3

Wake-Up Calls

WE'RE IN THE FLOWER SHOP AGAIN, enveloped in fragrance. Roses, lilies, freesia—a heady nectar. I had not planned on going in. Brio, as he always did when we passed the store, had pulled me in, not for a biscuit or to greet the owner but simply to smell. He sat absorbing it all. And I stood forced to take it in with him, to appreciate it with him, something no one had ever taught me to do before. It was my first lesson in patience.

For all his exuberance, there was a profound stillness in Brio. At the beach he would stare out to sea, into the horizon. In the city, he sought out flower shops. In these moments, he was in his own world. Even sitting, senses at work as he parsed his surroundings, there was something compelling about him. He was so still, so focused—but on what, I still didn't know.

There was majesty about him—a magnetism. And it wasn't just personality. He seemed to have a palpable energy, an aura that I came to think of as “presence.” With him, I felt more awake, more alive, more centered. I was supposed to be walking him. Yet he'd pull me into a moment amid the flowers. I had to wonder: who was really at the end of the leash? Did it even matter? No one in my life had ever led me to stop and literally smell the roses. Brio did.

Our life together in New York City gradually settled into a routine. There were the early morning walks to Central Park, where Brio could run off the leash at that time of day. He would still sometimes literally “run off”! But I was growing to trust that eventually he would come back. Then I moved to a new apartment, which meant a new neighborhood. But Brio adapted very quickly—both indoors and out. The night after I'd moved, with the apartment full of boxes, I looked around and found him lying on the couch, where he'd never been allowed to be in the old place. I didn't have the heart to move him—as he no doubt knew. So from then on the couch was his.

I certainly had no experience with the dog-human connection when I hesitantly came to this relationship. I'd naively thought that the only way dogs and people could talk to each other was through programmed human words or physical gestures—commands. Now I was beginning to think in a very different way about Brio, about who he was, about his capacity to feel and his level of intelligence. So I also had to think differently about how to communicate with him.

Dog people who have experience and insight know well that dogs read us like a book. Considerable research has been done looking at why dogs, uniquely among domesticated animals, seem to be so attuned to humans and able to pick up our body language, our feelings, and even our thoughts so accurately. There's evidence that dogs are more able to understand the world from a human perspective than had been previously recognized.

In a recent study, when the lights were turned off so the humans in the room couldn't see them, dogs were four times more likely to steal food they had been forbidden (than when the lights were on). Dr. Juliane Kaminski, who performed this study at the University of Portsmouth in the United Kingdom, says, “It's unlikely that the dogs simply forgot that the human was in the room” when there was no light. It seemed, Kaminski contends, that the dogs actually could tell when the human was likely to see them and adapted their behavior accordingly. “The current finding,” the study reports, “raises the possibility that dogs take into account the human's visual access to the food while making their decision to steal it.”¹

Another recent study shows that dogs can decipher the emotion behind vocal communication in the same way that humans can. Brain scans conducted by the Comparative Ethology Research Group in Hungary found that dog and human brains both lit up in the voice areas of the brain—which are in similar locations in both species—when whining, crying, happy barks, and laughing were heard. Moreover, in both species the auditory cortex showed more activation when a happy sound was heard versus a sad one. The researchers believe the study presents evidence that dogs and humans share an emotional “language.”² We have, after all, evolved alongside each other for the past one hundred thousand years.

Neuroscientist Gregory Berns of Emory University conducted brain scans of dogs that also strongly indicated that they have emotional responses similar to humans. The same brain area, called the caudate, which is associated with enjoyment in people, is activated in the dog brain in response to a hand signal indicating food.³

I always sensed, when I sat on the beach with Brio, staring out at the ocean, that we were feeling the same wonder and peace and awe in the space we shared. When something pleased him, he would get a little smile on his face. He often had that smile as he looked to the sea.

Yet another study indicates that dogs not only understand the emotions behind our words but that they also can comprehend the meanings of words no matter what the accompanying inflection or emotion. A graduate psychology student at the University of Sussex in England did an experiment in which she played a recorded command to 250 dogs with and without inflections in the speaker's voice. She then recorded which way the dogs turned their heads and found a clear pattern of difference, depending on whether they heard meaningful words or just emotional cues. The results indicate that the dog's brain—like the human brain—is separating speech into two parts: the emotional cues and the meaning of words.⁴

Early in the twentieth century, animal cognition research was discredited by the case of a horse in Germany, Clever Hans. It was claimed that he could understand human words and do mathematical calculations. Then it was shown that he was actually responding to body language cues from his human handler. Still, pretty clever!⁵

Today's current science has marked a sea change in how we think of the nature and abilities of nonhuman animals. I had increasingly come to recognize Brio as an autonomous and sentient being. When one sees one's own dog in this way, one cannot help but become more aware of how we treat all our fellow beings.

