A Dog's Best Friend
Do we need them, or do they need us?
Signals
Six flights of stairs divide Dr. Trad from his classroom for next semester. With Titan on his leash alongside him, together they walk up the stairs, flight after flight.
As they near the third floor, Titan's paw-taps suddenly reduce to silence; he has ground to a halt.
Dr. Trad doesn't notice at first, but when he does, he turns back around, confused. Titan has no problem with stairs. "Wha-?" No hand signal or voice command prompts him to move.
Something is holding him back.
Just two or three seconds pass by, and a faint bustling emerges from the ambience of the stairway. Booms of doors echo above and below.
A flood of students engulfs the stairway, ridding both of them from any remaining personal space. Throughout the rush, Titan remains perched; they're both at a standstill. The two of them stick together.
After a few minutes, the storm begins to subside. And as the air becomes clearer, Titan eases up. A final student passes the two of them, and Titan continues right up to the third floor, as if nothing occurred.
Their coherence becomes apparent.
"You need to switch your king and queen."
"Oh, do I?" I reply, unsure how to set up a chess board the right way, as Dr. Trad arranges his side, correctly.
Titan is eleven and a half years old. He's a mix of a Black Labrador and an unknown breed, suspected to be Mastiff. Despite his size and build now, back in 2017, he was found, skinny and terrified, by the kennel Dr. Trad’s daughter worked at.
"They did find the owners, but they refused to give him back, because Titan had been abandoned for a long period of time and left in a room."
Titan had been so anxious with these owners that he'd eaten his way out of their house and broken through the window. He was in need of a home.
"So we decided to take him in, and he was just meant to be our pet."
His all-round attributes and responsiveness lightened their household. But his separation anxiety still remained—they weren't able to leave him alone without him going crazy.
Dr. Trad had to propose a solution. Where he worked, at Methodist Theological School, he asked if Titan was able to come and sit in his office during the daytime. They were more than happy to agree.
He was beginning to take the role of Titan's support companion.
So who are their support companions when we're away?
In this audio story, my girlfriend Katherine reflects on her role as a dog carer, as we take a walk in the Granville countryside, along with two four-pawed friends.
"I've cared for dogs my entire life. I've gone through courses of how to train dogs as well, and I've had previous experiences training dogs that were mine [...] He and I worked with basic obedience training so that he could go with me places, so I could read his signals for what he needs, to keep his focus on me, so that he could read my signals for what I need him to do."
Dr. Trad and Titan started picking up on each other's characteristics. These signals became central to their dynamic.
It "just became a thing" that Titan went everywhere with him. There were a few exceptions of course: restaurants; the grocery store. But Titan ran all the errands, and sat in on all the classes. The more time they spent with each other, the more often they were together out and about.
Through the pandemic, Dr. Trad found himself leaning into "being more dependent upon Titan's presence." They cancelled out each other's anxieties, instead of it being just Titan's. By the end of it, the two of them had formed a well established bond, as Dr. Trad was looking at Denison as a place to teach.
"My number 1 concern was "Can Titan come with me?""
'He can come into your office for sure,' says Dr. Trad, quoting an admin assistant.
"I've gotten to the point where he comes everywhere with me."
'We're not really sure about that. Is he a service dog or...?'
"Not technically. He's not a service dog because I'm not disabled. He absolutely is my support, like, companion."
Dr. Trad never felt comfortable saying 'support companion'; it gives away information to strangers that he might not feel like sharing.
'Ultimately if you say he's your support companion, nobody can tell you he can't go with you.'
"I said "Well okay. Then he's my support companion."
Angie and Flash are inseparable. But over the summer, a decline in Flash's health forces them to reassess their companionship.
In this mini-documentary, It All Happened In a Flash, we discover what it's like at the extremes of when our dogs need us most.
"I think it's your move. Oh..! No you moved the bishop."
I was stunned. On a board still full of pieces, he'd noticed one move of one square, behind all my pawns. Dr. Trad advances the game, while returning to what he was saying before.
"Funny enough, a few things of his own peculiar behaviours and my peculiar behaviours started to work together,"
Dogs have been long known to live symbiotically with humans; both species are inherently social, and have "oxytocin spikes" when they interact with the other.
Dr. Sarah Marshall-Pescini at the Vetmed University of Vienna even mentions the similarity in these hormone spikes to the spikes in parent-child relationships. Our connection with dogs runs deep. But with Dr. Trad and Titan, the roots go deeper than any normal dog-human relationship.
Dr. Trad looks back to the lower-left side of his desk, where Titan has found a snug, as Dr. Trad explains a situation that happened at his former university.
"I hate fire alarms.. I cover my ears and if I close my eyes then I'll be okay, but that's not really what you're supposed to do in a fire situation, right?"
Dr. Trad was in the midst of giving a lecture to his students. A fire alarm began to blare in the classroom and throughout the hallways—just a drill, but he wasn't aware of that at the time. His first instinct was to grab Titan's leash, put it on his collar, and walk him outside. Instead of Dr. Trad walking Titan out, on the other end, Titan had rushed for the door, pulling him straight outside to safety.
"He's never had to do that since being here. But it does make make me feel more confident doing my job and knowing that, well, that's a situation that could happen, but I don't need to stress about it because this guy's got my back."
"Little things like that—that's a service. [...] I need to figure out a way to like, make this a thing."
"Check... check... check..." Dr. Trad calls out back-and-forth as he chases my king around the board.
My legal moves begin to run out—G2 and H4 remain.
"It's about whether I lose, or I lose badly at this point; I wasn't expecting anything else." I say.
"I think the next move is mate. And checkmating with a pawn is very satisfying, so thank you for that," he replies.
"It's cool." I say. We shake hands. Thank each other for the game.
We start rolling the mat away, placing the pieces one-by-one back into the tube, as a cosy Titan listens along to his companion.
"I was actually resistant to the idea of taking in a dog, because we lived in an apartment at the time. And I had no idea that it would be a life changing thing for me."
Dr. Trad turns his head to the left one more time to look at his.
"Titan, he's a one-in-a-million dog. Fit for a one-in-a-million situation. [...] Therapists are there to talk about things—to articulate things. But with Titan, it's beyond words—the connection—and that's something I need in my life."
Special thanks:
Dr. Trad Nogueira-Godsey, Titan, Angie Mims, Flash, Katherine Mims, Lady & Tucker
Built with Shorthand