January 17, 2003
View From Lodi, CA: The LOT of Springer Spaniels
By
Joe Guzzardi
Long-time readers of this space have been asking me
why so much time has passed since I last wrote about my
dogs.
I tell them that during the last two years I have
lost four of my closest four-legged dog pals and two
great cats.
I’ve often started a column about the dogs and cats.
But I’ve never been able to get very far.
Each was either a stray that wandered in or one that
I picked up from a local shelter. They went everywhere,
did everything and had long, wonderful lives. I loved
them all equally. Their unique but predictable
personality quirks were a daily source of joy.
One of my dogs Howie, a Springer Spaniel, was a
well-known personality around Lodi. He sat in the
passenger seat of my Jeep, and over his sixteen years
developed a strong following around town.
Howie was most admired at the irrigation canal where
his acrobatic feats catching a tennis ball were the
stuff of legend. His fans called him “Air Howie.”
No matter whether I threw the ball, Howie caught it.
All the tosses—low and straight or high and arching—were
easy catches. Whether Howie needed to swerve, turn,
accelerate or apply the brakes, the inevitable catch was
a foregone conclusion.
For an encore, I would throw the ball over the tulles
where it would disappear from sight for a few seconds.
Howie timed his leap, soared into the air and
re-appeared with the ball in the clutches of his jaw.
“Howie is unbelievable. He’s an artist, a virtual
Willie Mays,” I would say to anyone within ear shot.
No one ever argued.
And now, I have proof positive that Howie was indeed
a genius. Howie had a built-in grasp of arithmetic and
physics that enabled him to navigate successfully
underneath any ball in flight.
According to Arizona State research scientist Dr.
Dennis M. Schaffer (and his trusty Springer spaniel
Romeo), dogs and baseball outfielders use the same
instinctive and unconscious mathematical calculations to
catch objects hurling through the air.
Schaffer calls his theory
“LOT” -- Linear Optical Trajectory. Dogs like Howie
make an image in their brain of the moving target and
perform the split-second calculations required to catch
up with the ball.
If the ball changes course in mid-air, as it often
did as when I threw it into a strong wind or rain, dogs
will simply re-set their navigational course and
proceed.
At a presentation in Orlando to the
Psychonomics Society, the Arizona State researchers
demonstrated that dogs use one straight-line trajectory
to track the object in flight from the thrower’s hand to
the point where it curved off course.
Once the original flight path changed, dogs rely on a
second straight-line trajectory from the turning point
to the landing place.
Dr. Shaffer concluded “both dogs and humans seem to
have the innate ability to track an object flying
through three-dimensional space by using information in
the two-dimensional image on their retina.”
Now I know what accounted for Howie’s great
ball-hawking skills.
LOT is all well and good. But I would like some input
from Arizona State on some lingering questions I have
about my dog pals:
