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Canine Forteana (Dogs' Weirdness & Wonders)

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Anonymous

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There's a fascinating programme on Radio 4 at the moment, dealing with the fringes of medicine.
This week it concerns animals. So far we've had dogs being able to smell cancer in growths (even picking the most dangerous one from a number of melanomas on one person) and dogs being able to detect the imminent onset of a seizure (in time to allow the sufferer to take account of this in their plans for the day).
I'm just fascinated.
That's all.
 
Yes, I've read about that before. And I also read somewhere that certain diseases have certain smells.

Carole
 
Schizophrenia certainly does. Sufferers tend to smell of pear drops due to whatever chemicals they're overproducing.
ten years ago I'd have been far more informative about this. Ahh, the brain cells of yesteryear.
 
A great subject. I caught just a part of one of the shows last
night, I think. It was about dogs detecting seizures before they
happen.

It went on to discuss tribal peoples recognizing drugs because
animals had shown the way. There was also some detail about apes
which chose to eat bitter leaves to rid themselves of a certain
intestinal worm etc.

Many old remedies have been shown to be effective. Probably the
biggest recent success story is St. John's Wort, traditionally a magic
plant but now regarded as a highly effective anti-depressant.

Did trial and error over the years allow these properties to be
detected or was there some strange instinctive connection between
the symptoms and the remedy? :confused:
 
I found this strange story... IMO, it's nuts.

Racist K-9 McKEES ROCKS, PA. -- A police dog is accused of racial profiling.

The five-year-old German shepherd named Dolpho is the lone police dog in McKees Rocks, Pa.

Dolpho can tell the difference between marijuana, heroin and cocaine. But a borough councilwoman says the dog targets blacks and should be put to death.

Dolpho made a mistake last week. While a K-9 officer wrestled with a drug suspect, a button on his belt inadvertently opened a door to the K-9 wagon.

The dog bolted out and bit a nine-year-old boy on the leg, and not the suspect.

The boy is black.

Police say the dog became confused because there was a lot of noise and yelling.

The incident was brought up during a council meeting on Monday. No decision was made about Dolpho's fate.
 
Whether the dog is racist or not :D surely it shouldn't get confused during an arrest? Sounds like a poorly trained police dog to me!
 
Seem to remember that there were a flurry of stories coming out of the US about 10-15 years ago, about so-called "white dogs" which were trained by racists to attack blacks - exactly how they were trained seemed to be unclear (can a dog be trained to distinguish between, say, light-skinned Negros and heavily-tanned Caucasians?) There was even a cinema film, "White Dog" with just that plot idea, which seems to have sunk without trace.
A quick googling doesn't turn up any real stories about such dogs, so I think we can consign 'racist dogs' to the UL bin, until some evidence of them actually surfaces. It sounds like this particular case was one of a confused and badly-trained animal going for the nearest target.
 
there was a couple of these stories about racicst police dogs in the UK in the last couple of years too...........in between the ones about racist police people.....:(
 
Al Hirt said:
I doubt that the dog is racist. It probably thinks that the people its going for a more likely to be crooks down to experiance.
In this particular case, the dog went for a nine year-old boy. The size of a target would be much more noticable to a dog than skin colour (especially when it's confronted by a noisy, crowded, confusing ruckus), but I doubt it thinks that kids or midgets are likely to be crooks.

Racism is wrong, but so is ignorance.

You said it.....
 
According to the article the police officer stated that the dog got confused with the yelling. I wonder if the boy was yelling and that contributed to the dog attacking him...?
 
Arn't dogs colour blind, I seem to remember reading somewhere that dogs can only see in black and white and shades of grey.
 
Just to note that the movie White Dog was a late (1982) work by
the director Sam Fuller. It surfaced three or four years ago on UK
tv, when Channel Four did a Fuller retrospective. I didn't see it.

But remembering a time when terrestrial tv did director retrospectives
sounds like another world now! :(
 
Al Hirt said:
Lots of kids are used by drug dealers as middle men. They carry the drugs from dealer to customer. Perhaps the dog was picking up the scent of drugs thatt he young boy was previously carrying.
So what you're saying is that US police dogs are routinely encouraged to bite drug-dealers?
Somehow, I doubt that. Police dogs anywhere are rigorously trained; they are taught to attack only on command or if they perceive the target as being an immediate physical threat. They do not (should not) bite under any other circumstances. Smell doesn't come into it - they are not sniffer dogs and respond only to auditory or visual cues. This particular incident was clearly an accident, possibly with a poorly-trained dog.
 
My Dobermann, who I discussed on the Fortean Pets thread, adored black people, but hated Chinese people.

His sister hated Airedales, and went for a greyhound in the vet who'd done absolutely nothing to upset her when someone came in with an airedale but I suppose that's another story...

PS The dogs were both rescue dogs; we got them at 5 months old, so we don't know their history in case any of you thought they'd been taught this!
 
