Chaser: Unlocking the Genius of the Dog Who Knows a Thousand Words; By John W. Pilley with Hilary Hinzmann

I finally got a copy of this book from the library and it was definitely worth the wait.  With a wonderful mix of storytelling and science, it was difficult to put down!

If you haven’t heard of Chaser the border collie, you should definitely watch a few videos of her.  Here are some links:

A quick one from ABC: http://youtu.be/_6479QAJuz8

Another short video from Today : http://youtu.be/Hi8HFdPMsiM

The Nova Science Now special:  http://youtu.be/mTTuiE1_Oe8

And another demonstrating Chaser’s understanding of two-word combinations: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbI13nbDRRI&feature=share&list=UU2NjUImk-ITC_LhgsNvvADg&index=1

Chaser tells the story of how John Pilley raised Chaser, developed their relationship, and carried out her training.  Pilley was a professor of psychology and so he knew a great deal about human and animal learning and this gave him a great start for working with Chaser.  Just before he got Chaser as a little puppy, Rico the border collie was getting lots of media attention for knowing over 200 words. However, several things were pointed out about Rico’s skills – for example Rico only fetched objects, he didn’t do anything else with them.  Pilley researched all of the ways to improve upon the training done with Rico and came up with his own goals for Chaser.

• His first goal was to try to surpass Rico’s 200 words – which he definitely accomplished by teaching Chaser over 1000!
• His second goal was to show that Chaser definitely was not getting any clues from him about which toys to get.  He did this by putting the toys in another room, behind the couch, behind a screen, etc.
• His third goal was to teach Chaser to interact with the toys in more than one way.  He taught her herding commands (Come by, away to me, walk up, drop) in addition to “take”, “paw”, and “nose” so that he could use these words in combination with the object name.
• He also wanted to see how fast Chaser could learn an object name and whether she could learn by exclusion.  When she was just 6 months old, she could learn an object by hearing it named only once.  Pilley would say “ Chaser this is _____” and then she could find that object amongst others by name.  Soon after, he tested her ability to learn a new object name by exclusion and found that she passed with flying colors!
• Pilley also taught Chaser the names of categories like “ball” and “Frisbee”.  She learned that each ball had it’s own name for that specific ball, but that the word “ball” meant any of the balls.

The rest of the book focuses on their experience with writing the publications and getting them accepted in a peer reviewed journal (they were first published in Behavioral Processes), how they “went viral” after the paper was published online, and how they were included in a Nova Science Now episode on the intelligence of animals.  They also made a trip to New York to help promote the show, did demonstrations at the college, and presented at the American Psychological Association’s conference in Washington D.C.  He wraps up with some of the future training he hopes to do with Chaser and what they are currently working on.

Beyond Chaser’s amazing abilities, here are the things I was most impressed by in this book:

• Pilley spends 4-5 hours per day training Chaser!  This is a great mark for anyone working with his or her dog.  Training takes time, consistency, and patience!
• Pilley spends 4-5 hours per day training Chaser!  When people say a border collie (or other working dog) needs a job, this is what they mean!
• All of Chaser’s training is presented as play.  All of the learning is one big game for her and treats are rarely used.  For Chaser, playing with toys is so much more fun!
• The Pilley family always put Chaser’s needs first – they didn’t fly her anywhere when she became famous and they were very careful about how much she was taken on TV.  That environment can be stressful for a dog who is not used to it (or probably even for dogs who are!).  They were always very careful to keep her routine as much as possible even through the traveling – right down to playing Frisbee in the hotel hallway!

I really encourage you to read this one.  The explanations of the training sessions are very clear – maybe you’ll decide to give it a shot with your own dog!