I have three main interests in my life: dogs, writing, and comedy. So today, I’m thrilled to be able to combine them all together in this interview with Jess Erace.
Jess is a brilliant dog trainer in New York City. I met Jess because she taught my dog Roman a sport called mantrailing, which is how to track a person’s location using their scent. It ended up being the perfect thing for my stubborn independent Italian Greyhound. Roman has yet to question why his dad gets “lost” in the park so many times, but he takes his work of finding him very seriously.
About a year ago, Jess gave a presentation with another brilliant dog trainer, Sarah Rodriguez (a big shout-out to Sarah, who taught Roman some of his cutest tricks including “Wave” and “Take a bow” — he’s ready for show biz!). In that presentation, which was about enrichment activities, Jess described some of the inside jokes she shares with her dog Jordy, and I knew I needed to learn more.
In our interview, we dig deeper into what animals find funny, and how we can initiate jokes with our dogs and pick up on their jokes, too.
Can you start by telling us what type of training you specialize in and how you got into it?
I’m a licensed veterinary nurse and while I was a veterinary nurse, I also taught low-stress handling, or what is now called fear-free. After my clinical career ended because I developed an aggressive form of inflammatory arthritis, I started doing more behavior stuff. Then, because I missed the medical side, I went back and did additional certifications in physical rehab for dogs and cats — basically, PT for animals. I also teach scent sports, so nosework and tracking.
I know you’re someone who thinks very deeply about the bond we share with our pets. Can you tell us about your dog Jordy? How would you describe his personality, and what is your relationship like?
I adopted my dog when he was around five or six months old. He seemed to have never been inside a home before and he also wasn’t born inside the city. Being a city dog is a tough row to hoe, especially if they're not initially imprinted on urban life, which would mean being here before 12 weeks old. But Jordy is very prosocial for humans, meaning he seeks and wants human eyes upon him and he wants humans to speak to him and make a fuss over him. He’s also just essentially an optimist.
How do you know if your dog is an optimist?
Well, for example, a couple months ago, the gas utility started ripping up the gas line on my street. So there’s all of this weird equipment making a tremendous amount of noise, and Jordy just goes about his business. That points to him as being a dog who, when they encounter new things, thinks, “Well, I don't see anything flying up in my face, so it's probably going to be fine.” So he’s more of an optimist.
Aww, Jordy. He’s an inspiration. Let’s talk about animals and their sense of humor. How do animals make jokes?
People can initiate a joke, but dogs and other animals, they can also initiate jokes, too. A lot has been learned about wild animal behavior since they invented the camera trap, which is a waterproof camera that they leave out for a few weeks, then go pick up and review the footage. On one camera trap, they caught a pack of wolves interacting. One wolf comes over dragging this enormous branch, and the other wolves jump and try to grab it. In that example, the wolf was making a joke, like, “Here I come, parading next to you with this giant thing!” The point was to entice a positive social interaction with the rest of the group.
My dog Jordy has some jokes that he initiates, and I have some that I initiate. Now, when I say “joke,” I’m not talking about jokes that are played upon the animal. There's a whole lot of social media where people, for example, go around a corner super fast and then the dog slips and falls. That’s not a joke. When I say “joke,” I'm talking about something that is a back and forth between you that you both find amusing.
Thank you for bringing that up. Sometimes you see videos and it’s “comedy,” but it’s clearly making the dog uncomfortable. When it comes to a dog initiating a joke with you, how would you pick up on that and engage with it on their terms?
The body language of the dog has a lot to do with it. One of my friends coined the term “Felony Trot.” We were at her house for dinner and everybody was sitting at the table. Her dog wanted some attention, so he went into the kitchen and picked up a potholder, then he trotted past the dining room. His head was high and his feet were coming up high, and everybody started laughing. That’s the Felony Trot. It’s when the dog is doing something “illegal” but they’re parading in front of you because they want you to notice.
And, by the way, that dog made that same joke for every dinner that we had for nearly the rest of his life because he got a big boost from that laughter. He understood what laughter was. He knew everybody had their attention on him, and he was happy about it. It was often a potholder but sometimes he couldn't reach it, and he would pick up something else. But it was the same joke.
