Ever wonder what it means to have a “meaningful relationship” with your dog?

It’s easy to get caught up in the mechanical aspects of owning a dog. You feed the dog, walk the dog, and train it not to pee on your carpets. And you work on obedience training — teaching your dog to “sit” and “stay” and “heel” and “come.”

Maybe the ultimate “mechanical” experience is owning a robot dog like Aibo. (Click on the image to see a BBC article about Aibo.)

This is sort of old news. You’ll notice the date on the BBC article is 2001. But it’s an interesting experiment in understanding the difference between a “robotic” relationship with a dog as opposed to an “emotional” relationship.

Aibo, developed by SONY, had some pretty cute features. You could program his software to change his name. And you could hook him up to your computer to see the world through his eyes. But the author of this article reaches this conclusion:

“No further connections grew between us, and I grew increasingly frustrated with my inability to develop a mutual relationship with Aibo.”

Here’s the final chapter of the Aibo story. Sony cancelled the project in 2006, partly because people wanted more than a robot for a pet.

It’s possible for owning a dog to become robotic and boring. For example, if you don’t like to walk, then walking your dog can be a burden. But for people who do like to walk for exercise, walking a dog can be a pleasure. The walk can be a shared experience.

What does it mean to have a relationship with your dog? Well, it must have something to do with getting past the boring, robotic chores. Here are a few ways that your dog relationship can get past the mundane stuff:

• You actually enjoy walking your dog, and the walk becomes a shared experience — and you and your dog get healthier in the process.
• You find other shared experiences, like going to a dog park, or in the case of Callie, playing soccer.
• You discover some things that your dog really likes to do, or is bred to do, and you take pleasure in supporting your dog’s “hobbies.”
• You get into competitions with your dog, like dog shows, agility training, or dog dancing.
• You tune into the more subtle “messages” that your dog is sending, and start to “speak” its language.
• You discover that your dog, in addition to depending on you for lots of things, also really cares about you — likes to be in the same room, licks your wounds and wants to sleep on your bed.

These are just a few of the ways your dog can capture portions of your heart and soul, if you let it.

Here are two of my favorite images from “My Doggie Says… Messages from Jamie.” The first is a photo of Jamie lying across the hallway by my home office saying, “I’m going to do everything I can to keep you right here.”

The second, is a photo of Jamie getting excited because she saw me take my green backpack out of the closet at our Lake Arrowhead house. Jamie knew that this meant she was going to get to go swimming in the lake, which was her favorite thing to do. So she sat by the door, waiting patiently (well, not always so patiently) to go to the lake.

Why would you want to have a “meaningful relationship” with your dog? After all, it will affect you emotionally — sometimes in happy ways and sometimes in sad ways. From the dog’s point of view, you are making its life better by sharing a part of yourself. But you’ll find that you grow in unexpected ways, too. For example, I got so interested in Jamie’s “dog talk” that I took hundreds of photos and wrote a book about it (“My Doggie Says…”). In many ways, the book — and the ensuing experiences — were a gift from Jamie.

The ultimate test of your emotional connection to your dog, of course, comes when you lose it. It’s been exactly a year since Jamie left us, and it’s still not something I want to write about. I treasure the times we had together, and I know that she was a better dog and I am a better person because of them.

One of my alma maters, Carnegie Mellon University, has announced a new mascot. In keeping with its Scottish heritage, the university unveiled the profile of a feisty looking Scottish Terrior, complete with Scottish plaid neckware, as its new mascot. Read about it here. Here’s a picture of the new mascot:

The job of mascot is one that Callie forgot to mention in her October 4, 2007, post, “Top Ten Jobs that Dogs Could Do.”

I still think that dogs are smarter than we think. Here’s an article on “Dog intelligence” from Wikipedia. Does this do the subject justice? I’m not sure it does. The focus is on how well dogs solve problems, or how well they can be trained. It seems to me that dogs have intelligence that goes beyond this.

Every morning on our walk, we stop on a certain bridge for a water break. At first, we trained Callie to “touch the bridge” with her paws. When she did, she got a treat. But now, she touches the bridge without a command (just like Jamie did), knowing that she’ll get her puppy treat. So who’s training who? And who’s the smart one?

Callie invited me to play soccer with her the first day she came home to our house, at age eight-weeks. She now has me trained to play soccer with her every time we’re in the back yard. Who’s the smart one?

One thing most discussions of dog-intelligence are missing is their ability to “sense” what’s going on around them and act upon it. Whether because of their acute sense of smell or hearing, or other senses. I suppose dog-intelligence is different from human-intelligence, but I find it just as amazing.

So much of dog training — and training people to train dogs — is about getting your dog to obey your commands. This is important. There are times when your dog’s safety depends on obeying a command.

Another theme in dog training is establishing yourself as the alpha pack animal. This helps make life unambiguous for the dog; it knows where it stands in the family order.

That said, I don’t think it’s necessary to train every spec of creativity, initiative, or assertiveness out of a dog. I like a dog that is pleasantly assertive. I don’t know how to train this into a dog, if it doesn’t already have it. But I do think it’s possible to train it out of a dog by being too alpha and too focused on obedience.

Callie’s showing some signs of assertiveness, and we’re glad to reinforce them, within limits. Actually, when she first came to our home, at age eight-weeks, she invited me to play soccer (by sitting behind a soccer ball), and I complied. My compliance surely encouraged her to keep inviting me to play soccer. Which I really like.

The other day, Callie was enjoying her freedom in my office, and I decided to let her walk, without her leash, out to pee. Se we headed for the side yard. But first Callie stopped, picked up her kong toy, and made eye contact, as if to say, “Is it OK if I bring this?” I like to honor her requests, but, knowing how easy it would be for the toy to get lost in the ivy, I decided it was a bad idea.

