Mensa puppy

Lloyd's been telling me--over and over and over--how smart dogs are. "They're much smarter than cats, which are smarter than a rock..or maybe a wood chip," he'll say. He knows which buttons to push: the insult Barb's cats button never fails to get a rise out of me.

Last week Lloyd was out of town, so Dieter and I spent some quality time together. One night we were in the family room and I said "Dieter, why don't you go and find your squirrel toy." It's a flat, cloth toy he can shake and savage to his heart's content. Oh, and it squeaks, too.

Dieter's Skverral

I thought a squirrel would be a funny dog toy to get for a German Shepherd, as I remember an episode of "Top Gear" where the presenter claims that Germans can't pronounce the word "squirrel." It comes out sounding like: skverrel or skweeral or skwörl or some such word mangling. Linguists have some confusing explanation as to why "squirrel" causes Germans such problems. It has something to do with the word's syllable structure.

So we sometimes tell  Dieter to "get your skverral," We kill ourselves, we're so funny. Anyway, I asked him to get the stuffed rodent and he stood up, walked across the room, picked up the squirrel, and brought it to me. I think my jaw dropped. And I got goose bumps, too, as I saw how smart Dieter is. He got the squirrel toy a second time when I asked him, so I'm pretty sure it was no fluke.He understands. A lot of things!

As you might have guessed by reading my blog, I love to research stuff, so I started looking up information about dogs' vocabulary capabilities. I found an article, from 2009, on CNN.com/living that says that dogs, on average, understand about 165 words, including signs, signals and gestures, and can can count, reason, and recognize words and gestures on par with a two-year-old human. The rocket scientists of dogdom in terms of intelligence are Border Collies, Poodles, Retrievers, German Shepherds, and Doberman Pinschers. In case you're dying to know, at the other end of the dog intelligence scale, bringing up the rear, are the Borzoi, Chow Chow, Bulldog, Basenji, and the Afghan Hound.

So, I'm not sure if Dieter will ever be able to pronounce squirrel properly, but he certainly recognizes (and loves) his squirrel toy. I think he's also made the connection between the toy and those "bushy tailed rats" that sit on our deck and eat sunflower seeds. Dieter gets all intent when he sees one of those little rascals. Luckily for me, he hasn't attempted to chase any of them. Yet.

Time will tell.

Hey, Dieter, I see you!