Born to Bark by Stanley Coren Read Free Book Online Page B

door, away from his larger brother. At that moment my mother entered the room, lifted Arthur from the floor, and then carried him into the next room. Only then did Penny seem to relax, as she followed my mother to monitor what was happening to “her child.”
    Penny’s relationship with Arthur was special, and she would tolerate many misdemeanors and abuses from him that would have brought out hostility toward anyone else. For example, one day when Penny was peacefully resting in the living room. Arthur waddled into the room carrying two large metal spoons. He looked across the room at the peacefully resting boxer and clanged the spoons together to produce a sharp sound while he announced “Glock!”
    Arthur then proceeded in an unsteady waddle across the room toward the dog, clanging the spoons together and with each impact he repeated “Glock!”
    “Glock! Glock! Glock! Glock! Glock!” Now he was in front of Penny, who lifted her head and looked up at him. Arthurthen slipped one spoon under her chin, and took the other one and banged down across the top of her muzzle. His shout of “Glock!” was partly cut off by the fact that Penny leapt to her feet and in the process knocked the unsteady toddler off of his feet. She looked at him, shook her head as if trying to clear some fogginess from her eyes, and then walked over to the other end of the living room and lay down again.
    Arthur rolled over and pulled himself upright. With spoons banging he marched back across the room toward Penny: “Glock! Glock! Glock! Glock!”
    When he was a foot or two in front of her, she rose to her feet, bumped her square muzzle against his chest, and watched him topple backward. She then walked over to him, licked his face, and went to the far end of the room.
    The whole process then repeated itself, Arthur wobbling across the room with his “Glock! Glock! Glock! Glock!” Penny knocking him over, licking his face, and retreating to the far side of the room.
    Back and forth they went in their little dance of “Glock and tumble.” Arthur apparently enjoying the game, Penny showing incredible degrees of forgiveness.
    My mother ended the show by announcing, “Come on, now, we can’t just sit and let him abuse the dog.” She removed the spoons from his hands and picked Arthur up. Arthur reached his tiny hand out in the direction of the dog, opening and closing it and repeating “Glock!”
    The next time Arthur saw Penny, she was resting and he was not carrying spoons. However, he ran over and flopped on top of her and announced “Glock!” Suddenly and spontaneously, my family concluded that they may have been observing more than a game, and to Arthur at least, this was a naming ritual and thereafter Penny had a new nickname, although it was used differently by different family members. My mother used it as a noun and as a synonym for the word “dog” as in the query“Have you fed the glock yet?” Arthur, Dennis, and I tended to use it as just another name for our dog, as in “I’m going to take Glock for a walk.” Penny accepted the name as just another strange label that was being applied to her and responded to commands like “Glock, come!” with the same reliability that she responded to “Penny, come!”

    In spite of her protectiveness toward Arthur, Penny still spent her nights sleeping on a pillow next to my bed. Because I was a sound sleeper, I needed a loud alarm clock to wake me, so I had bought a spring-wound clock with two large bells on top. The noise that this clock made when the alarm went off virtually shattered the furniture around it—certainly no one could easily sleep through it. Penny hated it. Because the clock made some sort of sound as it approached the time set for the alarm, Penny quickly learned that if she could awaken me just before the time set for thealarm, I would glance at the clock, and, since it was near the time when I intended to wake up I would turn off the alarm and get out of bed.