Does your dog speak to you?

Most dog owners know that their pets "tell" them about their needs.  I want a drink or some food, go for a walk and so on.
 Now two researchers from Salford University have been receiving lots of media attention from all over the world, having published the results of a study which showed that there is a distinct dog "language" .  Sean O'Hara and Hannah Worsley ¹ conducted research with 37 owners and their animals where they video recorded hours of footage which on analysis showed clearly that dogs communicate with their owners  through  behavior  and signs which have a specific meaning and are intended to get a particular  response. Many reporters have interpreted this as a kind of sign language.

Sean and Hannah visited London recently to be interviewed by Sarah Vine, a Mail columnist who wrote quite a long piece on the subject.


Admittedly most of the piece was about Sarah Vine and her own dogs, but interesting nonetheless.

The Salford research was carried out in the North West of England and it would be interesting to know if the same results would be found in other parts of the country.
The North East , for instance.  We all know that folk on Tyneside speak English which is unintelligible to people from elsewhere. What about their dogs? Does a Newcastle whippet understand Geordie and respond with two fingers instead of a paw? Then down in the West Country there is a different English again.  Further research is required..

And its a pity about Brexit.  It would have been a further area of research to discover what kind of Gallic gestures those French poodles use when asking for the garlic bread.

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1 Worsley, HK & O'Hara, SJ (2018) Cross-species referential signalling events in domestic dogs (Canis familiaris). Animal Cognition, 21(4): 457-465. ^↩

Have you made a will?

How many  people  leave  it too late to make a will?

A distant relative, James heron when writing his testament in 1825 started by saying "I Consider it to be every mans duty in his own lifetime to settle his affairs in such a manner as to prevent all disputes after his death....."
He  then went on to leave all his estate to his only son, also James.  He survived for a few more years and in the meantime son James was apprenticed as a solicitor and became a member of the Society of Writers to the Signet,
Inheriting some nine thousand pounds James decided not to work anymore  especially when he later inherited the estate of his uncle, William Heron a substantial addition to his coffers.   Time slipped by, as it does, James lived the high life and did not think he was going to die.  He did, of course, but earlier than he anticipated so  had not had time to either marry or make a will.  Ironic that a man with legal training should die at the age of thirty eight and had not made a will.

The result of dying intestate was that his elderly aunt, Elizabeth McKie, as his next of kin, inherited everything.  According to the legal records, she was too aged and infirm to even write her own name so she quickly disposed of much it,  giving the Dalmore house and estate to her brother William in trust for his daughter.  She also gave railway shares to her neice,  Helen which enabled Helen's husband to retire from his bakery. 

Doubtful if this how young James would have disposed of his goods,  etc  had he got round to making a will.

So the moral of this story is, if you want to decide who gets all your goods and chattels then make a will.