Recent research has led some scientists to argue for the legal rights of animals. Three prominent neuroscientists recently issued a declaration saying that “nonhuman animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors.”⁶

Here we have scientists delving into the mysterious realm of consciousness.

Science has yet to decipher the nature of human consciousness, much less that of other species. Yet the exploration itself shows that some scientists are driven by curiosity about what's going on inside animals' minds and who they really are.

I could see that Brio made decisions about what to do in certain situations and knew to make other choices in different circumstances. He was clearly able to choose his moments to do exactly what he wanted, completely ignoring what was in my mind about his behavior. Once when I was hosting a cocktail party in the country, he seized a moment when I was distracted to somehow get out of the house and run very fast and very far down the road, after a deer. It took a good ten minutes of chasing him in my heeled sandals down the dirt path, screaming in panic, before he deigned to hear me and turn around.

I was becoming aware of Brio as not “just a dog” but as a conscious being. He constantly exhibited a creative and original mind. Once when he was still quite young, I took him with me to dinner at the home of some friends. He disappeared for a bit. After calling him for several minutes with no results, we searched the house. We found him in a back bedroom sitting on a nightstand next to a tall lamp. The perch gave him an excellent view out the window.

I came to realize that I would never be able to make Brio “obey” and “sit” the way I wanted, and I was grateful for it. I was starting to see that he was his own master and a unique being.

Other people seemed to sense some special quality in Brio. My close friends, Bob and Arline Prince, knew poodles well. They'd owned several over the years and in fact helped inspire my affection for the breed as well as Brio's name. Bob Prince was a composer, and their dog, Forte, had also been named after a musical term.

One night at dinner we were talking about our respective dogs' personalities. “Forte is a genius, the smartest dog we ever had,” Bob remarked with pride and a touch of dog-person competitiveness. “Look at what he does when I sing ‘Oh Danny Boy' to him—but as ‘Oh Downy Boy!'” Sure enough, after a couple of phrases Forte slid his front paws forward into a “down.”

“He won't do that if you just say ‘down'?” I asked.

“Only when I sing,” Bob replied with a smile. He was not a fan of traditional dog training, but it was clear he was really enjoying this exhibition of canine comprehension techniques. I was impressed and a little competitive myself.

“Brio's smart too, don't you think?” I asked, fishing for confirmation of my growing conviction that Brio was special.

Bob was not a man to get into deep conversation about matters of spirit and soul. He held his inner feelings and insights about life to himself. So what he said next surprised and touched me. He looked intently at me, as though he wanted me to really hear what he was saying. “He's not just smart,” he said evenly. “You can look into his eyes and see the pyramids.” I felt chills along my arms. Bob had seen what I saw in Brio each day—that eternal presence, a kind of wisdom that was deep and ancient.

A year or so after the conversation with Bob, I decided to visit an ayurvedic doctor to ask about nutrition and diet for myself. A friend had recommended this healer and I was curious. I decided to take Brio with me because I didn't have a dog walker that day. We waited in the office with lots of people for our turn to be called in. Brio sat like a statue. He tended to rise to occasions like this and restrain his exuberant tendencies. Finally the healer, Pankaj Naram, a sweet Indian man in a long jacket, beckoned us into his room.

“Oh, he's an old soul,” were Dr. Naram's first words, looking intently at Brio.

“What do you mean?” I asked, both excited that he had picked up on Brio's special quality and a bit nervous about what would come next. Who was Brio exactly? Was I living with a being who really had come from some other dimension and who had knowledge completely foreign to me? Part of me feared learning that Brio was actually some kind of old master in dog's clothing—not even my equal but a being whose essence I could never fathom and certainly never control. With Dr. Naram's next words, I really felt stunned.

“He's been here on Earth many times,” said the healer, peering into Brio's eyes as if he was making out a story there. “He won't be coming back as a dog in the next life, we know that.”

“He's coming back? What do you mean coming back?” I asked. Brio was young. I certainly wasn't thinking of the end of his life, much less a return to life. But in the back of my mind I had some fear that if he came back it might not be to me. I might not recognize or see him again.

“You'll be surprised,” the healer said to me cryptically, and then turned his attention to my questions about my diet. Nonetheless, during most of the visit, he remained in silent but substantive conversation with Brio.

Sometimes I got surprising reports from people who said Brio had somehow changed their lives. A housekeeper confided that she told Brio her secrets when I wasn't around. There was something about him, she said, that made her know he understood—understood and did not judge. Then Jim Moran, a former computer technology expert turned dog walker, let me know that Brio played a key role in his decision to make that major career change. Jim had first turned to dog walking as temporary work when he'd been laid off from a corporate tech job and was still looking for work in that field. One day he was out walking Brio in a snowstorm. “He loved the snow and the wind. I was having a great time with him,” Jim remembers. “It was idyllic.” And then his cell phone rang. It was a headhunter offering him a big job with Hewlett-Packard. The headhunter talked about all the money that came with the job. Meanwhile, Jim says, “Brio is playing in the snow and I'm having a ball watching him.” Jim thought about the pressure and harassment from complaining clients that would also come with the job. In that moment, watching Brio, Jim decided to turn down the work and to “reinvent myself as a dog walker and trainer.” The moment with Brio gave him clarity. “That was fifteen years ago,” he says, “and I haven't regretted that decision once since then.”

