From the Files of Fortean Slips by D. Trull Enigma Editor dtrull@parascope.com George Carlin once did a stand-up routine about dogs having utterly no conception of the future. When they're playing frisbee or chowing down some Alpo, they think they're set for life -- the contentment of that moment will go on forever. Then when they're left home alone, they go into a blind panic: "Oh man. They're never coming back. Now I'm screwed." The return of a human, Carlin believes, comes as a complete surprise, which explains why dogs welcome their masters home with a detonation of slobberingly frenzied gratitude. Dr. Rupert Sheldrake disagrees with Carlin's canine psychoanalysis. A former director of biochemistry at Cambridge with a taste for the paranormal, Sheldrake believes that dogs are in fact intimately familiar with the future, because they have psychic powers. He has conducted a series of experiments on the seeming ability of pets to sense when their masters are about to come home. Sheldrake claims to have found some measure of psychic talent in a number of domesticated species, including cats, birds and snakes. But dogs, he believes, are the most clairvoyant pets of all. The most amazing subject of Sheldrake's study has been a mongrel terrier named Jaytee. The seven-year-old British wonderdog lives in Ramsbottom, Lancashire, with his owner Pam Smart. Years ago, Smart had been amused by Jaytee's habit of watching out the window for her every evening when she came home from work. Smart later lost her job and began coming home at irregular times, yet Jaytee appeared to persist in anticipating her arrival. Smart was convinced that her pooch possessed psychic abilities. She had heard about the studies of Dr. Sheldrake, an advocate of quasi-mystical science who believes in "morphic fields" that are generated by all living things. Smart contacted him about Jaytee, and Sheldrake agreed to investigate the dog's behavior in depth. Sheldrake mounted video cameras in Smart's home to record Jaytee's activity in her absence. He gave Smart a beeper and signaled her to return at random times. To eliminate the possibility that Jaytee had simply learned the sound of his master's automobile, she came home in a number of different cars, and by taxi and by bicycle. Over the course of 153 experiments, Sheldrake felt that Jaytee exhibited precognition of Smart's return in 80 percent of the cases. Sheldrake explains that Jaytee, like many dogs, is highly attuned to his owner's morphic field, and responds to that flowing energy as it draws close to him. He accounts for the 30 times Jaytee didn't predict the arrival by noting that during those tests, the dog was either sick or distracted by a neighborhood dog in heat. Presumably Fifi was generating a morphic field of a higher priority. The scientific community, as you might guess, is not quite ready to accept Sheldrake's tale of the telepathic terrier. In a bid to gain credibility, he brought in psychologists Richard Wiseman and Matthew Smith of Hertfordshire University as independent experts, and they attempted to replicate his tests. Their appraisal of Jaytee came out somewhat differently. "In three of the tests, there was no evidence that Jaytee knew the moment his owner began to return," Smith reported. "In the fourth, he did visit the window close to the time when she began to return. However, he visited the window at 13 or 14 other times." Doggone it. Personally, I ain't no scientist, but I've had a lot of dogs, and I don't think Sheldrake is barking up the wrong tree -- not completely. Peanut, my family's half-bulldog, half-Chihuahua, reliably goes buck wild the instant before my dad comes home. But I think that's because she can hear and smell with incredible acuity. It may simply be that we humans are such big, dumb, noisy, stinky animals, it's a cinch for canines to detect us a mile away. And we're so stupid, we can only think, "Damn, them dogs is psychic or somethin'!" But that's okay -- until they evolve an opposable paw for working a can opener, our place as the dominant species is entirely secure. Sources: The Times (London); The Electronic Telegraph (c) Copyright 1996 ParaScope, Inc.
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