When a Dog Talks, Even Some Skeptics Listen

When a friend suggested I write about Maria Tello and her talking dog, I thought: Does a world brimming with anguish and deceit need another talking-dog column?

So I called Maria. It seemed her dog not only talked but could do everything short of sitting down at the piano and pounding out the Brandenburg Concertos.

But why not keep an open mind? I told myself. Maybe this beast--whose name is Ten--can live up to his reputation as a wit, a raconteur, a canine George Plimpton. After all, I’ve written about merciful tax collectors and humble attorneys and city council people who don’t use the wretched term “agendize,” and other matters that also strain belief.

Besides, a deadline was looming, and as anyone who has ever sung a country song or written a newspaper column knows: They all look good at closing time.

So I drove to Ojai for a chat with Maria and, theoretically, Ten.

“He’s a little distracted,” she explained. “Just a little while ago we asked him whether he’d say ‘I love you’ once you got here.”

“What did he say?”

“He said: ‘Hell, no!’

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Tello knows a thing or two about animals.

A single mother of four, she makes life even simpler for herself with three dogs, three cats and a wild mustang. She works at the Humane Society’s animal shelter, running the volunteer program and taking specially trained animals to comfort patients in hospitals and nursing homes. On Jan. 27, at 7 p.m., she’ll start hosting a TV talk show about pets for Jones Intercable subscribers in Oxnard, El Rio and Port Hueneme.

But such credentials didn’t prepare her for Ten.

A border collie-German shepherd mix, he was found wandering in the oil fields behind Ventura and brought to the shelter as a pup five years ago. Tello and her kids--then ages 10 to 17--took him in. They called him Ten because that was the number on his kennel.

At first, he was just another playful, rambunctious, dog-like dog. But then--and this is where the tale gets stranger than any talking-dog story known to man or mutt--the kids decided to read aloud the complete works of William Shakespeare.

As a father, I was skeptical.

“Your kids . . . decided . . . to read . . . Shakespeare?”

Tello was quick to correct herself.

“Just the plays,” she said. “Not the sonnets.”

For months, Ten sat beside them in the living room, a lean and hungry look playing across his muzzle as they plowed through the tragedies. Perhaps it was this intensive plunge into iambic pentameter that led to the next astounding event.

“My daughter and I and Ten were driving along one day when she turned to him and said, ‘Oh Ten, I wish you knew just how much I love you.’

“That’s when he turned to her and said, ‘I love you!’ We were stunned.”

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Over the years, Ten has declared his love all over the place. A neighbor drinking beer came over once and told Tello, “I know this sounds weird, but your dog said he loved me.”

People at work have heard it. When Ten drops into convalescent homes, it’s a veritable lovefest. Every year, he’s featured in an assembly at Ventura’s Poinsettia School, where he says you-know-what.

From time to time, he lets loose with other bits of rhetoric. A plumber once told Tello about a leak in a water line. The dog looked up at him and said, with the weariness of a homeowner girding for the bill: “I know.”

After being coaxed with a Milk-Bone, Ten said something to me that sounded like an expression of profound affection, as rendered by a cranky old man with his jaws wired shut.

“UnhWUFFrou,” he said.

According to Tello, he puts his money where his mouth is.

As her father lay dying, Ten kept a vigil by his bed.

When her family has experienced various degrees of pain, Ten has helped out--wordlessly, for the most part.

Not long ago, Tello took a CPR class. While she was practicing on a plastic baby, she called over to Ten, jokingly: “Lassie, where’s Timmy? Did Timmy fall down the well?”

The dog ran over, licked the doll’s mouth, gently clamped its jaws around her head and tried to lift. Then he frantically licked its face again.

“He’d been lying there watching us for an hour,” Tello said. “I believe he was really attempting to resuscitate that baby.”

But Ten’s future might really lie in management.

A board member, with Tello, of the Ojai chapter of the American Red Cross, Ten doesn’t suffer lengthy meetings.

“He lets us know when to stop,” said Christine Drucker, the chapter’s chairman. “Sometimes he’ll look at the clock and bark when the hour is up.”

A dog that keeps a tight leash on the blather of humans. So what if he doesn’t know the sonnets?

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Steve Chawkins is a Times staff writer. His e-mail address is steve.chawkins@latimes.com.