Pilot Scheme

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29910, 25 August 1962, Page 3

Pilot Scheme

IA Fourth Leader in "The Times"! Until mid-September, accounts of the trials which will determine the winner of the International Sheepdog Society’s championship shield will tend to make at least one dog-owner feel uneasy—not to say sheepish. On the evidence, these working col-

lies are remarkably reliable, steady, and obedient. His own dog, to which he is devoted, is none of these things.

Sporting dogs justify their existences by retrieving. Guide dogs guide the blind. Truffle hounds find truffles. Bloodhounds track down criminals and, when they catch up with them, are said to be as docile as lambs.

■Police dogs do the same thing, but pin their captives to the ground. Foxhounds and beagles provide sport for those who follow them. On the Continent dogs pull carts and turn water-wheels. Other people’s dogs trot off to the newsagent and return with the morning papers in their mouths. Racking his brains to think of some task to which his dog could usefully apply its talents, its owner hit on the idea of a canine get-you-home sendee. His bump of locality is faulty, and he is a poor map-reader. Dogs—or at least his dogare devoted to motoring and are reputed to possess excellent senses of direction. Stranded far from home, dogs have unerringly struck out across unknown country to return in safety to their baskets and their dinnerplates. It should be easy enough to train an intelligent. dog to sit beside its master on the front seat and. when a Question of right, left, or straight on arises at sisnpostless cross-roads, to indicate the correct route by a simple rode of barks

The picture conjured up is an attractive one. In practice, so far, the experiment has not proved a success, and the blame, the dog's handler has decided, lies with himself rather than with his pupil. Left to its own devices, the dog would probably have no doub’s or hesitations It is not left to its own devices Its master has one idea. His wife, on whose knee' the pilot is precariously perched, has another. There is a sharp clash of opinions, and telepathic waves, to which dogs are known to be acutely sensitive, get hopelessly crossed and confused. It is small wonder that, at this crucial juncture, the dog. for the first time in the course of the journey, yawns delicately and settles down for a short nap.