Lance, a border collie and the main character in the book Lance: A Spirit Unbroken, was purchased from what may very well have been a puppy mill in an attempt to make a dysfunctional family more functional. This is the classic case of the road to hell being paved with good intentions. Not only did that family remain troubled, but Lance, only a few weeks old, was unceremoniously kicked out of the house and tethered to a stake with a heavy chain. This all occurred during the Christmas season.

Although a neighbor did her best to care for Lance, he spent the next ten Christmases and every single day in between them in the not-so-great outdoors, stuck on his hostile owners’ property. The photo on the left shows the entirety of Lance’s world for the first decade of his life.

Just before his 11th Christmas, I met Lance by pure accident. I began walking him from his “prison” on a regular basis, feeling guilty every time I returned him to it. One thing led to another and my wife and I rescued Lance over the Fourth of July weekend in 2002. Six months later Lance celebrated the 12th Christmas of his life inside a home where he was welcome, and in grand style as the photo in the middle shows. He never spent another Christmas trapped outside.
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At times I feel a tremendous sadness reflecting on Lance’s life but, thanks in large part to Lance himself, I find much to chuckle about. For example, that first Christmas we bought Lance all kinds of cutting-edge dog toys, figuring we'd try to spoil him and make up for at least some of what he'd missed out on growing up. Wouldn't you know he had no interest in the toys (possibly because of his age?). What interested him was what those toys (and everybody else’s gifts) were wrapped in. Once a gift was opened, he’d wait for me to roll the paper it came in into a ball and throw it to him so he could shred it, as he's doing in the photo on the right. Having found out he had such inexpensive tastes, we spent a lot less on him during subsequent Christmases.  I’m confident Lance wasn’t upset at all.

 I meant to post this long ago but it got lost in my disorganization. I’m sure you’ll agree it’s a story worth re-visiting:
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Meet Eclipse. Every day she leaves her house by herself, and takes the bus downtown to the dog park where she spends a couple of hours getting exercise and making friends, and then she takes the bus back home again. She even has a bus pass attached to her collar.

It started when her owner, Jeff Young, was taking too long when the bus arrived. Eclipse impatiently ran ahead and got on the bus by herself. The bus driver recognized her and dropped her off at the dog park, and later Jeff caught up with her. After several more trips by herself, Jeff started letting her go on her own, and she always comes back home a couple of hours later.

All of the bus drivers know her and she makes them smile, and many of the regular passengers enjoy seeing her every day and will often sit down next to her. Even the police have given their approval as long as the bus drivers are okay with the arrangement. Why wouldn’t they be? She makes everybody happy!

Click HERE to watch Eclipse in action

Because of my experience rescuing Lance and writing a book about him, I put together a PowerPoint presentation entitled In Defense of Dogs. I give this presentation wherever I can—libraries, schools, senior centers, YMCAs, etc. I’ve (hopefully) made it part humorous, part educational. In one section of the presentation, I refer to the Jon Katz newspaper interview I recently posted on Lance’s blog. I then go to the following brief description of some scientific testing that has been conducted on dogs:

“In 2013-2014, animal cognition scientists at Emory University in Atlanta, Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and also scientists in Hungary all conducted studies on dogs utilizing MRI machines. They used positive reinforcement to train the dogs to remain motionless, no mean feat in itself.  The studies focused on an area of the brain called the caudate nucleus where emotions can be measured in both dogs and humans. The results?  Hand signals indicating food, smells of familiar people and other dogs, the return of a familiar human and hearing the voice of a familiar person (not just someone who fed the dog) all triggered activity in the dogs’ caudate nucleus. Any hints of their owners took priority over everyone and everything else's smell.

Further objective findings: other domestic animals tend to run when scared/ worried, dogs typically seek out their owner. Dogs are the only non-primate animal to seek eye contact from humans and, like humans and other primates, dogs can distinguish faces. Women's brain activity increases in areas such as emotion, reward, affiliation, visual processing and social interaction when they looked at photos of their own children and pet dogs versus looking at photos of unknown children and dogs.  When shown photos of familiar and strange faces, dogs also prefer faces they know. I couldn’t find any similar studies involving men.

Humans and dogs boost each other's level of oxytocin—the "love hormone" responsible for feelings of affection—with eye to eye contact. It's been said that dogs “hug” with their eyes.”

​Here’s a link to an updated report on these test results:

It’s worth looking at just for the photo alone!

In fairness to Mr. Katz, his interview with the Chicago Tribune was conducted a few years before any of these studies had been done.

When writing Lance: A Spirit Unbroken, I did my best to make it clear that I was not in any way, shape or form a dog expert. I have neither training nor college education in any field relating to animals in general or dogs in particular. I do make the claim of being an expert at handling one particular semi-feral border collie named Lance. That skill—and my lack of any professional expertise in things canine—are both on display in Lance: A Spirit Unbroken. In next month’s blog I will offer anecdotal—not scientific—evidence that a dog, even an ornery one like Lance, can indeed love.
--Walter

 Here are some of the reader responses the newspaper received in reaction to the Jon Katz interview. One of them was apparently written by a dog, no less!

