Vengeance Is Mine

The scientific community contends that dogs are incapable of higher emotions such as revenge. An act of revenge would be part of a phenomenon known as “theory of mind,” which requires a complex ability to understand and even predict the thoughts of others, something dogs are incapable of doing.

Well, I wish some learned animal behaviorist would convincingly explain this to the dogs. Because, on numerous occasions during the 15 years I judged all three types of hunt tests and in stories told to me by sane, sober people who had no reason to be anything other than truthful in their descriptions of what happened, I have seen or heard of many, many instances when – sometimes with calculated premeditation and sometimes with spur-of-the-moment retaliation – dogs have gotten even with their owners or handlers for some real or imagined sin or slight. What’s more, the dogs knew they’d gotten even and rejoiced in that knowledge.  

A friend’s Golden Retriever was going for his final qualifying score in utility obedience. With one more Q, the dog could retire from the obedience ring and go on to something more interesting to him, like hunting or agility.  “Everybody seems to think all Goldens are these push-button obedience dogs that hardly need any training and love endlessly repeating the exercises,” my friend says. “Well, I wish someone would tell my dogs, because while a couple of them have finished their UD, obedience definitely wasn’t their favorite activity.”  

On this occasion, as my friend was warming up her dog prior to entering the obedience ring, an Akita bound for a nearby conformation ring passed by and growled at her dog, who promptly responded in kind. 

The Golden’s owner reacted by giving the leash a sharp yank, accompanied by a loud and stern “No.” The look she received in return from her dog clearly spelled trouble: How come I’m the one being yelled at? The Akita started it! 

A dispute with an Akita that resulted in a rebuke from his owner caused the Golden Retriever to retaliate in the utility ring a few minutes later.

In retrospect, my friend said she would have been smart to have heeded that look and apologized. Instead, she picked up her articles box and headed into the ring. 

Her go began just fine, as the signal exercises and scent discrimination were perfect. But on the directed retrieve, the excremental material began colliding with the cooling device. 

The judge had indicated that the right glove was the one to be picked up. Instead, the Golden went to the left glove, shook it vigorously and threw it out of the ring. He then went to the middle glove and did a repeat performance. He followed that with an encore on the right glove, then trotted over to the high jump, lifted his leg and proceeded to liberally sprinkle the jump. Finally, without so much as a backward glance at his humiliated owner, he stalked out of the ring, and as soon as he cleared the ring gate, sat down with his back toward the ring and his owner. 

With the gallery’s hysterical laughter ringing in her ears, my friend picked up her leash and articles box, retrieved the far-flung gloves, which bystanders had by now pitched back into the ring, reclaimed her dog and slunk away from the obedience ring. 

When recounting the story, she shook her head ruefully and said, “Payback is really a bitch sometimes.”

A German Wirehaired Pointer I was judging was going for his fourth qualifying score at the master level. But on the way to the breakaway, he was frolicking and dancing around his owner in anticipation of the fun he was about to have. Apparently concerned that the dog wasn’t taking the task at hand seriously enough, his owner grabbed his scruff and addressed him with a few words of “dog language,” telling him, in no uncertain terms, to cool his jets. 

The insulted look the Wirehair gave his owner when he released him caused me to side pass my horse over to my judging partner and say, “He’s going to regret doing that.” 

My co-judge responded, “I was just about to say the same thing.” 

The marshal laughed and chimed in with a “Me, too.”

Sure enough, all was serene on the back course, where there were few birds. But once the Wirehair entered the bird field, as soon as he caught wind of the first bird, the dog hit the afterburners, running through the bird field, busting birds left and right, stealing points, chasing wild flushes and ignoring his owner’s commands like he had suddenly gone stone deaf.

Every possible sin a pointing dog can commit, the Wirehair did. It was a virtuoso performance of naughtiness. When finally the brace running time expired and he was corralled by his irate owner, he was again the recipient of a scolding: “Bad dog, bad!”

While the dog was properly remorseful – ears back and tail down – during the scolding and when his owner’s eyes were on him, the minute he looked away, the dog turned and looked at the three of us on horseback. When he did, his attitude was anything but contrite. With his laughing mouth and dancing eyes, he was the picture of a dog that had just gotten even with his owner, knew it and had a whee of a time doing it. 

While I can’t testify that it was a pre-planned or even a conscious gesture, the Wirehair then winked at the three of us.

This Newfoundland's resentment of the pressure being applied to him to get ready to do the Newfoundland Club of America's water-rescue test boiled over at the test.

A lady I know who has Newfoundlands likes to put the Newfoundland Club of America’s water-rescue titles on her dogs. It takes a good bit of work and training to get a dog ready for the water-rescue test, and she admits that since they were coming up on the last available test that year, she was pushing the dog pretty hard to get him to the point where he could pass. She said she could see he resented being pushed, but the dog was such a water lover that she assumed he would be fine once they did the test. Just one more example, she said, of why it’s unwise to make assumptions where dogs are concerned.  

What happened instead, on the day of the test, was that his resentment of the pressure boiled over, and he flat out refused to even get into the boat. Finally, after the dog ignored several verbal commands, in exasperation and desperation she had essentially forced him into the boat, hoping for the best. Faint hope, as it turned out.  

