Woof! : a horizon guide to dogs.

A Horizon special which looks at science and man's best friend, the dog. Narrated by Dallas Campbell, the documentary looks back over more than forty years of Horizon shows featuring dogs, from 1963 to the present. We begin by looking back at Erik Zimen's experiment to crossbreed wolves and poodles. One of the key areas of study across all the years is the connection between wolves and dogs. Are dogs merely domesticated wolves or have they evolved to become a different species entirely? Some of a dog's more puzzling traits today can be traced to their wild origins: shaking objects, howling, licking others' mouths, growling and snarling. A 1950s experiment to domesticate the silver fox is still on-going and now, a few generations later, Dr Lyudmila Trut describes the results achieved so far. It would seem that by choosing the tamest versions of the wolf we have produced the dog. We hear about different kinds of trained dogs working in tune with humans - from sheep herders to dogs sent into outer space. However, human selection has had a huge impact on the appearance of different dogs leading some extremes of breeding to be outlawed as cruel. Pedigree dog shows, Crufts in particular, came under fire and were eventually banned by the BCC for this reason. We hear about the health benefits of having dogs around as well as research looking at the sophistication of a dog's communication. Conversely, negative sides of our relationship to dogs appear not only as animal abuse but also in overindulgence. The resulting bad and aggressive behaviour of dogs led to the advent of dog training classes, such as those run by Barbara Woodhouse which was based on a dominant wolf pack theory. Latest research shows that wolf packs are formed, not by dominance, but by family ties andindividuals rewarded by love and affection. All in all, the programme concludes, dogs shouldn't be treated as either wolves or people but as dogs, a new type of animal entirely.