Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
canines than between same-sex pairs. That made sense. Even socially challenged Solo would
ultimately start to show off for female dogs, cavorting goofily, rather than bristling. That was
my hope: more romp and less hackle.
How, though, could I assess which female puppy to get?
Of course, I fell back on research. I found a great deal of work on “whorls”—those
mathematically inevitable spots where hairs converge and then wheel one way or the other.
Cowlicks. Temple Grandin's early work in cattle-hair whorls showed that the direction and
position of the hair swirls on a steer's forehead helped predict whether he was calm or fearful.
Australian veterinary researcher Lisa Tomkins went to town based on that work. She as-
sessed 115 future guide dogs, looking at their whorls and their paw preferences. Then she
followed their progress. Puppies who preferred to use their right paws over their left were
twice as likely to pass guide-dog school. Puppies with counterclockwise chest-fur whorls were
more than twice as likely to succeed than those with clockwise chest whorls. Tomkins and her
fellow researchers noted that it appeared to be linked with the whole left-brain/right-brain
crossover. I already knew Solo preferred to use his right paw to snake toys out from under the
sideboard if he couldn't use his mouth. I looked at his chest with some trepidation; at first
all I could see was an undifferentiated mass of fur, but as I parted the fur and moved farther
down his chest, just before he leaped up, frustrated by my nonsense, I saw one small cowlick
moving in reverse. Thank God.
I could hardly wait to tell Mike and Steve how they could save police K9 units time and
money on shipping dogs in from Europe to assess. As a first order of business, all they had
to do was obtain full frontals of potential patrol dogs' chests and hope that the brokers didn't
know enough about the research to flip some photos to ensure that all the dogs had coun-
terclockwise patterns. Oh, and Mike and Steve could ask the brokers if they wouldn't mind
giving the dogs Kongs filled with frozen treats to see which paw a dog used to hold down the
Kong and remove the treats. It was even possible that a female or two might pass that test.
I could envision my and David's arrival at Kathy Holbert's hilltop kennel. I would have
my checklist in one hand, a food-stuffed Kong in the other. Here's what we need: one fe-
male German shepherd puppy with a counterclockwise chest whorl and another ideally on
her right elbow, and a strong right-paw preference. Along with everything else: high drive,
high sociability, great health. And a sense of humor. Hope that's not too tall an order?
• • •
The pups were born in early September, before the leaves of the huge sycamores started to
turn yellow in the mountains of Barbour County, West Virginia. Their father was such a dark
sable that anyone would have called him black, though he had traces of dark velvet brown
on his chest and belly. My lookism returned momentarily, although I tried to tamp it down.
