Doggone it, I now know why dogs hate postmen

I HAVE a dog. He’s a playful, good-natured mutt of dubious ancestry, probably involving a liaison between a pointer and a spaniel. He does have one vice: a deep hatred of postmen. I met our postman the other day and apologised for the dog’s unwelcoming reception every time he made a delivery.

He said not to worry — he was used to it: all the dogs on his round hated him. The mystery of why dogs hate postmen may not be the most pressing scientific question of our generation, but it is intriguing.

The first thing you do when you’re trying to solve a scientific problem is to check the literature. There’s not a lot out there, but I did come up with a couple of suggestions. One was that dogs dislike people in uniforms. This is an unsatisfactory explanation. First, nowadays postmen, at least in rural Ireland, seldom wear uniforms. Then, we are also left with the questions of why dogs dislike uniforms and how they can tell what a uniform is?