It is not hard to see how the two species have gone their separate ways. In the centuries since man has become the dominant force on earth, he has moulded the dog – and many other animals – according to the rules of his society alone. It did not take man long to spot he could adjust, improve and specialise the skills of dogs by putting them together selectively for breeding purposes. As early as 7000 BC, in the Fertile Crescent of Mesopotamia, for instance, someone noticed the impressive hunting skills of the Arabian desert wolf, a lighter, faster variety of its northern relative. Slowly the wolf evolved into a dog able to chase and catch prey in this harsh climate and, more importantly, to do so according to man’s commands. The dog – variously known as the Saluki, Persian greyhound or gazelle hound – remains unchanged today and may well be the first example of a purebred dog. It was certainly not the last. In ancient Egypt, the Pharaoh hound was bred for hunting. In Russia, the borzoi was bred to chase bears. In Polynesia and Central America, communities even developed dog breeds specifically for food.
The process has continued through the ages, aided by the dog’s willingness to be ‘imprinted’ by our species. Here in England, for instance, the hunting culture of the landowning aristocracy produced a collection of dogs customised to fulfil specific roles. On a 19th-century estate, a typical pack would include a springer spaniel, to literally spring or flush the game from cover, a pointer or setter to locate birds, and a retriever to return the dead or wounded game to the handler.
Elsewhere, other breeds maintained the historic bond between man and dog even more closely. Nowhere was this exemplified better than in the development of guide dogs for the blind. It was at the end of the Great War, at a large country convalescent home in Potsdam, Germany, that a doctor working with injured veterans noticed just by chance that when patients who had lost their sight started moving towards a flight of steps his German shepherd would cut them off. The doctor sensed the dog was turning them away from danger. He began training his dogs specifically to use this natural shepherding ability to help humans who could no longer see. The guide dog for the blind developed from there. It may be our most direct throwback to that earliest community. Here was a dog providing a sense that man has lost. Unfortunately it is a rare example of co-operation in the modern world.
In more recent times our relationship has changed, as far as I am concerned, often to the detriment of the dog. Our former partners in survival have become companions cum accessories. The evolution of the so-called lapdog illustrates this perfectly. The breeds were probably begun in the Buddhist temples of the high Himalayas. There, holy men bred the hardy Tibetan spaniels so that they became smaller and smaller. They then used the dogs as body warmers, teaching them to jump up on to their laps and remain under their robes to fend off the cold.
By the time of Charles II, the idea had travelled to England, where the English toy spaniel evolved from breedings of tinier and tinier examples of the setter. Over time, these little gundogs were pampered by their wealthy owners and crossed with toy-dog breeds from the East. The breed’s history is still visible today in the distinctive flat-faced features of the King Charles spaniel. This was, to my mind, a pivotal moment in the history of man’s relationship with the dog. To the dog nothing had changed but to his former partner, the relationship was entirely new. The dog had ceased to have a function beyond mere decoration. It was a foretaste of what was to come.
Today, examples of the old relationship that man and dog enjoyed are few and far between. Working dogs such as gun dogs, police dogs and farm dogs, as well as the guide dogs I have already mentioned, spring to mind. However they are the tiny exceptions. In general today we have a culture and society in which no consideration has been given to the dog’s place. The old allegiance has been forgotten. Our familiarity has bred contempt, and along the way the instinctive understanding the two species shared has been lost.
Again, it is easy to see why there has been a communications breakdown: the small communities in which we began our history have been replaced by one huge, homogeneous society, a global village. Our lives in the big cities have made us anonymous, and we don’t know or acknowledge the people we are around. If we have become divorced from the needs of our fellow humans we have lost touch completely with dogs. As we have learned to cope with all the things we have to face in our society, we have simply assumed that our dogs have done the same thing. The truth is they haven’t. Today, man’s concept of the dog’s role and the dog’s idea of its place are completely at odds with each other. We expect this one species to abide by our norms of behaviour, to live by rules we would never impose on another animal, say a sheep or a cow. Even cats are allowed to scratch themselves. Only dogs are told they cannot do what they like.
It is ironic – and to my mind, tragic – that of all the 1.5 million species on this planet, the one species blessed with the intelligence to appreciate the beauty in others fails to respect dogs for what they are. As a result, the exceptional understanding that existed between us and our former best friends has all but disappeared. It is little wonder there are more problems with dogs today than there have ever been.
Of course there are many people who are living perfectly happily with their dogs. The ancient bond clearly lives on inside us somewhere. No other animal evokes the same set of emotions or forms the basis for such loving relationships. The fact remains that people today who are living in harmony with their dogs are getting there by a happy accident rather than through knowledge. Our awareness of the instinctive, unspoken language that we share with our dogs has been lost.
In the last decade, I have attempted to bridge that divide, to attempt to re-establish that link between man and dog. My search for this missing means of communication has been a long and at times frustrating one. Ultimately, however, it has been the most rewarding and exciting journey I have ever made.
Chapter 2
It is hard for me to imagine this now, but there was a time when I could not face the prospect of forming a friendship with another dog. In the awful aftermath of Purdey’s death, I had become deeply disillusioned. At one point I even think I came out with the classic line ‘I will never have another dog in this house’. The reality was, however, that my affection for dogs ran too deep. And, within a year or so of Purdey’s death, a little gun dog was healing the scars left by my tragic loss.
Despite our early setback, my family and I had settled well into country life. It was my husband’s interest in hunting that brought dogs back into our home. One day, in the autumn of 1973, he came back from a rough shoot bemoaning his lack of a good gun dog. He had seen a wounded rabbit slinking its way into the woods to die. ‘If I had a dog that couldn’t have happened,’ he complained with a look that left little room for doubt about what he was thinking.
So it was that on his birthday that September, his first gun dog, a springer spaniel bitch we called Kelpie arrived in the house. He loved the dog as I did. It was the beginning of my lifelong love affair with that beautiful breed.
We were, predictably I suppose, terrified of repeating the experience of Purdey and immediately bought one of the standard text books on gundog training. I have to confess that our first efforts at shaping Kelpie up were far from a roaring success. We wanted to train Kelpie to retrieve, an unnatural act for a springer. Sticking rigidly to the book, we started her off by throwing objects for her to recover and return to us. The book stressed the importance of beginning with something very lightweight. The idea was to teach the dog to be ‘soft mouthed’ with the objects it recovered.
We decided to use one of Ellie’s old bibs, which we tied in a knot. One morning we took Kelpie outdoors, threw the bib into the distance and waited for her to return it to us. We were so thrilled when she bounded off and picked up the bib, but our expressions soon changed as she ran straight past us into the house. I remember my husband looking at me with a blank look: ‘What does the book say we do now?’ he said. At that point I think we all collapsed to the floor with laughter. We made an awful lot of mistakes with Kelpie but we had great fun too. Whenever