August 2010
A dog is a man’s best friend, it is said, and those who own such a wonderful animal are indeed fortunate.
How sad it was, therefore, to learn that the Battersea Dogs Home and other rescue homes for dogs are forced to put down such a large percentage being temporarily sheltered. Many apparently are too vicious, or uncontrollable, to be suitable for re-housing.
As animals, like children, used to be trained from an early age, dog owners who fail to do so are ruining the lives at the animals concerned. They are also possibly depriving someone else taking on an unwanted dog and giving it a very good home.
Apart from the love and protection a dog can give to an owner it can, for instance, enable a handicapped person to live a largely independent life which is so much valued today.
Dogs for the Blind, after many months of training and subsequent follow-up, have enabled many blind people to be employed, giving them great independence. These dogs when on duty walk with heads held steady, always alert. The dog knows that whatever smells he may detect at ground-level, the head must never lower to investigate, however much he may be tempted. Any person unwise enough to try to speak to the dog or fondle its neck must realise that they are unlikely to receive any response whilst the animal is on duty.
A dog can be of great service to the community of course. We have all seen the way guard dogs are used to control crowds, particularly in violent situations. The animal can detect intended violence in a person even before the brick, or whatever, is thrown.
There is an ever-creasing demand by police authorities to use sniffer dogs for tracking drugs. Anyone watching such action on TV can see the animal’s tremendous excitement as it is closing in on a hoard of drugs and with the highly tuned sense of smell the dog is never going to give up its search until it can show its master just where the drugs are located.
Patients suffering from epilepsy can often have their lives saved by having a trained dog near at hand. Such dogs are specifically trained to pick up the change in a person’s chemical make-up which occurs shortly before an epileptic seizure is about to occur. A gentle paw placed on the patient’s lap or arm is sufficient to warn the person so that he can lie down safely before he is incapacitated. Thus a life could be saved, for an epileptic not so warned could easily be in a dangerous position when the fit strikes. I have seen a patient brought into hospital with dreadful burns all over face and back from falling over the cooker at the onset of a fit.
There are many ways in which a dog can use its wonderful sense of smell to great advantage. For instance, persons are often traced by dogs that have only the scent picked up from having a piece of material, previously handled by the missing person, placed over the nose for a short while.
There are, of course, instances where animals have demonstrated awareness from a distance and it is to be hoped that much more research will be possible on this aspect to open up other ways in which detection may be possible in the future.