Dogs, they’re just like us. Can you tell us about the jokes you have with Jordy?
Jordy has one where he finds something on the floor that’s not supposed to be there. It can be a tiny scrap of paper from when I opened the mail, or a sock that I left out. I’ll hear this trotting and then he comes in, his head's high, and he runs over to me like, “I got a sock!” So then I act like, “I can't believe you did that!” I act like I’m going to get the sock and he moves back. It’s basically a joke where he gets to play “keep away” with an item that he's not supposed to have. He’s actually ready to give me the item, but my part in the joke isn’t to take the item and put it down. My role is to pretend that I just can't believe that he did it! It’s very exciting for him. That's one of his favorite jokes, it’s one of his standbys.
A classic joke, the ol’ sock on the floor. So that’s how Jordy initiates a joke, but how do you initiate jokes with him?
This is going to depend on your dog, but for a lot of dogs, if you make funny movements they tend to find it really funny. So anyone reading this, you can get up and start dancing around a little bit, and your dog will probably find it hilarious.
One thing that I like to do with Jordy is that when he's in a room, if I'm leaving the room, the last step or two that I take before I turn the corner, I'll do it super fast. So I'll whip around the corner, and that is very funny. He always pops up and he runs after me. There’s something about a quickly disappearing thing that is super hilarious. I’ve used it as a way of triggering engagement, so I can use it when he's off leash in the park. I'll just suddenly turn and go away, and he'll start running to me, because it's a joke that I've made before.
I also have the “creepy hand” joke, where I put my hands out and I wiggle my fingers like, “I'm going to get you.” That's funny to him, and I also use it off-leash because he finds it engaging.
A lot of the jokes that we have with our dogs relate to our voice. Humans can make such a big range of vocalizations, so when I'm asking him what it is that he's got, I'm doing it in a voice that he knows is a joke. I can pull out a funny voice and use it almost anywhere to signal that this is a lighthearted time and we're joking together.
Your point about vocalizations is interesting. It makes me wonder: what’s the difference between the jokes our dogs have with us, and the jokes they have with other dogs?
The answer has a little nerdy side to it. I think that the jokes have a lot to do with hardwired behaviors, such as the predation sequence. A lot of times when dogs are joking with each other, they do this “predator and prey” type of joke. For example, the play bow that people are familiar with is an exaggeration of a pounce behavior. If a dog really wants to catch a rat or something, they don't have their butt way up in the air like that. They’ll have this sort of tense, crouched position. So when the dog does a play bow, they’re saying, “I’m going to get you! But you see, my tail is up and wagging, so it's not for real.” Then the other dog will sometimes stop and fake pounce at them, or take off to initiate chasing. For the most part, the jokes I'm talking about with Jordy — like when I rush around the corner or do the monster hands — are also “prey and predator” type of jokes.
One other joke category is based on what’s called resource guarding, so dogs guarding items. For example, the wolf in the camera trap dragging the branch around. The wolf was saying, “I've got this big branch here,” and then the joke was for the other wolves to try to take that resource.
When Jordy brings me the sock, I'm acting like I'm going to take his resource. Dogs will sometimes do that with each other, like in that wolf example. But taking a resource can be more touchy with dogs, so you'll probably see fewer of those jokes between dogs, except in dogs that have a really strong relationship — for example, dogs that live together. But that type of joke is more common when dogs are interacting with people.
I want to go back to what you were saying earlier about the types of jokes we want to avoid. Obviously, we want to avoid jokes that aren’t actually jokes, like in the example you gave of when people film their dogs slipping and falling. But in these behavior-based jokes you’re describing with Jordy, how can we know if our dogs are finding what we're doing funny?
That's a good question. So, we always want to see body language that is loose, and you also want to see a loose jaw. For example, if you feel tense, your teeth are probably clenched and touching each other. It’s the same for a dog.
