
She nodded vigorously.
“Good,” I continued, “because there is a condition.”
“What?” Helen asked.
“In order for you to miss school, you have to pull your science grade up to an A,” I explained. “If you have an A in the class, you can come. The Dog Project is very important to me, and I would really like you to be there to share in it.”
“I can do that!” she agreed.
For the next several days, the prospect of positive reinforcement had the desired effect. Although Helen still didn’t enjoy studying science, there was a noticeable decrease in homework resistance. She threw herself into making flash cards and made an earnest attempt to memorize the material. Kat and I patted ourselves on our backs, celebrating our success at applying dog-training theory to preteen behaviorism.
But like dog training, the effectiveness is in the details.
Callie was making progress in the training in large part because I was beginning to learn how to make it clear what I expected of her. Baby steps, coupled with consistent reward, make for effective learning. But if the desired behavior is too difficult, then the reward becomes unobtainable and motivation declines.
With Helen, the desired behavior was clear: get an A. But what I had neglected to consider was the inherent unpredictability of her science teacher. I mistakenly assumed that if Helen put in the necessary effort, she would be rewarded with a good grade.
Big mistake.
A week later, despite all of her efforts, she returned home with a 75 on a quiz. This pretty much put out of reach the possibility of raising her grade to an A, at least by the time the Dog Project launched.
“I really tried,” she said. “He makes the tests too hard.”
Now Kat and I were in a difficult position. Helen had failed to achieve the goal we had set. If this were Callie, I would simply make her try again until she did what I wanted. But not only were we running out of time with the scan day a week away, but I also hadn’t accounted for an element out of my controclass="underline" the fairness of the test.
Certainly Helen could have tried harder. With half the school year gone by, she knew what the tests were like. But that wasn’t really the point. She had done what I had asked, which was to redouble her efforts at studying.
The great compromise that emerged from this hand-wringing was an explicit and concrete statement of what was expected, a goal that was entirely within her control.
“I still want you to see the dog scanning,” I said. “I know the tests are picky. So how about you put in an extra hour of studying each day until the scanning?”
“If I do that, I can come?”
“Yes, but to make sure that you’re studying the right things, it has to be with either me or Mommy.”
Helen already had one to two hours of homework each day, so this was not greeted with enthusiasm. But grudging acceptance was all that was required.
She refused to study with me that night. But over the next two days, the resentment diminished, and Helen allowed me into her room to go over concepts from science and math. I hoped that my explanations of how things worked would somehow help her remember the laundry list of facts that she would be tested on. But all I really wanted was an excuse for her to share in the excitement of the Dog Project and see what real science looked like.
12
Dogs at Work
THE DRESS REHEARSAL with Callie at the scanner made it clear that the dogs should be conditioned to more than the MRI. They needed to get used to the entire experience. We wanted them peaceful and poised on the day of scanning. The more we could do to get them used to the environment, the calmer they would eventually be. Because of her agility competitions, McKenzie was a certified road warrior, and traveling didn’t faze her. But Callie was a homebody, and she didn’t take well to car travel. After all, most of her car trips ended at the vet for a series of shots or a similar indignity.
So I started bringing Callie to work.
Getting her into the car was the hardest part. I would say, “Wanna go to work?” and Callie would run over to the garage door and leap up and down as though her legs were made of springs. But once I opened the car door, she would balk, tail between her legs. She would stiffen up as I placed her in the front seat. Even when we got moving, she never relaxed and would try to sit in my lap as I drove. Eventually we settled into a mutually acceptable position with her in a standing position, hind legs on the passenger seat and front legs on the center console, facing me. She shivered for the entire thirty-minute trip from house to campus. Her nervousness also caused her to shed, leaving short black hairs all over the seats.
Once we got to Emory, Callie became her normal, cheerful self. The short walk from the parking deck to the lab triggered smiles in all whom we passed. Callie liked to hop up on a stone wall, about waist high, in front of the lab building, where she would trot along, doing her best imitation of a circus dog on a tightrope.
Inside the lab, she would zoom around to each of the waste cans, looking for food scraps. Once she was satisfied there was no free food, she would interrogate the people. Lisa would lower her face to dog level and coo, “Callie!” Callie would stand on her hind legs to lick Lisa’s face. The guys were friendly, if not as demonstrative, and tried to engage Callie by throwing a tennis ball around. But Callie was not a retriever. Her interest in things that moved tended toward small, furry animals.
With each trip to the lab, I brought a toy to keep her amused. It wasn’t long before bones and Kongs lay scattered on the floor. A water bowl was in one corner, a doggie bed in another. The lab was starting to feel like home.
Presciently, we had included language in the official IACUC protocol specifying that the dogs would first be familiarized with the scanner environment. This would minimize the chance of the dogs freaking out and running amok. Although the intent was to placate the risk-averse lawyers, there was now the obvious side benefit that the dogs would not only have to be familiarized with the scanner, but they would need to be familiarized with the staging area—the lab. Therefore, when I brought Callie to work, I was just following protocol.
Also according to our protocol, we would need to find the right subjects. Mark had suggested a laundry list of ideal characteristics: calm, good in novel environments, good with strangers, good with other dogs, inquisitive, unafraid of loud noises, unafraid of heights, and able to wear earmuffs. These traits were specified in the official IACUC protocol that gave us permission to do the research.
Never mind that Callie and McKenzie had already been selected as our first two subjects. We would still need more dogs. We needed backups in case Callie or McKenzie couldn’t make it into the MRI. Of course, we could conduct dog tryouts at CPT, and eventually we would, but we could just as easily hold “auditions” at the lab. Because the dogs hadn’t yet qualified to be research subjects, and therefore fall under the IACUC rules, they existed in a gray zone between pet and research, and, as I was painfully aware, pets were not allowed.
One day, Andrew brought in his toy poodle, Daisy. Andrew had warned us that she was a temperamental dog and barked when anxious, which was often. We were already testing the boundaries of research rules, but if we got noise complaints, dogs would not be welcome anymore. Daisy was on good behavior, though. She didn’t stray far from Andrew, and he limited the duration of her visit. He didn’t dare bring his other dog, an American Eskimo named Mochi. She tended to leave puddles wherever she got excited. Other lab members soon followed suit. One day I was greeted by two beautiful huskies, London and Reyna. Another day, Lisa’s goldendoodle, Sheriff, paid a visit. Sheriff was a golden, frizzy cross between a golden retriever and a standard poodle. He didn’t qualify for the Dog Project based on size alone.