Vancouverites love their pooches. Or do they? Things only your dog walker and a UBC dog psychologist know about why, lately, everyone is out there ...

By Beverly Cramp

Walking the dog with Carlene Chartrand is an eye-opening trip into the world of people and their pets.

Yaletown-based professional dog walker Chartrand isn’t your ordinary dog walker. For starters, the owner of Walk.Run.Jump! strictly limits herself to no more than two dogs at a time. There’s no juggling half a dozen dogs on leashes, spending most of the time keeping the animals in formation; only Chartrand, paying intense attention to her charge. She doesn’t even want the diversion of other people accompanying her when she’s working but on a sunny but brisk spring day, I convince Chartrand to let me tag along to the off-leash area at West Vancouver’s Ambleside Park with her and a long-hair German Shepherd named Max. On the ride over, Chartrand keeps a watchful eye on Max who is in the canopy-covered back of a truck. “It’s OK, Max, Mommy’s here,” coos Chartrand through the cab’s sliding glass rear window. Chartrand says tone of voice is as important in developing your relationship with a dog as the actual words. “Dogs are an emotional animal. They respond to how you say something as much as what you say.”

Chartrand has severed ties with clients whom she considered poor care-givers. In one instance, clients for whom Chartrand was dog-sitting left their dog outside at night in a leaky crate with a wet blanket or other way of keeping warm. “The owners are intelligent, well-informed, well-to-do people. They fed their dog well; they just didn’t seem to be aware of proper shelter requirements for him. I went at midnight to check on the dog. He was shivering. I took him to my place, wrapped him in blankets and put him in my solarium where it was warm. It took him a long time to get back to normal. I made some comments about this. Our relationship became strained and they are no longer clients.”

When we get out of the truck at Ambleside, it quickly becomes an extreme socializing time. Dog owners, like their dogs, interact a lot with each other. We meet several other dog owners and their dogs.

There’s Virginia, a Border Collie Cross. Virginia, we soon find out, has an aggressive form of cancer. “We’re enjoying as much time as we have left with her,” says Virginia’s watchful owner. “I’m here almost every day. This is the best dog park down here. We love it.”

A little later, we encounter two Boston Bull Terriers (also known as Boston Terriers or Boston Bulls). One of them, two-year-old Lola, wears a diaper. “She was hit by a car and there was spinal cord damage,” says Laura Avary, Lola’s owner. Avary says that Lola sometimes knows she has to go outside “to do her business,” while other times Lola doesn’t sense the urge. The diaper is for the mess that used to ensue. “She’s my baby, my favourite girl. I’m convinced she came from me,” jokes Avary.

A tan Pit Bull Terrier puppy with floppy ears runs up to play with Max. The Pit Bull hasn’t had its ears cropped nor its tail docked – procedures for surgically removing ears and tails that are becoming more controversial, especially if done for cosmetic reasons. “My friends would kill me if I did that,” says the Pit Bull’s owner, a young woman with long blonde hair, adding that the pup is a rescue dog.
Soon, Max is playing with a Rottweiler. The two roll around like Olympic wrestlers in the sand. Lots of play, no fights. “Very seldom do I come across a confrontation here,” says Chartrand. “Most of the dogs are well-taken care of and well-socialized. I don’t see signs of any animal abuse, which can make the animals dangerous.”
Dr. Stanley Coren, a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia, dog expert and host of the weekly show Good Dog!, says there’s a reason humans have strong feelings about dogs. “God may have created man but man created dog,” he says. “The dog really is a designer device that we have put together. The reason that he is such a wonderful companion to us and responds so well to our needs and communications is because that’s the way we created him.
“We have systematically been manipulating dogs [through breeding and training] so that they are the perfect companion. And that’s part of the bond we have with them. They recognize that which we are talking about better than any other animal in the universe. And that’s the way we’ve programmed them.
“We’ve designed a dog that will systematically produce intense feelings in us because it does what we expect a companion to do.”

Frequently, the family dog is just that – part of the family – and treated that way. For many, dogs are little people in fur coats. This is not new.
“Our relationship to dogs is complicated,” says Coren. “Ramses III [Egyptian Pharaoh who ruled from 1186–1155 B.C.] had a dog, which we now know was a Greyhound. Slept in his bed with him. Just what we do now. Frederick the Great of Russia, when he built one of his palaces, had an entire wing dedicated to his dog. Eugene O’Neill, the Nobel Prize-winning playwright, had a Dalmatian. He had a four-poster bed made for the dog and a raincoat designed for him by Hermes of Paris. Our being dog crazy didn’t just begin in 1980s.”

And the business of Chartrand talking to Max the Long Hair German Shepherd is a natural way of communicating when we are feeling protective and close to someone or some other creature, says Coren.

We talk to dogs as if they were kids. There’s a language that psychologists refer to as “motherese.” When we talk to children our voices rise in pitch. We do the same thing with our dogs. We use the same kind of diminutives. It’s not [in a very low, rumbling voice], “Do you want to go for a walk?” It’s [high-pitched, sing-song voice] ‘Do you want to go for a walk?” And with lots of repetition, “Walkies, let’s go for a walk.”