Can dogs be racist? - YES

When I lived in Kenya, some dogs owned by Asians and Whites would growl at every Black person they came across, welcome visitors or otherwise. Yet the same dogs would be submissive (head down, tail wagging) when an Asian or White approached them, even if they were strangers. It didn't take a genius to work out that the dogs just reflected their owners views on race, but hadn't mastered the art of two-facedness.

Nuff said
 
Al Hirt said:
The dog was trained to attack Blacks, It doesnt mean its racist. Its views where forced on to it by its owners who obviously saw fit to train the dogs to act this way. You can teach a dog to do almost anything including hate. I hardley think this constitutes as K9 Racism.

Exactly. Animals do not create their own stereotypes, but learn behavior that their owners/trainers teach them.

If there's anything to question in this story it's whether or not the dog was trained to attack black people. From the sound of the story, I doubt it.
 
If the kid was making noise or attracted the dogs attention, then I would say that the dog went after him because it assumed the cop had the other guy in hand..

The kid might have run away from the dog when he saw it and also triggered it's prey instinct and training at a bad time.
 
I think dogs have so bad eyesight that they wouldn't be able to distinguish between the races. But they would be able to if they smelled differently. In this case I just think the dog panicked or such though.

BTW animals can of course be racists.
 
Annasdottir said:
In this particular case, the dog went for a nine year-old boy.

I can't help but note that it's never asserted in the story that the boy wasn't involved in the fight - just that he wasn't the drug suspect.
 
Xanatic said:
I think dogs have so bad eyesight that they wouldn't be able to distinguish between the races. But they would be able to if they smelled differently. In this case I just think the dog panicked or such though.

BTW animals can of course be racists.

I read somewhere years ago that a dog's eyesight is so bad it can barely see it's hand in front of it's face so to speak unless it's a moving object. They rely totally on scent.

The article was in a magazine I was looking at in an opticians - an owner was devasted because her dog had cancer in one of its eyes and she hated the thought of her dog going blind. Seems it's more of an inconvenience than a handicap to a dog.

I wonder how they know this though? Maybe they tested the eyes of a talking dog?

Incidentally, one of my dogs was on medication, and it said on the label that a side effect of the drug was headaches...
 
Now I'm confused - I just did a search on Yahoo on dogs eyesight, and most of the hits say their eyesight is better than ours...

It was a long time ago - maybe new research has disproved this?

Can anyone get a definitive answer on this?

:confused: :confused:
 
Just found this:

"A dog’s eyesight is not as important to it as its sense of smell and hearing, since it mainly hunts and orientates itself, with its nose and ears. In fact, dogs’ eyes are typically weaker in daylight than a human’s, although at night they are far keener, for the wild dogs have always hunted at night, complementing their keen nose and ears with their eyes. Scientist disagree on whether dogs can see in colour but the predominant verdict is that they are almost colour - blinded, seeing only black, white and shades of grey. It is also widely accepted that a dog sees things indistinctly, identifying a person or object by the basic shape, and confirming its finding with its nose and ears".

Oh well.
 
Typically weaker than humans? I thought humans were actually supposed to have excellent eyesight compared to other animals.
 
It didn't take a genius to work out that the dogs just reflected their owners views on race, but hadn't mastered the art of two-facedness.

Hit the nail on the head there I think! And of course, its completely out of the question that a dog that spends its time with cops could be affected thus:devil:
 
Dogs are pack animals and I have to agree 100% with Lutzman. I have seen it in various countries and is very prevalent here in the M.E. If I wander around the locals villages at night I will get no end of bother from the local dogs wheras a strange local type will be allowed to pass unscathed and vice versa in the Expatriate areas. If the area is of a mixed patronage then things get alot more confused and depends on if its a pack of dogs or one or two.
( Don't let the children out.) When I go for my runs of an evening I will pick up stones or sticks on the approach to certain areas because you know the dogs will pick on you because of your race. ( not being local)
 
Good boy!!

Dolpho has since been taken off active duty, but the department is standing behind him.
good!! glad to here It ..That's one cool dog!!
 
Wasn't there a news story a while back about someone who killed his dog 'cos he thought it was gay?
 
I used to have an alsation which wasn't keen on black people. I've no idea why as she certainly wasn't trained to be like that. I'd guess that she just wasn't used to them as she never really saw that many and she was perfectly ok with Asians.

Amusing tale. I was driving down the road with her sitting in the front seat when we drove past some people in fancy dress. One was dressed as a huge rabbit and the look of shock on her face was priceless. 'My god, did you see the size of that bunny!!!!'

Made me laugh but I suppose you had to be there. I once also inadvertantly terrified my cat with a huge pantomine cows head. It was ok while it was just sitting there but as soon as I put it on and walked around the room, the cat went mental.

I'm waffling now so I'll shut up.
 
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