Guide dogs chosen by smart tug toys

摘要

SOME dogs have jobs and others are pampered pets, but how can you tell which are suited to a life of hard graft? The answer may be smart toys, and they could stop us wasting time and money on attempting to train dogs that will never make the grade. In the US, 60 per cent of dogs that start guide dog training never finish it. The process is arduous, taking two years to complete and costs about $50,000 per dog. To try to predict which dogs will succeed, a team at the Georgia Institute of Technology developed a sensor-filled ball and tug toy, which a training centre has used with a new cohort of 40 dogs.