So off we went to the side yard without the kong toy. But as soon as I opened the door, Callie exploded into a barking, running and slamming-into-the-wall frenzy. Our neighbor’s cat had been basking in the sun atop the wall, and Callie decided to chase her away. Which is fine with me. 🙂

Then, as we walked back to my office, Callie stopped at the sliding glass door to the back yard. The door was open just enough for Callie to get her nose through the opening, but not enough for her to walk through. She stopped and looked right at me. The message was very clear. “Could we please play soccer for a few minutes?” I managed to catch her in action in this photo:

I couldn’t say “no,” so we played soccer for a while. After all, she made such a polite request.

Then, I decided to let Callie join me for a little practice in my golf net. Jamie used to do this all the time. Here’s a photo of Jamie from “My Doggie Says… Messages from Jamie: How a dog named Jamie ‘talks’ to her people.”

But Jamie was not a ball dog, and Callie definitely is a ball dog. So the minute Callie saw the golf balls, she collected two of them in her mouth. She really wanted to chew the golf balls, but I worry about the materials and the possibility that she could swallow one of the balls. Not good. In the end, I had to decide that golf practice wasn’t going to work for Callie, at least not until she matures a little more.

I’m really glad that Callie is asserting herself. She does it in a nice way, but she makes her wishes known. It’s fun to reinforce her assertiveness, when it’s safe and when it doesn’t get out of control.

It seems to be working to let Callie be assertive at times. We still let her know who’s boss, and we continue to insist on obedience. Somehow, I think she understands.

Hi! This is Callie writing. Fred’s been up in Silicon Valley for a few days, so he asked me to fill-in. Happy Halloween!

I thought I’d share with you how I feel about some of my toys. First, here I am with a few of my favorites — my stuffed trout, my favorite “stinky,” my black and yellow barbell, and my (now legless) dodo bird.

So here are my Top Ten favorite toys:

1. Black and yellow soft barbell is pretty fun. It feels good to chew on, and it’s heavy enough that I like to flip it back and forth.

2. Little stuffed bear. This little guy can be pretty relaxing to just munch on — very gently. I don’t want to hurt him, so I don’t ever bite hard. It’s almost as good as my “stinky” for calming down in the evening.

3. The new funny little thing with rope loop handles. This is a new toy that Fred and Barbara bought me last week. I don’t know what to call it. It has about three very hard, colored circles of rope that act like handles. So it’s a really good toy for playing “give and take” with Fred. I offer it to him and he grabs hold, but he doesn’t pull hard. He just holds on for a minute, and then he lets me take it. I really like it when we do this.

4. Green jacks. This one is about eight inches square, and it looks like one of those little metal “jacks” that kids play with — it has four little sticks with knobs on the end. I like this one because it’s easy to grab in my mouth. But it’s not a real good chew toy; there isn’t much to hold on to.

5. Orange fire hose toy. Some doggie toys are made out of old fire hose, so they’re supposed to be indestructible. Well, the fire hose is pretty tough, but the handles they put on these things are easy to chew through. So all my fire hose toys are just fire hose these days. These are really good for flipping back and forth. I like to play with my toys this way sometimes. I get them flipping back and forth real fast and then, if I time it right, I can launch the toy clear across the room!

6. Stuffed trout. This isn’t the kind of stuffed trout you’d eat for dinner. It’s the kind of doggie toy that is stuffed to make it soft for a doggie. It’s pretty amazing that I haven’t chewed through this one, because it’s one of my favorites. I spend a lot of time with it, but it’s tough. This is a good “flipper” toy, too. When I get it going real fast, it looks just like a trout jumping in Lake Arrowhead.

7. (Legless) Dodo Bird. My legless dodo bird isn’t supposed to be legless, but it is. The legs were made of rope, and I un-ravelled them a few weeks ago, so Barbara just cut them off. But I still like the dodo bird. It’s good for cuddling, and sometimes I use it like a pillow in my crate.

8. Soccer ball. This is one of my favorites, because it’s something I can do with Fred. When he lets me out in the back yard, I run right to it, and invite him to play soccer. Fred kicks the ball, and I run fast and trap it under my tummy. Then he kicks it loose, and I run and trap it again. Sometimes he throws it real high, and I jump way up in the air and bump it with my nose. It’s really good exercise!

9. Floppy disc (water frisbee). Boy, we’re really getting to my favorites now. This is the “floppy” (just like Jamie’s in “My Doggie Says…“) that I retrieve when I swim at Lake Arrowhead. After all, please remember I am a Golden Retriever. I’m not as good as Jamie yet, but I really love to swim and retrieve this floppy.

10. So here we are at my absolute favorite — my “stinky.” Fred calls it my “stinky” because that’s what his granddaughter, Lauren, calls her security blanket. My “stinky” is a little stuffed puppy that belonged to Jamie. I’ve enjoyed it ever since I moved in with Fred and Barbara in March. It’s pretty amazing that it’s survived all this time, but I’m very gentle with it. I don’t really chew on it. It’s more like “gumming.” Sometimes I like to hold it in my mouth and just nibble at it a little. It’s very relaxing. Most nights, when I’m about ready to go to bed, I settle down with it. It helps me calm down after bouncing off the walls.

11. (For good measure) This one is so much like food it’s unfair to call it a “toy.” It’s a kong toy. It’s a small, hard chewie thing with a hole in the center for dog food or puppy treats. I can chew on it, but the real challenge is to try to get the puppy treat out of the hole. Like I said, it’s too much like food to really qualify as a toy.

So there you have my favorite toys. See ya’ next time!