These are the few who pass on to The Boss those little vignettes that sustain us, that give us hope – those who remind us of the ancient bond between canines and their owners… and how the canines have done more than their fair share.
One of these sensitive friends last week passed on an article from England’s Country Life magazine, entitled “Hopelessly Devoted To You.” You can tell straight away it wasn’t about me, right?
It laid out the tedious arguments about whether we led humans out of the darkness some 30,000 years BC or a more modest 12,000 years ago - but I am not one to quibble. The fact is, while I remain 99.9% wolf, the other 0.1% of a domestic dog’s DNA gives me (and the other billion-odd hounds giving loyal service to humans) three special little genes – genes that code for hyper-sociability, so that we lick you rather than eat you.
The author went on to say that, when you gaze into your dog’s eyes and pooch gazes back, both brains – the dog’s and the owner’s – flood with the hormone oxytocin, which produces a positive emotion. “Love,” the author says.
This is not my experience, I have to say. I think food. And it’s not The Boss’s either: he accuses me of plotting something self-serving, or wanting more of everything. We could both be right.
But hey, when it comes to loyalty, we are it. Hard wired. At the Emory University in the US they ran these MRI experiments on dogs, with rags soaked in their owner’s scent, confirming how it spikes the reward centre in the dogs’ brains in a way that doesn’t happen with strangers.
The Boss claims he knew this from Homer’s ancient story of The Odyssey, when Odysseus returned home after 20 years, dressed as a beggar to disguise himself. He found his old dog, Argos, left skinny and neglected on a rubbish heap; Argos wagged his tail when Odysseus approached but was too feeble to get up. But Odysseus had to ignore Argos and keep walking, lest he be discovered. It’s a dog’s life indeed.
So they’ve now figured out that most dogs derive as much pleasure from social rewards as from snacks. I am an exception to this but I suppose I could work on it. And that we dogs also feel jealously, grief and empathy. Apparently.
Then there’s language. The author reports that a border collie named Chaser has learned the names of 1022 different toys, which is admirable but I would be inclined to tear right into the pile and destroy them. And they say we’re better at following hand-pointing than chimps or cheetahs are, which isn’t saying much.
Dogs are also better at recognising human emotions than the reverse. They note that humans aren’t all that good at discerning dogs’ emotions, although The Boss seems to zero in on my guilty look when I’ve been into the kitchen bin or hoovering up a bit of blood-and bone in the garden.
The most reassuring thing in the entire article is the proclamation that dogs have an IQ equivalent to that of a two-and-a-half year-old child. It’s the kind of ridiculous conclusion that reminds us dogs that humans are essentially stupid and, if we play our cards right, we’ll eventually be running the show. Woof!