Thursday 31 January 2008

It’s difficult to believe that the pet who greets you when you return home is actually a wolf in dog’s clothing. Now I mean no offence to those of you who treat their dogs like family and would rather spend the evening playing with him than go out for a drink, though such love is hard to find. Human beings and chimpanzees share 98 per cent of their genotype. But dogs and wolves are genetically almost indistinguishable, with the similarity being 99 per cent. Of course, there is a sea of difference when it comes to the behavioural pattern, where both have fundamental traits that make a wolf a wolf and a dog a dog. Much has been said about the companionship between dogs and humans. The prehistoric man and the vicious wolf have had tens of thousands of years of history between them. The wolf moved on with man in the evolutionary cycle, to produce fascinating results for us to see. It is amazing to see how physically-distinct-but-so-genetically-similar a Chihuahua and a Great Dane can be. But then, at the risk of sounding objective (everyday observation), I believe that a dog brought up in isolation from his canine folk is bound to retain his lupine instincts. Take the case of Boka, my ingrate cur, rescued from the streets two years ago and shunned from any social contact with other dogs. He is definitely a wolf in dog’s clothing. Now I don’t obviously mean it in the bad sense of the term. Lately, I’ve realised that the mutt just doesn’t bark. Something so true of wolves, who rarely ever bark. All his attempts at barking just produce a feeble “wuff” instead of the machine gun like ‘row row row’ we are so accustomed to hear from dogs. And when left alone, he starts howling, so much so that the neighbours now threaten to go to the cops if I don’t put an end to it. Now how do you explain it to them that the poor dog is just trying to call out to his pack members? Just like the wolves do when they want to signal something or need to pin-point their location in the jungles. Adding to my worries is the fact that the dog now thinks he’s risen to the rank of a pack-leader and doesn’t let me on the bed when I return from work. He probably wants to oust me from the den and usurp my role as the hunter-gatherer. But what's worrying us a great deal is that it's been happening every night now. It's almost like he gets into a tic and is torn between being ferocious and subservient. His deep guttural growls are interspersed with fleeting moments of nervous tail wagging, implying that he is aggressive by default, but will be considerate if I only speak to him softly. This is quite surprising because all his life, he has been extremely servile, even to the point of pissing in gratitude. So I’m on the lookout for a dog shrink. And if matters don’t take a turn for good, I might look up one for myself.