My dog is obsessed with stalking squirrels, rabbits, lizards, and other small game. (She almost never catches them, but she loves to stalk them.)
On the other hand, she isn’t all that good at noticing prey that isn’t moving. So I try to help her out by pointing at them.
Some dogs, I am told, understand pointing, but my dog isn’t one of them. She just stares at my finger. Even if I try to position my finger two feet in front of her eyes in a direct line of sight with the squirrel, she’ll just focus two feet away.
But plenty of people claim their dogs are much smarter than that.
So why not create a new breed that almost always has the instinct to look in the direction of where you are pointing?
You could call it the pointee breed in contrast to the pointer.
In general, people don’t seem as good at breeding useful traits in dogs as in the 19th Century. I suspect in Victorian England, a rare culture in which the richest and best educated tended to live in the country (at least most of the year), the best parts of society (e.g., Charles Darwin’s friends) were obsessed with animal breeding for function.
Today, in contrast, most dog breeding seems more for show and dog breeders are not as serious, effectual personalities on average as back then. Granted, I’m mostly extrapolating wildly from the memorable characters in the Christopher Guest mockumentary Best in Show.
Competent retriever’s routinely obey hand signals at considerable distances. When the handler extends his arm, the dog will typically look in that direction before heading that way in response to the “over” command. Talented pups pick this up amazingly fast. I’ve messed with hunting dogs most of my life. As a young man, I believed good hunting dogs were about half nature and half nurture. As an old man, I’m convinced it’s about 80 percent nature.
Same with my cat.