Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home by Rupert Sheldrake

Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home by Rupert Sheldrake

Author:Rupert Sheldrake [Sheldrake, Rupert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-88846-4
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2011-04-25T16:00:00+00:00


For every case like this that is reported in the newspapers, dozens must remain unpublicized. On our database we have ninety-five unpublished stories of homing dogs and sixty-one of homing cats. Some of these animals were abandoned or lost when they were away from home, but most were taken to live in a new home and later found their way back to their old one.

Nearly all of these animals were transported to the new place rather than walking there by themselves. They would therefore have been unable to note the smells, landmarks, or other details of the route. Most of the outward journeys were by car, but some were by bus or train, and one was by boat along Lake Zurich. Some animals were taken by indirect routes, but most of those who were spotted on their journey back were heading straight home, not following the route by which they had been taken. In any case, a dog or cat that tried to follow the roads or railway lines along which it had been carried on the outward journey would soon be squashed. Somehow the animals knew in what direction their home lay, even when they were in a place they had never been to before and to which they had been taken by an indirect route.

The clearest evidence that the animals’ sense of direction does not depend on memorizing smells along the route, or other details of the outward journey, comes from cases where the animal was transported by airplane. During the Vietnam War, scout dogs used by U.S. troops were taken by helicopter to the war zones. One such dog, Troubles, was airlifted with his handler, William Richardson, into the jungle to support a patrol ten miles away. Richardson was wounded by enemy fire, and was airlifted to a hospital; the other members of the patrol simply abandoned the dog. Three weeks later Troubles was found back at his home at the First Air Cavalry Division Headquarters in An Khe. Tired and emaciated, he would not let anyone near him. He searched the tents until he found Richardson’s belongings, then curled up and went to sleep.3

Another dog that could not have homed by following familiar smells along the route is Todd, a Labrador who fell overboard from his owner’s yacht a mile off the coast of the Isle of Wight, in the English Channel. He was given up for dead by his owner after a four-hour search. But Todd was swimming across the Solent, the strait separating the Isle of Wight from the mainland. He swam at least ten miles, first across the choppy sea and then up the Beaulieu River, landing near his home. He had not attempted to reach the nearest land, on the Isle of Wight, a mile from where he fell into the sea, but instead headed homeward.4

Although most pet owners are astonished by the unsuspected homing powers of their animals, shepherds and other owners of working dogs are often well aware of this capacity.



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