Diary of a Dog-walker (9 page)

We think dogs belong to us, but current theories about the domestication of wolves (from which the modern dog developed) suggest they may have inherited a rather different understanding. One proposition holds that at the end of the Ice Age, when wolves and humans were competing for the same food, alliances of convenience were formed between them: the women and children of hunting communities nurtured animals who would stay near
them. Another theory is that clever (and lazy) wolves worked out they could feed themselves without the bother of hunting if they scavenged around human settlements. Both theories suggest a degree of equality, with the decision to collaborate being made as much by the wolf as by the human.

Juliet Clutton-Brock, the distinguished archaeozoologist, argues that Late Ice Age humans formed alliances with all sorts of animals; the alliance with wolves endured because we live in similar social structures. ‘As with human communities,' she writes, ‘the social structure of the wolf is based on a hierarchy of dominant and submissive individuals who are constantly aware of their status in respect to each other.' Other species that might seem wolf-like never developed into dogs because they socialized in a different way.

Thus among African Hunting Dogs (
Lycaon pictus
), ‘Social behaviour is more dependent on the mutual regurgitation of food and less on communication by facial expression … So that if a man is not prepared to take the regurgitated offerings of a hunting dog into his own mouth his powers of communication with the dog are going to be limited.' On balance I think we should be grateful that these no doubt charming animals took an evolutionary path that did not lead them to the domestic hearth.

All this history is, I am sure, churning atavistically
at the back of Kudu's brain as he pulls me along the pavement. Quite why his usual submissiveness should turn to dominance at this particular moment of his day and at no other remains a mystery, but in the course of my researches I encountered an aphoristic reminder that some aspects of dogginess will always remain closed to us: ‘Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.' It is attributed to Groucho Marx.

Off on a ski holiday? Be sure to take the dog

19 February 2010

How does a dog come to terms with the chemistry of snow?

The question was prompted by the owner of one of Kudu's smarter Clapham friends, a boisterous young Springer called Tigger. We were discussing the annual skiing holiday, and she described Tigger's attempts to retrieve snowballs; the way a snowball disappears into snow when it lands must be deeply puzzling to an animal bred to retrieve solid objects like dead pheasants, and Tigger, dutiful dog that he is, digs deep before admitting defeat.

But he loves the skiing holiday, I was told, chasing his owners up in the lifts and careening
down the slopes after them. My companion did admit that taking a dog skiing is easier if you have your own chalet.

This is the season when, as thoughts turn south to Alpine sun, the owners of privileged dogs agonize about dog care. Most of the time Kudu's friends enjoy a cheerful equality: the pleasures of park and common are open to all. But their lifestyles when the owners are away vary hugely: here lies the great divide between rich dogs and poor dogs.

The distinguished historian Leandra de Lisle tells me she treats the boarding arrangements for her dog as seriously as those she used to make for her children. She booked Fitz (a large Lab) into a local farm, and was interviewed housemaster-style by the owners: ‘As they worked through the questions,' she says, ‘I found myself giving the kind of answers I would have despised had I heard them from anyone else.' Asked whether Fitz barked or whined, she replied, ‘No, but he does talk a lot. He is very intelligent and communicative' – meaning that he does indeed bark and whine, just in varying tones. When Fitz was returned to her the canny dog-hoteliers told her that he had behaved impeccably: ‘My sons never had such a good report – I burned with pride.'

In the United States dog-hotels really are like human hotels. At a dinner my wife found herself next to an American businesswoman who described in
some detail the facilities then being enjoyed back home by her Schnauzer (‘my baby'). Each room in his dog-hotel was equipped with bed, miniature sofa, television set and a selection of DVDs. Kudu quite often watches television by mistake (by sitting on the remote control) but I do not think he enjoys it very much, and for some reason he always seems to pick a shopping channel. I cannot help wondering whether the Schnauzer's system offered those ‘adult' channels that all hotels now seem determined their guests should enjoy.

Dog-carers compete fiercely for this top-end business. A former BBC manager of my acquaintance has acquired one offering daily emails with up-to-the-minute news of her Labrador: ‘Fudge had a good walk today. I had him out a little longer just because he was having a great time. He really is getting fit, usually by the time we get to the common he just lies in the grass but now he gets involved in the other dogs' games and loves exploring …' It takes real literary talent to churn this stuff out day after day, but it is a brilliant business idea: this is just what you want on your BlackBerry to take the edge off any guilt you might feel about leaving Fudge behind while you cane the
piste
in Courchevel.

But what of the dogs at the other end of the economic spectrum? Walking through one of the underpasses by Waterloo Station, I spotted a
homeless man asleep with his Alsatian. The man looked sad, sick and scruffy; the dog, curled up against his body, looked sleek and completely contented. Dogs do not really appreciate DVDs in smartly appointed hotel rooms – to be happy, they just need to be with us.

So if you have got the money, buy the chalet, and take him skiing too.

5

In Defence of Dogs

I AWOKE ONE MORNING
to find my wife looking at me in a most alarming manner – alarming and, indeed, alarmed: it was almost as if she had found a stranger next to her in bed. ‘Did you sleep well?' I enquired, in a tentative manner.

‘Actually, no,' came the reply. ‘You were talking in your sleep … well, not so much talking. You were growling … and then you made little woofing noises.'