When it came time for the rescue, the dog’s owner got into the water in the test’s simulation of someone who has fallen overboard and moved a distance away from the boat. But when she called to the dog to come and “save” her, he first put one front paw down off the boat, then pulled it back, then put the other front paw down and pulled it back. He repeated this performance three times before finally turning around on the platform and flopping down on it, telling his owner that she was on her own as far as any rescue that day was concerned. It was for sure he wasn’t going to do it.

A friend’s yellow Labrador was going to run for what he expected would be her last time at the senior hunt test level. So confident was he that she would pass he had entered her at the master level in a test the following weekend. 

But in training two days before the senior test, she bit down pretty hard on two pigeons. It may have been because the birds had been used for several dogs prior to the Lab getting them and had gotten a bit gamy, or at least more gamy than dead pigeons usually are. In any case, the problem was serious enough – rendering a bird unfit for the table is most definitely a “no-no” in a hunt test – to cause her owner to ignore one of his personal training rules, which was, “Never, ever train the day before an event, because if things turn sour there’s no time to get them fixed.”

Ignoring that rule was not a wise decision, because trying to fix the problem right now resulted in unrestricted warfare between the Lab and her owner. 

While he appeared to have won the battle in training, she was ultimately to win the war at the test. Win it she did on the first series, a nice land double where the flyer duck dropped behind a six-inch fringe of grass that was about a foot tall, and the dead bird throw was into an open area of recently mowed grass. 

Sent for the flyer, she reached the six-inch-wide grass strip and stopped like it constituted a six-foot stone wall. After two attempts to return to her owner without the bird, he finally was able to handle her back into the area of the fall where she picked up the duck, brought it back to within about 10 feet of her owner and right there, in front of the judges, one of whom was me, proceeded to have a duck lunch.

Not only did she fail to get her final qualifying score in senior, but she also put her owner in the position of having to scratch her from the master test the following weekend with no refund of his entry fee. For if he had been able to cure her bird-munching that week and she earned a qualifying score in master, not only would he have wasted her three qualifying scores in senior but she would have needed six orange ribbons in master instead of five to get her title. Indeed, he faced the same choice as did the clients of English liveryman Thomas Hobson, who required the people who rented his horses to take the horse nearest the door or get no horse at all. In other words, the Lab’s owner had no options other than the obvious one.

Trying to correct a sudden case of bird munching that popped up shortly before a hunt test resulted in unrestricted warfare between the yellow Labrador and her owner.

Another lady I know recounted a similar tale of woe in agility with her Papillon. Again, it was a case of something going seriously wrong in training shortly before an event and trying to make a quick fix. 

Three days before the trial, her owner noticed that the Pap was, for some reason, starting to avoid the contact area on the A-frame. So that day, she just slowed things way down, walked the dog over the obstacle and stopped her on the contact area for a treat reward. After a few slow passes, she let the dog speed up a bit, and all seemed well. But it wasn’t. 

The next day, the day before the event, her dog started avoiding the contact on all three obstacles. But there wasn’t time to do the slow-walking routine with all three, and since she thought she had done the “fix” the day before, when the dog avoided the contact area again, it earned a sharp “No” from her owner because, she said, now it looked like defiance. Then she made the dog go back and do the obstacle again each time, reprimanding her if she missed the contact. 

“At the time, I thought I’d correctly analyzed the situation and had provided the right ‘cure,’ because she stopped avoiding the contacts,” the Pap’s owner said. “But what I had actually done was make these obstacles an area of conflict between my dog and I.”

And did she ever get payback the next day at the agility trial! The Papillon ran up the A-frame and came down to the contact, stopped, turned around and went back over the A-frame again until she got to the “yellow” and then jumped off. 

“On the dog walk,” the owner continues, “she got halfway down to the contact, jumped off, ran into the tunnel, sat down and refused to come out. When I finally coaxed her out of the tunnel, she dodged my attempt to grab her, flitted out of the ring too fast for anyone to catch her and disappeared.” 

The Pap’s owner and several others searched the grounds for her without success for a good half-hour as the word quickly spread throughout the show grounds to be on the lookout for a Papillon that had had a major-league meltdown in agility, evaded everyone’s efforts to catch her, and had run away. 

Attempting a quick fix for a Papillon’s avoidance of the contact areas on agility obstacles prompted a total meltdown at the trial a day later.

“Finally,” the dog’s owner says, “one of the vendors came walking across the grounds with my dog snuggled in his arms, waging her tail and showering him with kisses. He said he’d found her calmly sitting among the boxes of treats he had stacked in his vending area, munching on one, with several others she had picked out for later at her feet. When he handed her to me, drama queen that she is, she started cowering, trembling and whining. I’m sure, to this day, he believes I am Cruella de Vil to my dogs. But what he actually saw was a performance worthy of an Oscar or Tony by a canine version of Sarah Bernhardt, the great French actress.”

So, the next time some learned animal behaviorist or ethologist starts pontificating about how dogs are incapable of higher emotions such as retaliating for a grievance, please excuse my skepticism. While in Romans of the King James version of the Bible, the Apostle Paul reminds us “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay, sayeth the Lord,” it seems there are quite a few dogs that are unwilling to wait for God to act, but would rather get the jump on Him when some wrath is merited for their owners.