A voice in the studio
The spoken LP catches a small, unguarded moment. Chuck pauses to tell Hobo not to get too close to the microphone, explaining that his dogs are in the studio with him. Later he asks Hobo to pick up a dropped paper and thanks him. For a moment, the recording stops sounding like a lesson about dogs and simply becomes Chuck talking to Hobo beside him in the studio.
A public performance
Contemporary reports describe dogs carrying out complicated requests and elaborate routines before live audiences. They tell us what people saw, although they cannot always tell us exactly how each response had been taught. Chuck used those performances to argue that his dogs could do more than repeat a memorised action.
On television
Television took those demonstrations into homes across North America. Chuck appeared several times on The Mike Douglas Show, explaining his ideas with dogs beside him. In 1971 he also appeared on The Pet Set, the American animal programme hosted by Betty White. Surviving episodes show him there with dogs publicly named London, Hobo, Venus and Raura or Roura.
The dogs as a team
London may have been the famous name, but Chuck’s public work was rarely the story of one dog alone. Thorn, Toro, Little London, London Jr. and others learned and performed alongside him. As the years passed, younger dogs joined the family, learned from Chuck and from life around the older dogs, and took their own places in the demonstrations.
