I’m a big dog fan. That’s meant both ways it can be read. I was bought up with Irish Wolfhounds, a modern day Romulus or Remus, although I was suckled by the bottle, not by Liffy, our brindle bitch. So, wherever I am in the world, be it on the common land of my home town in the UK, or the streets of Kiev, I take an interest in them. Pedigree pooches or stray scruffs, they all have their various traits and characters, and I love to observe them. Admitedly, I’m more likely to stroke a Bassett Hound on a lead gallumphing down the street with its equally jowly and sad-eyed owner than a 25 kilo stray rooting and rumaging through a bin, but they all appeal.
I’m not a person who replaces human interaction with canine socialising, but the easy company of a bright dog beats the labourious company of a dull person any day. And a lot of dogs are bright. Our domestic relationships with them are ancient and varied. We press them into faithful service - as partners in the hunt, our quarry is caught and both species’ bellies filled; working as equals alongside us as olofactory dectectives extraordinaire; hearing dogs that alert the deaf to everyday moments and emergencies alike. But the working dogs that make me wonder, that inspire me (and the thousands of people that donate to the cost of training the creatures) are seeing dogs, or guide dogs for the blind. The range of skills that they master and then perform day in, day out, for those they work with (not for, it is a partnership of equality), is awesome. And the skills that we mostly witness, are those undertaken whilst the pairing are in public, and that is most often demonstrated by crossing the road.
I’m loathe to claim Kiev has the brightest stray dogs in the world, I’ve not been to enough cities, and there are scamps and Tramps in all. But, when it comes to crossing the road, I have found myself staring in slack-jawed wonder, and then chuckling in admiration, at the road-sense the Roaming Rovers display. What I first took to be an anomaly, I have soon realised that, here in Kiev at least, is par for the course. And this is the thing. Dogs are intelligent creatures. Sure, they can be stupid, dumb and idiotic, but Darwinism illustrates that on the street especially, only the most adaptable survive. Now in, say Mississippi, this survival of the fittest is probably best witnessed by watching the phenomenon that is a middle-aged lady, probably called Mary-Jo, in a sequined orange cowboy outfit, displaying her dancing skills (the outfit may well have been first used during a Line Dancing phase) alongside a collie, lets call him Prince Elvis II, clearly infatuated with the reward he gets for jumps, rolls, backflips and bipedal dispays of walking. The reward is the food, the praise. Although this is impressive, it does strike me as a corruption in the dog’s intelligence and its response to a very human world, one far from nature. And the relationship between dog and handler seems, well, a little too close at times!
But to witness the short-legged, barrel-bodied mongrel crossing the road on Artema, as I did last week, is to witness a dog’s intelligence without direct human training. This atttractive little fellow (I’m a sucker for a cross breed, although not in the way I reckon Mary-Jo may be for a collie), was attempting to persuade a bitch of the proportions and looks of German Shepherd (she didn’t present, nor did I ask for, her pedigree papers) to “do it like they do on the Discovery Channel” in the words of the aptly named Bloodhound Gang’s awful song of a few years back. They were by what resmebles a filled-in swimming pool, complete with diving board. After a promising start, she decided against the proposition (I saw her again the other day, with two pups, so she was probably just family planning – like I said, they’re clever, these Ukrainian dogs). Not believing her potential suitor would respect the straightforward “up and leave” approach, she got fairly angry, and Barrel Body came to realise that this was a coupling not to be. Still, he wasn’t going to leave without his say, or bark, and the scrap headed in my direction. I’m not keen on any domestic situation, so I stopped and watched, lest the confrontation cross my path. Over as quickly as it began, Barrel Body trotted along the sidewalk to the nearby pedestrian crossing. He stopped, looked both ways and then, as the green light signalled the correct time, he walked assuredly across, looking both ways at the waiting traffic as he did. Surely this was a mere coincidence?
But I have witnessed it since. In a taxi just last night, two strays crossed at the same time as the assembled people, seemingly deep in the sort of animated and amusing conversation that teenaged girls have, and just as incomprehensible to me.
And what do I find most amazing about this? As an Englishman, still unused to the traffic driving on the opposite side of the road, these dogs all have a better chance of getting to the other side without incident. More often than not, I end up dancing through Hummers and Lada’s as if my name is Prince Elvis II.