Dog Archives | Chandra Clarke

So, it turns out dogs make pretty good film critics.

Pooch and popcorn enthusiasts held a Dog Film Festival in Albuquerque, New Mexico recently. The films had to be about dogs, have dogs in them or make you think about dogs. Owners had to pay $5 to get in, while the dogs got in for free. Of course, no one told them that the proceeds were going to the city’s spay and neuter programs. If they had, I suspect the dogs would have staged a major riot, which would have involved throwing their chocolate covered milkbones at the projectionist.

Why did they hold a film festival for dogs? For starters, it would be impossible to hold one for cats. This is because:

1) You can not leash a cat to take it out anywhere. They either go limp and slither out of their collar, or attempt to shred your shins. Possibly both.
2) If people were able to transport their cats to the theatre, 70 percent of the felines would resolutely look everywhere but the screen, just to be contrary.
3) The other 30 percent would go slightly psycho and attempt to attack whatever was moving on the screen.

But the real reason why they held a film festival for dogs is, well, people get slightly weird about their pets sometimes. We talk to them, hold birthday parties for them, and dress them up in four-legged versions of human clothing. Even I confess to wrapping the odd bone-shaped parcel and putting it under the Christmas tree. Of course, I learned the hard way that it’s never a good idea to put edible things under the tree until Christmas morning.

Of course, there’s a good reason for being nice to animals. In addition to providing companionship, they have skills and abilities we haven’t got, and can’t yet imitate with technology. For example:

Dogs: In addition to protecting your home from squirrels, the neighbourhood cats, and falling leaves, dogs are great additions to any lawn maintenance program. They provide free fertilizer and many dogs aerate your lawn by digging large holes in random places. They’ve also got great noses, capable of detecting a Twinkie at 200 yards. More seriously, we’ve recently discovered that dogs can detect cancerous cells just by scent.

Cats: Cats have this tremendous ability to bring all the hidden mice in your home out into the open, usually by eviscerating them and leaving them on your pillow. They are also an excellent addition to any home office, adding to your professional demeanour by saving all their best hairballs for important conference calls. The sound of a cat purring, meanwhile, may have healing properties — the tone and vibration frequency has been shown to improve bone and muscle thickness.

Fish: Fish promote personal hygiene, mainly because after cleaning out a tank, you smell like, well, fish. Watching fish swim around in their tank or bowl, meanwhile, is a good way to reduce stress. And if you’re depressed, fish are a good source of omega-3 fatty acids, which help combat depression. Mind you, they’re only a good source once.

Rabbits: Rabbits provide free lawn care, trimming the grass down to golf putting green level. They are also excellent at producing more rabbits, which means you could open your own organic lawn care business with only rabbit transport costs to worry about. Petting a rabbit, meanwhile, and assuming you don’t get bitten or kicked, can reduce stress levels and promote general well-being. For you, if not the rabbit.

So the next time you rent a movie, consider inviting your furry or scaly family friends in to watch too. You never know how they might pay you back.

Researchers have recently discovered some amazing things about dogs that will absolutely astound you … if you’re a cat owner.

In one study, scientists found that dogs may have personalities. That is, dogs apparently have enough unique characteristics and traits that you can actually tell them apart.

If you’ve ever been owned by more than one dog, you know this already. However, as a self-confessed dog companion you have shown yourself to be mentally suspect, and thus scientists don’t trust your judgement. This is because you regularly allow yourself to be smooched by something that may have just drunk out of the toilet.

So, how did scientists come up with hard proof of doggy differences? They recruited a thousand Labrador Retrievers and had them fill out the “What’s Your Party Style?” quiz in a recent issue of Cosmopolitan magazine. A control group of was asked to complete the “Which Star Trek Captain Do You Most Resemble?” quiz. (Incidentally, scientists had to choose this particular breed; otherwise it wouldn’t have been a lab test.)

The results showed that 40 percent of the test subjects wanted to play phaser fetch with James T. Kirk, while 30 percent wanted to discuss time travel with Captain Janeway over a cup of coffee. The remaining subjects went to the door and asked to be let out.

Okay, not really. What the study did do was have dog owners rate their dogs for various personality traits (aggressiveness, curiosity, friendliness) and then had strangers rate the dogs the same way. Most of the time, the owner’s assessment and the stranger’s assessment agreed, thus proving that dogs probably do have recognizably different personalities. Either that or they downloaded the personality test answers for their owners from the Internet.

A second, more interesting bit of research has demonstrated that dogs are very good at reading human social cues — better, in fact, than their cousin the wolf, or our cousin, the chimpanzee.

In this study, a graduate student approached a group of dogs, a group of chimpanzees and a pack of wolves, pointed at a wet spot on the carpet, and said “Bad! Very bad!”

No less than 100 percent of the dogs responded by ducking and whining apologetically. About half of the chimpanzees threw a banana at the investigator, while the other half pointed indignantly at the dog. No one is sure what happened with the wolves, as they’re still waiting for the graduate student to get out of hospital.

Right, okay, what really happened was that researchers hid a bit of food under one of two cups. The experimenter would then indicate which of the two cups the animal should investigate by either looking at the right cup or gesturing at it. Dogs were much better at recognizing the clues given by the human.

Again though, if you have ever been owned by a dog, you know this already. This is because you have to spell things like “car ride” or “cupcake” or “veterinarian” so that your dog won’t know what you’re talking about. Your dog will wake from a sound sleep and go to the door because he can tell you’re wrapping up that phone call. Or she will hide because she can tell that’s flea shampoo you’ve just taken out of the medicine cabinet, and not your own body wash and loofah.

Will there ever be definitive proof about cat personalities or a cat’s ability to read humans? We’ll need more subtle and sophisticated tests. When asked to fill out the personality quiz, 95 percent of cats tested bit the investigator’s ankle and wandered off. When asked to find the food under the cup, 97 percent of cats scratched the investigator’s ankle and wandered off.

So for now I guess, the dog is having its day, while the cat remains resolutely out of the bag.

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