Shooting Times & Country Magazine
LEFT OR RIGHT PAW?
There are ways to find out which side your dog favours
As a racket player, I have always noted whether my opponent is right- or left-handed, as this makes a real difference as to where you should hit the ball. I recently umpired a tennis match in which the loser admitted he hadn’t noticed until the second set that his opponent was left-handed, but as he was outclassed, I doubt it would have made much difference to the 6-2, 6-2 drubbing he received.
I’ve lived with dogs all my life yet never known whether they were rightor left-pawed. About 10.6% of humans are left-handed, but nobody knows for sure what the percentage is with dogs because of the difficulty of finding out. It’s generally reckoned to be higher than with humans, and may be around 20%. So I was intrigued by a recent study from the University of Lincoln, which suggested that left-handed people should adopt left-pawed dogs because they will get on better and have a stronger relationship. It also found that dogs will override their natural instinct to mimic their owner’s favourite hand.
This is a bit of a challenge for my dogs, as my wife is left-handed whereas I am right-handed. It did, however, make me want to find out which paw my four-yearold spaniel, Emma, prefers to use. The best method of finding out was to put a treat into a narrow-necked vessel and see which paw she used to try to get it out.
To begin with, she used her left paw, but after a few seconds of frustration, her right paw was also used, before reverting back to her left paw. It was an inconclusive result, but on balance I would say that she was left-pawed, though perhaps she might be ambidextrous.
There are other tests you can undertake, too. Does your dog turn to the left or the right when it settles into its bed? When it sets off for a walk, does it lead with its left or right paw? But perhaps the last question is whether it is of any significance. I’m not sure that it is.
Some time ago, I was watching my favourite gardener, Monty Don. He was doing a tour of some European gardens and one thing which struck me from one of his conversations was the fact that, in many countries in that part of the world, they still view flowers and grass as luxuries they cannot afford.
Instead, they are still growing their own vegetables, in the plots dotted around their dwellings. A chef, who was visiting the area with Monty, was viewing scores of Kilner-type jars with all manner of fruits preserved in them — exactly like we used to do not that long ago. It was in stark contrast to our own country, although Covid lockdowns have reversed the trend a little. Wind the clock back to our grandparents’ or great grandparents’ days and more or less everyone who was able grew their own produce — if they had a garden, of course.
The lack of gardens was more or less limited to the Victorian slums,
Root crops were readily available, certainly where I came from in Scotland; turnips were grown widely as livestock fodder and potatoes simply as food for the masses. I recall a very large hessian sack of spuds sold for £1, though that did not stop the rural gardener growing his own and storing them for the winter. Carrots and beetroot were lifted before the frosts arrived, stored in dry sand