I was immediately drawn to his face. This is a dog with the face of a wise human. I see a man in Jack’s face but it doesn’t have to be a man. There’s just wisdom in there, behind the eyes. We don’t know what he’s thinking. But his human caregiver, Teodora Greywoolf (which must be an online username) states that she has lived with him for seven years. Throughout that time, she has learned to trust him because on several occasions he’s been right about potential dangers.
She provides a nice example of how Jack protects her. She was involved in a road rage incident in a rough part of the city where she lives. Jack was sleeping in the back of her truck. But he woke up sensing danger and moved to her side in the passenger seat. He sat there in the upright position and was taller than her as she sat in the driver’s seat. A guy was walking towards the car with a baseball bat. That, I presume, was the sign of possible danger (to say the least by the sound of it). She turned to Jack and could see that his expression had changed. Jack just stared at the man who turned around quickly and went back to his car. She said “Good decision, mate. Problem solved.”
I’m sure that dog owners will recognise this canine sensitivity to events and body language. Apparently, there have been studies showing how dogs do indeed look after their humans in watching out for behavioural clues which guides them as to how to react under different situations and circumstances. Pet cats also react in a similar way sometimes. Dogs are very good at reading human body language. For example, when a human feels uneasy about somebody else within their vicinity, their body language changes in terms of posture, tone of voice and their gaze. In judging these human body language signals, they can decide whether something is wrong.
She charmingly states that “his default mode is sceptical”. She writes that he is not “overly friendly”. But neither is he hostile. He is very gentle with small kids and on one occasion he adored a “random guy”. There appeared to be no reasons for it. And he trusts females more than males which figures because he was raised by Teodora.
She says that he observes other people who interacts with her and her child. He is displeased when someone doesn’t respect personal space. And he checks on her. She says that he looks “through her” to see if she is at ease or not.
If in his assessment his human caregiver is not at ease he slowly walks away and then looks back to see if she follows him. She believes that this is a way for him to confirm that she is not feeling at ease. She does not know the clues she gives off and how he reads them.
It is the picture of this beautiful, handsome dog with the knowing face that makes everything she says about him believable. He probably protects her and is able to sense her emotional state. And as she said, he can sense danger when it presents itself.
Reqs a black Labrador fire service dog who recently retired with an OBE
National Crime Agency trained dogs to sniff the rubber of dinghies smuggled across the border between Bulgaria and Turkey