These acknowledgments from other people validated what I by now felt myself. I felt safe with Brio. I felt able to stay in the moment, secure in the moment, even in very difficult situations. The night my mother died in a nursing home, Brio went with me to sit with her body. He sat perfectly still by my side, looking at her. He allowed me to look at her and to accept the reality of that moment, to feel it and to live with it.

Others clearly felt Brio's presence, his consciousness, even if they didn't call it by those specific names or know exactly what it was that they sensed. The comments moved me down the road into a mysterious territory of the unexplainable and the invisible. There would soon be more wake-up calls to come.

Fueled by my growing belief in the consciousness of animals, I thought of ways I could introduce my newfound curiosity into my work. How can I do some more research about animal communication? I wondered. I was producing for ABC News at the time and decided to do additional testing of animal psychics on ABC's watch.

“Why not get a dog psychic to try to read Diane Sawyer's dog?” I pitched the executive producer of a documentary program, Turning Point. “It can be part of a story exploring the animal mind.”⁷

I got the go-ahead and phoned Samantha Khury.

“I want you to let us fly you to New York and read Diane Sawyer's dog,” I proposed in my most persuasive voice. “It's a great way to bring the idea of animal communication to a national audience.”

With only a touch of hesitation, Samantha agreed. Maybe she more or less trusted me after the reading with Brio. Samantha lived in California, and after she arrived in New York we met in the hotel suite we'd booked for the event. Here, Samantha was introduced to Diane and her Gordon setter, Charlie.

Diane only briefly spoke with Samantha, as we'd planned, and gave her virtually no information about Charlie except for his name. For his part, Charlie seemed quite anxious and very attached to Diane. He kept trying to climb in her lap, almost crushing her.

“He's always like this,” Diane said apologetically. “I'm afraid he's neurotic.” Then Samantha and Charlie left us and disappeared into the bedroom for about an hour. When they emerged, Samantha reported what she'd learned.

“It took him quite awhile to settle down but finally he started to trust me,” she told us in the calm voice of a doctor with a good bedside manner. “I wondered why he has such anxiety. He told me that when he was a puppy he remembers ‘spinning,' falling downward in a spiral. That scared him.”

Diane, who I think approached this venture with even more doubt than I felt at the beginning of my journey, looked startled. “He actually did have an accident when he was young,” she said with surprise. “He fell into a swimming pool.”

Samantha seemed to have done it again.

A day or so later, we taped another test with Samantha and Charlie—this time at Diane Sawyer's home outside of New York City. First, we shot Charlie inside and outside the house. We followed him through the dining room; we watched him outside in the big yard. Samantha was not present during this part of the taping. She had no idea where or in what type of house Diane lived. Later we interviewed her.

“What did Charlie show about where he lives?” I asked.

“He shows me a room with a lot of furniture. He's winding around the furniture.”

That sounded very like the dining room though it could have been lots of rooms. But then she reported that Charlie showed her a yard: “He says there's a lot of big trees near some water. He likes to go around under the trees.”

That was a pretty exact description of the yard. We had taped Charlie under the trees and near the water that bordered the property.

Again, the results defied easy explanation in terms of the ordinary material world. This was certainly no scientific study. But the results posed more questions about how Samantha could have relayed information ostensibly from Sawyer's dog that accurately reported on both his environment and events in his life. The scene was good television. As a producer, I hadn't revealed anything to my colleagues about the personal need I had to find out if the animal psychics were for real. I was pleased by Samantha's “translation” of Charlie because it at least meant there was a possibility that she and other communicators weren't fabricating their abilities. If what she said had turned out to be patently false, I would have been disappointed. Now I realized that more than simple curiosity was at stake in my investigation. Skeptic as I was, I secretly wanted animal communication to be true.

Dog psychics generally tell clients that everyone can develop the ability to “read” a dog on some level. I didn't really believe that I could actually “hear” what Brio was thinking the way the psychics could. Yes, I could now read his body language much of the time. But when I tried to see if I could visualize a “down” or a “sit” and have Brio obey the command, nothing doing. Either Brio didn't get the picture or he didn't want to! And I heard no messages back telling me what was going on his head. I evidently couldn't access whatever frequency the animal communicators said they could tap into.

The experience with Charlie and Samantha had really whetted my curiosity. I could no longer tell myself it was a purely professional interest; it was something more. I had to keep pursuing what was now almost an obsessive need to keep investigating animal communication and testing its validity.