“We are recognizing at some basic level that this is the equivalent of a young child. Because we are programmed to be biologically protective and affectionate to our young things, children specifically and to the extent that a dog is acting like a young child, that’s going to twang those particular strings. The music that is going to get played is, ‘I like you.’ ”

And dogs can learn the meaning of single words, although not whole sentences. “There is new data about how much language a dog can learn,” Coren states. “Not only can a really bright dog learn 250 words but he learns with a fast-tracking method of exclusion. Previously we thought only human beings or apes could learn this way.”

“Here’s how it works: throw five objects on the floor, four of which the dog knows the names of. You command the dog to get the object she hasn’t been trained to identify. She will check out the objects, reject the four she knows and pick up the strange object. Then put that same object in with another pile of objects, some known and unknown to the dog. Ask the dog to retrieve that fifth object again with the same name used the first time when the dog didn’t know it. Sure enough the dog will return with the fifth object. That’s high-level reasoning.

“Dogs have much more conscious representation that most people think.”
Coren argues that our choice of gifts we give our loved ones, including our dogs, says a lot about us: “When we shower affection on individuals, that affection is not determined so much by the response of that individual but by our effort and what we put into that affection and gesture.”

Tanya King and her husband Andrew run The Dog and Hydrant, a boutique and photographic studio for pets. “The clothes people buy for their dogs are an extension and expression of themselves,” says Tanya. “I have people who buy Metallica [heavy metal band] T-shirts for their dogs. The dog doesn’t know who Metallica is but the owner does.”

King takes professional family photographs of pets. The majority of her customers are dog owners. “Some are like stage moms. They fret about whether their dog is performing well. I once did a shoot with an Affenpinscher named Micky. The first shoot didn’t go well because the dog was so shy. The second time they brought Micky in with their other dog and it was a totally different story. Micky really hammed it up.”

Socialization is important to dogs. It’s also crucial for humans. “People forget that we are social animals,” says Dr. Coren, who is one of the rare scholars with both human and animal psychology training. “You deny a person social interaction and that is one of the worst things in the world you can do to them. That’s what solitary confinement is all about. It takes away your ability to engage in anything socially.

“Dogs provide a lot of that social interaction. That’s part of their function, which is completely independent from their functions as working dogs – herding, protection or sporting dogs, et cetera. Dogs have a social function that is incredibly important to us. Individuals will go out of their way to maintain that. Some of them are silly. Like the gifts we give dogs. Joan Rivers has a little Yorkshire Terrier named Spike and she called him the most spoiled dog in the world. She carried him around in a Gucci cat carrier. One of her assistants threw a ‘bark’ mitzvah for the dog. They had kosher foods and kosher dog foods, threw a party and they all ate and drank too much.

“That kind of bonding is very important. Dogs are a safe way of socializing, of interacting. But it doesn’t have to be silliness,” says Coren.
In the middle of my interview with Stanley Coren, a remarkable thing happens. He takes an emergency family call about his aged father who is in an assisted living facility (Coren himself is 65 years old). It turns out that his father’s dog has just died at a veterinarian clinic and no one has told him yet.

“When my mother died, the only thing that was keeping my dad alive was an overweight Cavalier King Charles Spaniel dog [named Amy],” says Coren. “When Amy died, my Dad was desolate. We arranged for a formal funeral. But it was necessary at that point in time that he got another companion or we were going to lose him too.

“There’s lots of scholarly evidence that elderly people, especially those isolated, need companionship. So I got him another dog very quickly. Of course she became massively overweight in no time at all. But he loved her. He liked the fact that she snored because he could know where she was in the middle of the night. Anyway, this second dog has had a series of strokes over the past month and a half and has been at the vet’s. When Dad was well enough, he would leave the assisted-care facility and go visit his dog. Well, that was the phone call saying Dad’s dog died. So I don’t know what we are going to have to do next. They aren’t going to let another dog into his assisted care.”

It isn’t just elder people who get their social interaction fix from dogs. Man’s best friend also helps facilitate social interactions between people. “Dogs are a safe way of socializing, of interacting,” says Coren. “This was discovered by Freud. He said having a dog in a therapy session was a great comfort to his patients.”

People and pets in urban areas can be a tricky business. On another dog walking experience, this time with a friend and her two dogs in Stanley Park, my friend took her dogs’ leashes off so they could have a good run through the wooded trails. I didn’t mind at first, having watched so many dogs in the West End straining at their leashes after being cooped up inside all day. Dogs need places to run free.

But, being hunting breeds, my friend’s dogs chase squirrels, barking madly at anything that moves in the underbrush. Eventually, one of the dogs returns, snout covered in blood, the limp body of a squirrel in its teeth.
I know my friend is dedicated to her dogs and has their best interests at heart (she bakes them liver cookies, for goodness’ sake). But this is certainly not what Stanley Park officials want to see repeated.

“There are signs throughout Stanley Park to inform people that dogs are not allowed off-leash, especially on the trails,” says Bill Manning, Vancouver Park Board’s operations manager, Stanley District. “The impact of off-leash dogs is devastating on wildlife, vegetation and water bodies in the park. Given the sensitivities of the surrounding environment, we encourage people to act responsibly. There has to be increased knowledge about the need to protect these sensitive areas in our urban parks.”

I prefer to think of another image of my friend and her beloved pets – her throwing snowballs at one of her dogs while he goes crazy, jumping in the air trying to catch the icy projectiles in his mouth. Now that’s fair play.