Dear General
When I go for a walk, I like to learn what has been going on, and, like every dog I know, scents are the first-, second- and third-best option, followed by hearing, and then finally, looking at stuff.
For some reason, my master either gets embarrassed or considers it unimportant when I linger near a bush, tree or patch of grass another hound has peed on and drags me away, which gets up my nose (so to speak).
What can I do about that?
Zac
Zeerust
Dear Zac
Short of biting his ankle, you might use your superior bulk to hold your station until you’re good and ready. He clearly has no idea what you’re up to.
Fortunately, I have been able to educate The Boss a little, although it has been a painful process for both of us.
I eventually convinced him that another dog’s urine tells a story, like those he reads in the paper every day — except it is like reading all the stories in that day’s paper, plus the classifieds.
It tells us whether it was a male or a female, a bitch in heat and how old it was — and a lot about its state of health and its personality. It tells us if it’s an aggressive sort, perhaps an aspiring top dog marking out territory — or a nervous, timid little thing too scared to take a proper pee.
The fact is, Zac, humans have no concept of how smart we are: it can dawn on them now and then but they regard it as an aberration and forget about it — but it’s something we’ve been living with for 14,000 years.
The Boss likes telling me about more aberrations he’s discovered. The other day, it was from a story psychologist Stanley Coren wrote about Babu, a 12-year-old shih tzu living in Miyako, Japan.
Babu was getting old and lazy, but on March 11, 2011, she suddenly insisted on her 83-year-old owner, Tami Akanuma, taking her for a walk, but Babu stubbornly refused to go the way Tami wanted to go.
Babu dragged Tami in the opposite direction of their usual walk, and when elderly Tami paused to catch her breath, Babu would look back and urge her mistress to walk faster until they reached a higher point on the hill.
Minutes later, Tami watched in horror as the lead wave in that monstrous tsunami struck, flattening the district where they lived and destroying Tami’s home with a swollen torrent of swirling, muddy water.
Zac, it’s similar to how St Bernards in Switzerland can hear the low-frequency sounds of a developing avalanche long before the humans think anything is wrong. Between you and me, we’re the last repository of true wisdom — but we’re unappreciated.
On the other hand, so long as they come home — and feed us — we’ll go on putting up with it. Woof!
