For the last 11 years, I’ve owned a Yorkshire Terrier named
Link. This is (a very blurry picture of) Link:
(And yes, for those of you who are wondering, I named him
after the protagonist in the Legend of Zelda series. I was nine and a bit obsessed. And yes, his name is still awesome.)
Everyone has the tendency to believe that their dog is
smarter than they probably are. It’s
possible I’m guilty of this too, but Link always struck me as a pretty smart
dog, or at least a fast learner. When we
first got him, he would always try to dash out the door whenever we tried to
leave. We initially got around his
attempts to escape by throwing a toy in the opposite direction. He’d get distracted and run after the toy,
after which we’d quickly exit and close the door behind ourselves. That only worked twice: he quickly caught on,
and we had to devise new methods of getting him to stay inside.
Also, he learned very quickly that the word “outside”
indicated that we were going to take him for a run. Any time we said it in conversation, his ears
would perk up, and he’d head for the door.
We tried to get around that by spelling the word out, but after a little
while, he figured that out as well. Now,
everyone in my family is careful to not mention the word around him unless they
want to deal with a hyperactive dog for the next few minutes.
And now, even at age 11, he still shows a propensity for
figuring out our habits—especially those that predict when he gets food.
I agree Link is an awesome name for a dog ha. Also, my dog gets really excited anytime we open the door or mention"outside". Kind of funny how a lot of dogs pick up on that.
ReplyDeleteThat's incredible how your dog can even pick up on the spelling of the word outside. Unfortunately (but fortunately in this case) my dog wasn't the brightest and never learned any words, which also included simple commands like sit and shake.
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