Well, to be clear, I should say that The Boss does the reading while I pass judgement, indicating whether it deserves further investigation or whether it might be tossed in the bin, along with most of the other stuff he reads.
I never learned to read myself, preferring the oral tradition. The Boss once told me that, before writing paper, books and printing presses, people had to remember everything important – and that the ancient Greeks prided themselves on remembering up to 3000 proverbs.
I can remember a few of those myself, like You can’t teach an old dog new tricks; Let sleeping dogs lie; and A dog is a man’s best friend. But 3000 is a bit of a stretch, even for a talented hound such as myself.
In any case, persistent barking can get a clever dog just about anything he wants so we won’t dwell on the pros and cons of reading and remembering. A dog needs to remember where he buried his bone and to be nice to the person who feeds him – that’s about it.
But back to the literature. There’s been more research on how dogs age similar to the way humans age - although dogs age much more quickly - so the researchers can use it to figure out how humans can age better. And what about the dogs? We get arthritis too, you know – they ought to be working out how dogs can age better.
These researchers in Vienna found that dogs’ personalities change over time like humans do. I’m sure you’ve noticed how I have mellowed and matured after having a little more attention paid to me during the Lockdown, for example. This wouldn't surprise the researchers at all.
They also found that some dogs are born old, in the same way some kids are more level-headed than others. But some adolescent dogs share the characteristics of human adolescents, as in “reduced trainability and responsiveness to commands.”
You might have seen these traits in other people’s kids, if not their dogs. Certainly not your own.
One funny thing they found was that the adolescent dogs reserved this behaviour for their masters; the researchers found the dogs quite responsive to people other than their masters.
They described it as “a passing phase of carer-specific conflict-like behaviour during adolescence” and said the results suggested adolescence was “a vulnerable time for dog-owner relatiomships.”
The Boss raised his voice as he read this out but I pretended to be asleep. As if I’m a adolescent. I mean, I’m six now and that’s old for a dog, I can tell you. Although another bunch of researchers reckon the seven-year multiple of dog years to human years is wrong too.
They established that to calculate the age of a dog, you now need to multiply the natural logarithm of your dog’s age in human years by 16, then add 31.
The Boss wandered off to his filing cabinet, hunting for his old log tables from Bourchier Street school in 1962 to work out what the natural log of six is but ended up looking sheepish and asking Google instead.
“People don’t know what log tables are these days, General. They just use a calculator.”
He said my natural log at age 6 is 1.8. Multiplied by 16, that equals 28.8. Add 31 to that and it indicates I am nearly 60 already. The Boss reckons I’ll need to do a little more retrieving yet so we might stick with the seven-year multiple. That makes me a sprightly 42 - about ready for reading glasses. Woof!
