GPS will bring my wandering dogs to heel
It’s one of those studies that tells us what we already knew: dogs can read humans rather well. Scientists at the University of Liverpool have found that dogs are much more likely to bite people who are afraid of them. In other words, they respond to humans’ moods and personality. They have, of course, invested thousands of years of evolution in doing so.
I never feared the dogs I grew up with, but I did once walk around a Vietnamese village in which the dogs, hearing my approach, tore out of gardens barking and growling at me. Unmoored from the familiar, my instinct told me to run from these unknown, foreign dogs – who knew what they might do? But dogs aren’t that different just because they’re in Asia. The best strategy, in fact, was to face them down with an authoritative shout and some stern gestures. Most will respect an assertion of hierarchy. If you run, they’ll chase you.
The trickier situation is when you’re the one chasing the dog. A couple of dogs in my family, both Labradors, have mastered the art of the late-stage bolt. For most of the walk they’ll stick with the human walkers. But if the mood takes them, they know how to pick the last moment, when your guard is down. A certain, shifty expression comes over them and before you can react, they’ve shot off at top speed.
They’re road-safe on the country lanes and always come back, but even so, the heart sinks. Now, thankfully, their days of roaming free are over. The same technology that, as Blue Planet II showed, can follow a whale to a depth of 400 metres under water has finally become affordable for tracking down the local ramblings of dogs. Fixed to their collar, the little GPS also reveals their habits.
The elder, prissier of the pair has a regular route. He makes first for the cricket field, sniffing his way along the footpath, before trotting down to a livery yard, coming up along the tracks and popping into a copse, which he runs around and around until getting bored and coming home.
The other, a more rambunctious fellow, has one regular destination. He makes for the house of his lady loves, a neighbouring pair of Labrador bitches. Off he goes, as soon as he escapes, like the soft-hearted suitor Freddy Eynsford-hill in My Fair Lady, to sit patiently on the lawn where they live, hoping against hope for a rushed exchange of slobbers before his inamoratas are ushered into their owners’ car. Thoughtfully, sometimes he takes them a gift – a mangy tennis ball – and chews on it while he waits. His affections appear to be returned by the older bitch, who is twice his age. He is a dog of sophisticated tastes.
All of this happy bounding can now be ruthlessly cut short by a quick check online, a short drive and a spell of authoritative yelling into the darkness.
Dogs have learnt to read us very well. What they haven’t yet learnt how to do is outfox an collection of satellites beaming their precise locations from orbit to our mobile phones. Give it a million years.
Last week in Dublin, I heard a speech by Michael D Higgins, the president of Ireland, and this week in London, I met him briefly. Small in stature, with a wizened, friendly face, he was, I had been told, not likely to say anything controversial, since he holds a mainly ceremonial role.
That, it turned out, was nonsense. Mr Higgins spoke for an hour as if addressing a symposium, rather than entering a political debate. What he said, however, was radical to the core. Europe, he argued, has succumbed to a “narrowing of intellectual work, an intolerance of critique and a blind acceptance of a unilinear vision of growth”. To translate: the free market economic orthodoxy does not serve the people and we should instead return to older, pre-bretton Woods ideas.
Intellectually, he has much in common with some of Europe’s most radical Left-wingers, from Jeremy Corbyn to Yanis Varoufakis. But in his demeanour, as I saw in London, Mr Higgins is a gentle and decent man, rather than a narcissistic authoritarian. That must be why, despite Ireland’s deep-seated conservatism, he is an extremely popular figurehead. A little affability, respect and academic seriousness go a long way.
The European Commission is gearing up for a fight, but this one isn’t with Britain. It is preparing to face down opposition from at least eight European governments, including France, over the way the next EU president will be chosen.
The current one, Jean-claude Juncker, was picked for his role in a controversial procedure known as the Spitzenkandidaten process. This process is not written down in any treaty, but after the last round of European Parliament elections, Brussels insiders managed to persuade Germany that it would be a good precedent to set. It involves the largest parliamentary grouping picking a candidate in a rather opaque procedure, without input from any sovereign government.
David Cameron vehemently opposed this process, to no avail. The selection of an EU president supported neither by our government, nor a single British vote, was one of the many aggravating factors that hardened attitudes against Brussels in our political class. Now, if the commission has its way, it’s about to do it again. Will it ever learn?