STRANGE STORIES OF DOGS

Dominion, Volume 15, Issue 80, 28 December 1921, Page 5

STRANGE STORIES OF DOGS

The inquiry into the training of performing animals would have interested the great Lord Erskine, says the London “Morning Post.” One Christmas, at Hoikham, as guests of the famous Coke, of Norfolk, llrskine and Sir John Sebright fell to arguing the cleverness at learning tricks of their favourite dogs. A wager was laid as to which animals in the course of 12 months could be taught the most extraordinary trick, and the trial took place the following Christmas, when they were again at Holkham. Erskine’s dog cleverly took a roasted oyster out of the fire without injuring himself, but Sebright’s dog won the wager by carrying a glass of wine to any person in the room pointed out to him without even spilling a drop. K ’' ■ “Tho other day,” says a writer in “John o’ London’s Weekly,” “I read a dog story which, it seems has gone round tho world, and has reduced old ladies to tears of admiration. This dog was, by accident, left locked up in hit master’s office. Suddenly the local telephone exchange received a call from tho deserted room, and the operator heard 'a dog’s violent barking on tho wire. She telephoned to the owner’s home, and he came down and released the animal. Me aro asked to belicyc that the intelligent deg knew enough to lift the receiver from the instrument and bftrk into tho mouthpiece. Pictures of him doing so were made. Yet for this theory there is not a particle of evidence, nnr can there be, for no one was there to see what happened. The common-sense explanation is that, in his excitement and alarm at finding himself a prisoner he jumped on his master’s desk or on <i window-shelf in hisi desire to look out of the window, and knocked the receiver over.” A clergyman who addressed, the recent British Science Congress at Edinburgh quoted a delightful experiment of his own with a dog. Does a dog who has been in the water'shake itself rationally or instinctively? To secure an answer, he kept a puppy that was never allowed to be wotted. It lived as dry a life cs if it were in America. Then one day he let fall one drop of water on its nav, and the dog at once shook itself Io pieces, ns if trying to dry a much-sonkrd coat. His view was that, directly a num or animal showed itself a fool, at th nt modntmt it could claim to be rational.