Dogs succeed while chimps fail at following finger pointing
Ever since we watched Inside the Mind of a Dog, Sparky has been telling everyone that he’s smarter than a monkey because they said that dogs understand human pointing, and primates don’t.
There are times when I suspect that Sparky is stretching the truth. To start the new year off right, I challenged Sparky to demonstrate that he understands human pointing. It took some training, but he is getting the idea.
We just watched Lord of the Rings, and Sparky thought Gollum made a good case for eating raw fish and rabbits. Sparky wanted to post a picture as Sh-beagle.
Sparky wants me to feel better, so thinks I should lick his paw a bunch of times. He says that usually helps him.
We tried Search and Rescue again today, and it didn’t go the way I expected.
To foster Sparky’s intellectual development, we started a new training exercise. It’s really just hide-and-seek, but Sparky likes it better if we call it search-and-rescue. He wants me to get him an orange vest that says, “RESCUE DOG”. I reminded him that dogs can’t see the color orange, but he doesn’t care.
This time, I thought Sparky’s argument was really weak, and I had some complaints of my own.
Sparky wants to know why I just automatically assume that I got the cold from him. I have been out to all sorts of places, and he just stays home for no reason. So I probably got the cold and got Sparky sick.
Sparky is offended by the assumption that I got my cold from him.
Oh yeah, he finally got out of bed around noon. That gave me time to consider adapting my cold mitigation protocol for him.
I don’t even know if that’s possible, but with viruses, something isn’t possible until it happens, or everything is possible all the time.
I should be at Costco or Planet Fitness right now, but since I usually wake up around 7 am, an early afternoon nap seemed like a good idea. Being a well-mannered pup, Sparky waits for an invitation to hop up on the couch. He is far too cute not to be invited up.
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