You also want to make sure the dog isn’t showing any shyness or wariness. I'll give you an example with my previous dog, who was deaf. I live in an apartment building, and he would come with me to take the trash out. That just involved opening my door, and he would follow me down the hall to the trash chute. After I was done, he would sometimes get distracted and start sniffing something, so I would turn and run back to the apartment so that he would chase me.
Now, if the next time I went to take the trash out, if I had observed that my dog was sticking close to me and appeared to be anxious, thinking, “Is she going to run away? Am I going to lose her?” then that wouldn’t have been a joke because it wasn’t funny to my dog. But the next time I did it (because I knew my dog enough to try this joke in the first place), he was waiting for it. He actually kind of ruined the joke because then I could never run away. He was so excited about getting to chase me that he almost couldn't let me make the joke. He was thinking, “Oh my god, we’re going to do that thing again!” So his excitement was proof that the joke worked.
In the example that I gave you with Jordy, if my dog's head goes up when I'm about to walk out of the room, I can tell it’s a happy anticipation for my “fast movement” joke. If I raise my monster hands and he comes forward — if he closes the distance rather than increases the distance — then that’s a sign he finds it funny, too. And with his socks and scraps of paper, he continues to make that joke, which is a sign that this is something that he wants to keep doing.
Is there anything else that I didn’t ask about that you want to mention, or any point you want to emphasize?
I would say: look out for the kind of jokes that your dog is trying to make. Sometimes, if a behavior doesn't make a lot of sense, it can be because the animal is just trying to solicit a positive reaction. So in the wolf example, you might wonder, “Why would the wolf try to drag this thing around?” If you just look at it that way, it doesn't really make sense. But it was to try to trigger a certain positive reaction from the group.
Cats often make jokes where they get on top of something impossible, which causes us to make a lot of exclamations. You can also find a million videos of cats pushing things off the table because that behavior also gets a lot of attention and exclamations. And so you think, “Why does the cat keep doing this?” It’s because it's funny and the cat thinks it's funny.
Another example that you've probably seen or done yourself is that the dog will bring somebody a ball, and the person throws it. Then the dog brings the ball again, and the person throws it again. Then the dog stops because they didn't actually want to play a retrieving game. The dog wanted to play a game where you pretended that you wanted the ball. I see that sometimes with toy play. People keep trying to take the toy away and throw it, and for the dog, that’s not the joke.
If you see something that’s not making sense or that you find frustrating, like a dog bringing you a ball but not wanting to chase it, look to see if the dog is actually just trying to trigger a positive social interaction with you. Maybe that's what's behind the behavior that seems so weird.
I think that pretty much describes Roman. I feel bad because I don't think I play with him the right way. I'm slowly getting it but it's a process of trial and error. I think he likes to play “keep away.” Sometimes I pretend the toy is alive and jumping around. He gets a silly little look on his face when he plays and that's when I know that I've gotten it right. It’s when his mouth is open and it looks like a smile.
In dogs, they'll often open their mouth, and you can sometimes hear a “Heh, heh, heh” sound. It’s kind of like a laugh noise. That’s something that I always consider. You know that the dog is having fun when you get that face that you're talking about with Roman where his jaw drops, and he's doing this little breathing.
The dog's not panting. It’s not because the dog is hot, it's because it's exciting and the dog thinks it's funny.
Thank you so much. I feel a lot more confident now that Roman actually finds me funny, which is a huge relief. Where can people find more of your work? And is there anything upcoming you want to plug?
I run scent work classes several times a year, which I teach through Pumpkin Pups. I think that scent work is important for the quality of life for the dog and I would encourage everyone to do scent work with their dog. I also privately do fitness conditioning and physical therapy for animals, and you can find that information on my website.
That’s it! Keep Jess in mind if you’re looking for something fun to do with your dog.
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About me
I’m a comedy writer and freelance copywriter living in Brooklyn. My humor writing has been published by The New Yorker, The New York Times, McSweeney’s, Reductress, and more. I’m the co-author of Jokes to Offend Men, which was named the #2 Comedy Book of 2022 by Vulture. I’m available for new writing projects, writing coaching, and nerding out about comedy, so please reach out and say hi!