How “Intelligent” Are Our Dogs… Really?

Imagine watching a Big Headline News story blaring the “shocking” news that scientists have discovered that dogs can tell the difference between red lights and green lights. Whoa, you might think, you guys believed they were red-green color blind? How did you make this earth-shattering discovery, the CNN interviewer innocently asks…

“Vell,” the white-haired egghead in the lab coat begins in his thick Austrian accent, “ve taught zem how to drive, and found zey stopped at all ze red lights while proceeding through all ze green lights!”

It’s the cognitive dissonance that makes a joke like this funny. But wait! There’s more, and no, it’s NOT a joke!

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Uncle Bob and Grandma’s Thanksgiving Turkey

As we’re all preparing to chow down on Thanksgiving Dinner, I’ll just offer another story about our beloved Uncle Bob the Giant Mutant Mountain Poodle that is in keeping with the season.

I have previously posted about Bob’s death, his unfortunate demise of systemic cancer when he was only 8 years old. He had by then become so much a part of our family that we tried everything we could afford to try when the vet said his condition could be treated. That meant chemo-for-dogs, and the results weren’t very pretty.

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Thanksgiving Dinner Fit for a Poodle!

Thanksgiving is a great holiday, always a major Big Deal here on the mountain. That all started decades ago when we lived in Oklahoma, and signed on as the communications directors for a grant-based hunger project called “The Whole World Family Supper” that was scheduled to be a Thanksgiving feast for everybody, everywhere.

All of a sudden our little family gatherings just weren’t enough anymore. By the time we’d moved to Florida and became full time performers - with a friends list that included circus folk, traveling medicine shows and all sorts of other itinerant musicians and crusty jugglers - Thanksgiving became an annual pilgrimage to a St. Augustine boatyard an ex-Air Force friend managed. Price of admission was at least one homeless person or otherwise destitute person, and it got bigger every year. By the time we moved to North Carolina the boatyard Thanksgiving feast (a pot-luck affair) offered 4 turkeys and two hams pit-cooked by our host, at least 60 people, and stretched out with leftovers for the entire 4-day holiday weekend.

Now that we’re here on the mountain it’s still a Big Deal. We average at least 24 people every year, which is a heck of a crowd to host in a 28′ square cabin complete with dogs. And we often have 7 or 8 dog guests too, friends of our poods and strays, part of our many friends and family’s families. They get Thanksgiving Dinner too. It is a family supper, after all, and dogs are family.

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“Go Fetch Gramps, Timmy’s In The Well!”

It it just “tricks” or is it real skill?

We “dog-people” have known for awhile that television’s classic “Lassie” was a series of purebred collies (mostly male), trained to do all the tricks dramatized in the long-running series and its spin-offs from the 1950s to the 1970s.

We “Poodle-People” are used to dealing with a particular breed of dog that is so famous for its intelligence and desire to perform that many people on the street see a poodle and think “Circus Dog.” Performer. Actor. “Trick” dog.

I found a great web page this week entitled What is a Trick? written by standard poodle owner and dog trainer Charlene Dunlap. It examines the question of whether what poodles can be trained to do qualifies as actual learned skill, or just “tricks.”

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The Flying Poodle and the Bear

Her AKC registration name was “Kenya Queen Reba Amelia E.” She’s the only giant mutant mountain poodle… er, Imperial-size standard that we ever actually bought. Got her as a black hairball puppy from a couple whose actual business was to breed English Bulldogs in Savannah. The mama was their house pet, an impressive black. Paid $550 for her, had our pick of a litter of 6.

We’d answered an ad for the puppies, checked first to see if there were any close relatives or cousins in her bloodline and Uncle Bob’s. We wanted them to be a pair, and they were quite the pair. Though they never managed to have any pups of their own.

The naming of Kenya was quite the ordeal in a family with strong opinions and favorites. My husband wanted to name her “Queenie,” but only because his parents never let him name one of their dogs Queenie, and he thought it was a great dog name. I thought it was right up there with “Rover” or “Fido” - awful.

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