It is dogs who trained humans, not us them

There is evidence that super-sensory canines have been guiding man since Mesolithic times

When I was 10, I was obsessed with a memoir by Australian author Mary Elwyn Patchett,

Ajax the Warrior, which told how she found, raised and went walkabout with a fierce but loyal half-dingo pup in the outback. I knew I was unlikely to rescue a dingo from a hollowedout tree in the Kentish Weald, but I long held out hope for a stray wolfcub – never quite accepting the fact that they’d been hunted to extinction under Henry VII. This was long before Game

of Thrones made everyone yearn for their own spirit animal in the shape of a direwolf. In the end, I had to settle for a rescued Labrador-cross puppy, who developed a form of canine schizophrenia, bit me and pretty much everyone, including the vet, and had to be put down. Which rather proved my point that a wolf-dog would have made a better and safer companion.

It would, perhaps, have rather resembled the large canine that walked alongside a Mesolithic hunter-gatherer from York to Stonehenge 7,000 years ago (yes, a 250-mile dog walk) – which archaeologists have just identified from its Alsatian-like tooth.

It’s fascinating to know that dogs have been walking humans since the very first stirrings of civilisation. Because, as any dog owner knows, that’s the way the dynamic works. It’s your pooch who sits by the door yelping for you to get off your large, lazy derriere and go out into the fresh air. This dovetails neatly with the latest thinking in evolutionary science which proposes that, far from men domesticating wild wolves into canines, in fact the friendliest and boldest wolves infiltrated human circles, seeking food and shelter, and in doing so helped us to evolve.

When you walk a hound, you see, you’re both gathering vital information about your local environment: he sniffs bottoms and wee, while you scent gossip and hypocrisy. It was only through exercising my family’s exuberant Airedale terrier (successor to the vicious Lab) as a teen that I noted a glamorous neighbour arm-in-arm with her handyman. This Airedale, by the way, was so attuned to the family that he threw himself against the garden gate if I or one of my siblings was about to return home from London or university – no matter that my parents had no knowledge of our plans.

Dogs also help us see ourselves more clearly. Meg Rosoff ’s wonderfully funny latest novel, Jonathan Unleashed, details how a man-child in NYC borrows his brother’s spaniel and Border collie and, in so doing, starts to acknowledge the full horror of his job and glacial girlfriend. Rosoff is brilliant at slyly demonstrating that the emotions we so readily attribute to our dogs (in this case, ennui, disdain and a Reggie Perrin-like desire for escape) are actually our own. Who doesn’t enjoy telling the person looking down the muzzle of their growling dog, “He doesn’t seem to like you!” when what they mean is, “You’re repellent.” Similarly, when Jon’s pets take a shine to the pretty local vet, you know their doting walker will shortly follow suit.

In the age of social media, Tinder and gnat-like attention spans, dogs are more vital for our emotional evolution than ever before. If you want to meet people offline, then a comely mutt is the way to attract them. In the last week of the summer holidays, my eight-year-old son and I visited Deal, where we spotted a silver-haired woman walking two exquisite greyhounds, one brindle and one treacly-black. After an hour’s conversation, we were firm friends, who kept waving to each other for the next few days. An American friend tells how he once lived in a house near Corral Beach in Malibu, where his “big, gorgeous” golden retriever had the uncanny ability to sniff out the prettiest girls on the beach – “in the skimpiest bikinis” – and beg them to throw a ball for them, allowing my friend to strike up conversation.

The fact is, a stroll without a canine friend is just dutiful, unsexy perambulation. A dog will take you off-piste, through copses, along canal paths, down fox tracks and lolloping across vast heaths to your heart’s unknown desires. As Dodie Smith demonstrated in The Starlight Barking, the slumbering realm of humans is forever being trumped by the alert, super-sensory and uncanny world of dog-kind.

And here I must report that something strange occurred during the writing of this column. When I discussed the topic with my editor, I confessed I hadn’t owned a dog in recent years, because I’m often away and my husband fears pounding the park with a pooper-scooper on his own. Even so, there’s a constant, nagging sense that we’re depriving our sons of an essential relationship. I’ve given up on dingos and wolves, but would settle for the kind of grave, lithe hound you see on medieval tapestries.

Then, on Friday night, at a drinks party, I found myself instantly drawn to a bright-eyed elderly woman with the sort of lovely crinkle to the corner of her eyes that speaks of much adventure. As we talked, I realised she was a friend’s remarkable godmother and a lifelong breeder of deerhounds. By the time we said goodbye, I’d asked if I could come and view the next litter, should there be one. Further evidence, if any were needed, that dogs steer and choose us – not the other way round.