Teaching the Dog to Read

A couple months ago, on my return from a trip I learned that in my absence Tom had been trying to teach the dog to read.  He said that the dog wasn't making much progress.  On further investigation, I learned that he actually was trying to teach Bullwinkle the alphabet.  I told him that that no doubt was the problem, that the whole language method would probably be more effective than phonics.

Since then, there was an article in the New York Times about Chaser, a border collie that knows the names of more than a thousand objects, along with some additional verbs.  This border collie is owned by a retired psychology professor from Wofford College, who - from the time the dog was a puppy - spent 4 or 5 hours a day teaching the dog words.  Border collies are energetic, smart, obdient, and hard-working, and according to Dr. Pilley, Chaser's owner and teacher, she still demands 4 to 5 hours a day.  "I'm 82," Dr. Pilley told the New York Times, "and I have to go to bed to get away from her."

Now we knew about border collies and their vocabularies before this report; we thought that border collies could learn 400 words, and if border collies could do it, surely Bullwinkle could too. 

Bullwinkle is mature - he's 9 years old in human years - with a graying muzzle and a very sweet disposition.  He is not particularly obdient (see, for example, this and this) and not exactly energetic either, but since he was a puppy he has been in a household where we talk about current events over dinner and we read newspapers and magazines and books, so surely that counts for something.  (Caroline was in a study, the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, and every year or so I would be interviewed by phone.  Whenever they would ask how many children's books were in the house and I said "hundreds," I'm not sure they believed me.)

We do think Bullwinkle knows quite a few words; most of them have to do with food.  He is obsessed with food, and I think if he were given the chance he would eat until he was sick, or worse.

Given his food obsession and his mellow disposition and not-so-active lifestyle ("Caroline, there's a dog on your bed." "There's always a dog on my bed."), it is not surprising that he has a weight problem.  Tom buys the diet dog food, and at least when I feed him I definitely control portions, but he is insufferable when he thinks it's time to be fed. 

This is the thing that I don't understand.  This is a dog that will jump on the dining room table and snatch a loaf of bread or a stick of butter, if given the chance.  But the 40 pound bag of dog food is sitting out in the foyer, next to his bowl - the bowl he will toss across the room if not filled with food when he thinks it should be - and he has never knocked the bag over or tore it open to get into it on his own.  It's not that he doesn't know that's where his food is, and it's not that he couldn't get into it - he just hasn't.

We used to have a cat named Rocky, who decided he didn't like sharing his house with the dog and moved next door to live with Kathy and Steve; he died of cancer a few years ago.  When Rocky was still in our house at least some of the time, we had dry cat food sitting out for him so he could eat when he wanted to.  Bullwinkle started eating Rocky's food, and Rocky - I know this was deliberately done out of spite - did knock over Bullwinkle's close-to-empty bag of food and helped himself to dog food.  At the time, I told Tom this proved that cats are smarter than dogs, but that may not be true; they simply may be more devious.

Bullwinkle may not know more than a dozen words, but one morning when I returned from a before dawn trip to the grocery store, he broke out in frenzied barking that stopped as soon as he saw it was me.  He doesn't have much opportunity to be a watch dog but I am pretty sure if anyone did try to get into the house at night he would be as loud as our alarm system.  He also knows the sound of a half of a dog treat tapped against the back window, and even when he is barking at possums on the other side of the fence, he usually will come running.  Not bad for an middle-aged, overweight Laborador Retriever, even if he can't read.

Current Events

Off and on all weekend I've been trying to write something coherent about Egypt.  We've been following unfolding events on television, and on the web.  Some great reporting, from the media I usually follow and some I haven't before, like Al Jazeera English.  Learning about the complexity of how the military and the security forces are organized and how the fissures and factions and loyalities there will shape what follows.  Admiral Mike Mullen on the Daily Show (the Daily Show!), talking about the close ties between the U.S. military and the Egyptian military.  In clinic on Friday, sneaking a quick look at Al Jazeera's live blog between patients.  Yesterday afternoon, I turned on the television, looking for an update about what was happening.  CNN didn't even have any news on (isn't the second N supposed to stand for "news"?) but MSNBC did. 

The key factor that determines outcome, when the citizens of a country take to the streets, is whether or not the organized guys with guns - whether it be the police or the military - will kill their own people.  All week, waiting to see what was going to happen.  It seemed, last week, that it might be the day that Things Turned Bad.  Gangs of thugs were attacking the protestors and the journalists who were sharing the story with the rest of the world.  Remembering Iran, in 2009, and before that, Tiananmen Square.  What would the military do? 

As it has played out, tt seems that they are planning on outlasting the Mubarek government, whose days are numbered, and probably in days and not weeks.   What will follow?  Hopefully a government that is more responsive, and less corrupt, and less inclined to let thugs in uniform terrorize its citizens.

I was embarrassed, the other night, with Piers Morgan asked an Egyptian official if he would like to take the opportunity to apologize for the attacks on Western journalists, as if roughing up Anderson Cooper was somehow worse than attacking Egyptian journalists.  One Egyptian journalist has been killed, already, and countless others have been beaten, harrassed, intimidated, and detained.  It has been a systematic assault on the reporters who have bringing us the news.  They are brave people, and I am grateful they are still there.  A free press is critical to democracy, and in the long run, that's what will build peace, and prosperity, and stability to the country and the region.

I remember 1989, when the Iron Curtain came down, and one country after another declared their national independence.  Who could have imagined that in a few months, the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe would come to end so quickly, so bloodlessly?  Just because we didn't see it coming, doesn't mean it can't happen.  We do not know how this particular story will end, but we are hoping for a peaceful transition to democracy. 

So the other night, Tom mounted the flag holder on one of the columns on our front porch, and we hung the flag of Egypt.  I haven't heard of a march is support of the people of Egypt here in Atlanta, and if there was one, I probably wouldn't have time to go to it.  But if you are on Wessyngton Road, you can find our house. 

It's the one with the Egyptian flag on the front porch.