I have dog sat several times for people. I live in their house for a week or two.
I take care of the dogs. I feed them, give them water, walk them & definitely play with them. And guess what? When the owner comes home, those dogs go absolutely nuts!

They missed their owners. They may like me, but they completely love the people they really live with! –okgo

Until dogs can talk, the author's opinion can never be more than a theory.–Seamus

There was a time when I would have agreed with you but I believe you are completely wrong. My parents went away for almost a year while my father had a lung transplant. They left their little poodle "Lady" with friends. Lady did just fine with the new keepers until the day my parents came back home. When they walked into the room Lady almost fainted and then began to bark and squeal and dance and dance and so on. She was so happy to see my mom and dad that we began to fear she was going to have a heart attack and tried to calm her down.

This went on so long that it was more than seeing a past food server but genuinely missed my parents. I will never forget that experience.–HLW

Hellooo? His name is Katz. The arch-nemesis of canines.

Jeesh. I don't buy it.
Now go cough up that fur ball.–Dr. J

My husband & I recently visited friends we hadn't seen in 4 years. Their little Yorkie went wild over me and ignored my husband--I had cared for her a lot when she was younger and injured and when her "parents" vacationed, my husband was always there but not involved with Zoe. It was pretty amazing and her mom human told me that Zoe only acted that way for a very few favorite people. 4 years! What a memory.--Sean

As a golden retriever, I take great umbrage with this column (yes, goldens are smart enough to read and type). I am almost 14 years old, and have lived all over the country with my person/master/whatever you want to call him. He hasn't left me that often, but the few times he has, I most certainly missed him. and I most definitely love him. I've gotten sick before, and he's made me better. I needed both knees reconstructed so I wouldn't be in pain, and he took a second job so that we could get the surgery. I'm living with cancer now, and he's taking me to chemotherapy...and it's going into remission. Everything he gives to me, I try to give back 10-fold, and it's not just because he's got the food. Take it from me, dogs form attachments, and dogs love.--Julie

What about the dogs that manage to find their way back to their family after weeks, months, even years of separation (sometimes on their own, even!)? These dogs bypass new homes that could feed them and give them attention, focused on finding their proper "pack." What about the dogs that refuse to leave their master's grave/house/whatever despite other people offering food? It may not be love as we typically define it, but I would at least call that attachment.--Ella

Dangerous article to write in a city known for being dog lovers. I'd jump in the lake to save my dog every day and twice on Sunday.–Leonid Radzvilar

This is from Katz’s own website and describes his dog: "While Katz is trying to help his dog, Orson is helping him, shepherding him toward a new life on a two-hundred-year-old hillside farm in upstate New York. There, aided by good neighbors and a tolerant wife, hip-deep in sheep, chickens, donkeys, and more dogs, the man and his canine companion explore meadows, woods, and even stars, wade through snow, bask by a roaring wood stove, and struggle to keep faith with each other. There, with deep love, each embraces his unfolding destiny. "So, which is it, Mr. Katz?–Dan

P.S. Approximately 90% of the respondents insisted dogs can indeed love. Apparently, they felt Mr. Katz was “barking up the wrong tree” (I just had to write that!)

Border collies are known for their teamwork when herding.
​How about this teamwork when "getting hosed"? 

Early in the process of writing Lance: A Spirit Unbroken, I joined a critiquing group. It was the single best thing I did to improve my writing. Subjecting my work to others’ criticism wasn’t easy for me, but better to learn from fellow writers before publishing, than learn the hard way from readers after publishing. In those early critiquing sessions, I was told to do two things: get rid of the big words and write less formally. The former was relatively easy to accomplish; the latter required a leap of faith on my part but I'm confident the book became a lot more conversational by the time it got published.

Along the way, one of my fellow critiquers suggested that I make Lance a talking dog. Other members of the group rolled their eyes, but he was dead serious. I thought about his suggestion, but not for too long. To do such a thing would have changed the trajectory and the mood of Lance’s story and, in my mind, diminished the serious purpose I had for writing the book. That purpose was to raise awareness re: animal maltreatment and, hopefully, inspire the reader to take action.

Though Lance and I did not have oral conversations (except for the occasional bite!), I feel there were times when he and I communicated mentally, beyond his obeying a command or understanding words like “treat” or “hike.” For example, not once, but twice, he escaped from his abusive owners’ property and showed up on my doorstep. Wasn’t that a silent cry for help? 

In the book, Lance occasionally "talks" to me, not in quotes but in italics. I’ve wondered at times if a reader might find my communication with Lance a stretch, but so far no one has commented to that effect.

How about you? Do you have “conversations” with your dog? What has your dog “told” you and vice versa?