Is anyones canine this clever???

by sharreem Mon Jul 20, 2009 5:45 am

anyone's canine that clever?

September 21 | Damian Bathersby
Don’t you just love smart pet stories?
The cute little puppy dog saves a busload of nuns and orphans from plunging over a cliff by pushing the unconscious driver out of his seat and steering the runaway vehicle over the timber bridge he single-handedly built with his bare teeth just in the nick of time.
Then he bandages their injuries, counsels the traumatised kiddies and has everyone home in time for dinner.
Lassie has a lot to answer for!
Seriously. I reckon pets are great but let’s not give them more credit than they deserve.
Ever since I saw Skippy dial 000 to get help for Sonny (there may have been nuns and orphans involved there too), I’ve been a bit of a cynic.
I was only young but I knew a fake when I saw one.
It wasn’t really Skippy dialling the number, you know. Just a fake kangaroo forearm.
You can buy them as backscratchers in all the best souvenir shops.
So you can imagine my reaction to news of a German shepherd named Buddy who saved his owner’s life by calling the emergency dispatcher in America when the man had a seizure.
Uh-huh.
Dialled 911 all by himself, apparently.
On a recording of the call to the 911 emergency number, Buddy is heard whimpering and barking.
“Hello, this is 911. Hello ... can you hear me? Is there somebody there you can give the phone to?” says the dispatcher.
Police were sent to the home and after about three minutes Buddy was heard barking loudly when the officers arrived.
“It’s pretty incredible,” a local cop said. “Even the veteran dispatchers haven’t heard of anything like this.”
I’m all for happy endings but let me get this straight.
Buddy saw his owner in trouble, put down the crossword puzzle he was doing, stubbed out his cigar, wandered over to the phone and dialled 911.
So, how did he dial it?
Did he hook his little toenail into the dialler or was it one of those push-button jobs so he could thump it with his paw?
Just as well his owner didn’t have a mobile phone – he would have had all sorts of trouble using those tiny little buttons.
Call me a cynic but I know there’s a lot of you out there, dog owners included, who are pausing with a spoonful of cereal halfway to your mouth and thinking: “Damian is right. I’ve never seen my dog do anything that smart. He doesn’t even clean up his own mess when we’re out walking.”
We always had a dog when we were growing up.
They were usually labradors – happy-go-lucky sort of fellas who were completely untrainable and just liked to lie around scratching themselves.
Not unlike me, when you think about it.
Probably the smartest thing any of them did was the time one of them turned up with a freshly cooked chicken in his mouth.
Someone was obviously missing their Sunday lunch but we never found out who.
And then there was the time Santa Claus was doing the rounds in the back of a van with its sliding door open, ringing his bell so all the little kiddies could run out and get presents.
But when he got to the Bathersby house he was greeted by the sight of a bloody huge labrador, apparently upset by the sound of the bell he was ringing, bounding towards the open door and barking like a mad dog.
The door slammed shut and the van took off, leaving a trail of crying kids calling out: “Santa, come back. We love you Santa.”
Heartbreaking stuff.
And then there was the great Dane the size of a small horse who would hear Mr Whippy coming and stand in the middle of the street so the van couldn’t get past until he was given an ice-cream.
So while I’ve met some dogs which weren’t completely stupid, I never saw any of them use the phone.
Except to order pizzas.
But I had to teach them that.
Only Skippy would be smart enough to do that without any training.