Is there a way to disable the gesture tailgate. My Spaniel pup circles the car with the result that when I am reaching in the boot space to take the mat out or otherwise the top gate suddenly starts to drop down like an impending guillotine

I shouldn’t laugh, but I hadn’t thought of that

I forget that mine ever had the function. I use the tailgate several times everyday and can’t ever find a use for it 🙄

The answer is to turn off keyless entry.
I did it for security reasons but it has the advantage that when serving drinks from the tailgate, a dog running under the rear wing does not create disaster!

Unnecessary quote removed

The only way to temporarily stop it other than disabling the keyless entry is to keep the keys away from the rear tailgate / in the front of the vehicle - or put them inside the boot while it is open 2021 L405 Vogue SE 4.4 V8 DIESEL ~ #17

I was at the local shoot where I pick-up with my spaniels.
The shoot captain had laid out the lower tailgate of his RR with glasses of "sloegasm" (champagne and sloe gin) for the guns as they returned from the last drive.
One of my spaniels went under the rear panel on its way with me back to my truck.
The air turned blue as the tailgate flipped up, all the booze spilt and glasses broken.
Nobody had a clue what had happened, so I just sat in the truck with my flask of coffee and chuckled!