I am intrigued by the things my little labrynees does. I am always asking myself if he really did what I just saw him do. Sometimes I see him do things and I think he’s really smart. He understands mirrors. He will look at himself in the mirror, then see me in the mirror, and understands that I am beside him but will look at both of us in the mirror. When he first saw a mirror he sat in front of it for a while figuring everything out. I don’t know many dogs that actually sit calmly and don’t try to bark at the other dog in the mirror if they’re sitting for that long.
However, Bacio always does things that make me question his intelligence. Last night, I was sitting on the couch with some homemade bread and soup on the table and a napkin. I made the soup a little spicy…. Ok maybe a lotta spicy with some smoked yellow scorpion powder from www.knepperspeppers.com. Anyway the soup was so hot my nose was running. I used the napkin to clean myself up and finished my soup and most the bread. On the table sat half of piece of bread, a dirty napkin and a near empty bowl of soup with a piece of smoked sausage in it. Bacio comes up to me, acting like he wants to be pet, all wiggly and what not. I pet him and send him on his way, and he turns to the table… He sees the array of choices he can make to be a bad dog…. What does he do? He picks the dirty napkin. Of the sausage, the homemade bread, and the snot rag, the dog picked the least appetizing, and the only non-edible item on the table.
Oh Bacio.
Don’t worry, I didn’t let him eat the napkin, and I scolded him for taking things off the table. He’s had many more occurrences on both sides of the ‘I can’t believe you did that’ scale. I will always think he is on the smarter side, mostly because he watches soccer games and Bruce Lee movies with me. (Actually watches, not just lays next to me while I watch them). And also, he totally knows how to rock a toothpick.