I have always taken specialist journalism very seriously. When I was appointed Washington correspondent for
Channel 4 News
I went straight out and bought a shelf-load of books about American foreign policy and constitutional theory. When I moved to Paris for the BBC I dutifully ploughed through biographies of François Mitterrand, who was then
president. Taking on the diplomatic job at ITN, I did deep background by swotting up on Talleyrand. Being a dog specialist is, in its way, every bit as absorbing as any other discipline: I now have dozens of serious factual books with titles like
If Dogs Could Talk: Exploring the canine mind
, and lots of novels with the word ‘dog' in the title – Alexander McCall Smith's
The Dog Who Came In From the Cold
and Kate Atkinson's
Started Early, Took My Dog
are two recent titles that immediately found their way on to our bookshelves.

And if the unsettling incident of doggy sleep-talking is anything to go by, I can be every bit as obsessive and Ancient Marinerish about dogs as I once was about Famous Filibusters in the United States Senate or the importance of the
acquis communautaire
in EU accession negotiations.

The Dog has a way of looking at me that makes me examine my conscience, and honesty compels me to admit that part of the pleasure of being a specialist in a subject is knowing more than other people do – and showing off about it. When it is your professional duty to flaunt your expertise on a regular basis, it of course makes the fun easier to enjoy. And most specialist journalism is a blokeish, nerdy thing – like stamp-collecting or re-building vintage cars. It is probably no accident that I keep my dog library in that most blokeish of environments: my garden shed. I have done most of my dog writing there too.

But it is also true that if you are trying to keep abreast of everything that is written in your field you are bound to spot the odd book or article that deserves to be noticed more
widely. The book that forms the basis of this next column is an example.

A dog can sense if it's in bad odour with you

20 March 2010

The BBC has provided me with a piece of kit that allows me to broadcast in studio quality from our basement. It is invaluable for programmes at antisocial hours, when I would rather not schlep across town to a studio. Last Friday, I was pulled off the subs bench to present
Any Questions
, and in the morning I nipped downstairs to read the regular live trail just before the 7.30 a.m. news summary.

Kudu was in the kitchen, happily bashing my stepdaughter with his paw in the hope of being scratched. When I boomed from the radio he leapt to attention, nose a-quiver, clearly discomforted by my disembodied voice.

Why so, when he has often heard me broadcasting in the past? I assume that if I have left the house, he tunes out of our relationship, and does not register that the voice on the radio is mine, whereas on this occasion he knew that I was still about the place. But I cannot know this with any certainty.

An American animal behaviourist, Alexandra
Horowitz, has published a book to help those of us frustrated by the challenge of the canine mind.
Inside of a Dog – What Dogs See, Smell and Know
is based on a proposition from a certain Jacob von Uexküll, an early-twentieth-century German biologist: that to understand the way animals think, we must combine empirical scientific experiments with an imaginative effort to understand their
Umwelt
, or ‘self-world'.

Dr Horowitz is prepared to go to considerable lengths to think herself into a dog's
Umwelt
. She recommends ‘spending an afternoon at the height of a dog' where ‘the world is full of long skirts and trouser legs dancing with every footfall of their wearer', and the environment ‘is a more odoriferous one, for smells loiter and fester in the ground'. I suspect she would disapprove of those owners now prettifying their dogs for next week's Crufts. She argues that when we stick dogs in a bath, we deprive them of an important part of their identity: ‘The mildest fragrance that cleansers come in is still an olfactory insult to a dog.'

I first encountered Dr Horowitz when I interviewed her last year about an experiment into whether dogs really can distinguish between good and bad behaviour. She left the dogs alone in a room with a titbit that their owners had expressly forbidden them to eat. Some ate the titbit; the owner was told, and the dog was ticked off. On other occasions,
the researchers removed it before the dog could eat it, yet still told the owner that their pet had been disobedient, provoking the predictable ticking-off.

How did the dogs behave? The innocents who had been deprived of the titbits were just as likely to look guilty (lowered eyes, slump in the gait, faint wagging of the tail) as those who had sinned. In other words, the dogs were simply reacting to their owners' behaviour, and the guilty look had nothing to do with what they had or had not done.

Kudu is good at holding eye contact, and when he gazes at one of us in a soulful way, it feels very much as if he is trying to communicate. After studying Dr Horowitz's book, I am persuaded that he is in fact ‘reading' us, working out how we expect him to behave so that he can use this to his advantage. And I suspect the reaction to my radio broadcast reflected his shock at behaviour he could not understand. If Dr Horowitz is right, dogs really do know us very well indeed. She writes eloquently about the information they gather by sniffing; they can tell whether you are afraid, whether you have cancer and ‘if you have had sex, smoked a cigarette (or done both of these things in succession), just had a snack, or just run a mile'. Most unsettling – but it is a very good book.

Here is another confession: I enjoy feeling indignant.

This is a late-flowering pleasure, as for most of my professional life I have had to keep such emotions firmly in check for the sake of the impartiality that is quite rightly expected from broadcasters. There are two sides to most stories, and I am so used to reporting both that I sometimes worry I might lose the ability to hold an opinion of my own.

Kudu has taught me that on the subject of dogs I do in fact have very strong views indeed, and, I suspect like most dog-owners, I suffer regular episodes of dog-rage when faced with the petty restrictions that modern life imposes on canine freedom. Why do taxi drivers look at you with such horror when your perfectly clean animal jumps into the back and sits placidly on the floor? Why are dogs banned from post offices, which do not sell any food and make their customers queue for so long that any dog left tied up outside might reasonably assume it had been abandoned? Why do some people press themselves against railings and shop fronts with comedy expressions of terror on their faces when you walk along the pavement with your perfectly friendly hound on a lead?