Dog and I by Roy Macgregor

fairly well. A nine-year-old mutt, for example, is much the same as a sixty-three-year-old human mongrel. A fifteen-year-old pooch is very much a centenarian with teeth and bladder problems. It falls apart, however, when trying to figure out puppies.
    The current subject—the one sleeping in the corner over there with all four paws in the air—will be closing in on a year some time before Christmas. The date is inexact, as might be expected of a mutt of uncertain lineage that a mischievous daughter found in a distant Humane Society. But if we guess ten or eleven months, then this creature named Willow, by the accepted measure, should be roughly kindergarten level.
    I don’t think so. For one thing, she is too stupid. For another thing, she is too smart.
    The seven-for-one math simply does not work in the first year of a dog’s life. What human, for example, can walk at two weeks? What human can chew, and partly digest, a shoe at four weeks? What human has ever been known to run away at eight weeks? Find me the human baby who can swim across a bay at six months, let alone a beginning toddler who can chase a car halfway to work at ten months. Show me the child, please, who is house-trained at seven months—well, partly housetrained, anyway.
    Then again, we do not—at least I hope not—see a six-month-old baby insisting on hanging about the house with a dirty sock in her mouth. We do not find an infant demanding cat food instead of the food intended for her. We do not see toddlers taking apart, stitch by stitch, every toy they are ever shown to chomp down and burst the plastic squeaker inside.
    It is a difficult measure, admittedly, but I think there is a simple solution: triple the rule of thumb for the first year and, if the dog reaches fifteen, forget even trying and just start treating every extra year as an extra year. By this methodology, it is safe to conclude that the brown and white creature sighing in the corner is a … teenager. Certainly, the signs are irrefutable:
    â€¢Â Â Gets up, eats, goes back to sleep, gets up, goes out, comes in, eats, sleeps, whines if can’t go out in evening, eats, sleeps.
    â€¢Â Â Never picks up after herself. There are mismatched socks everywhere, including one in her mouth. There are chewed balls, destroyed squeaky toys, pull toys, animal toys strewn everywhere. If you place them neatly back in her toy box, she spends fifteen minutes hauling them out and placing them, randomly, where they are most likely to be in the way.
    â€¢Â Â Totally, one hundred percent self-absorbed. It is all “me … me … ME! ” all the time. She wants fed, wants out, wants in, wants petted, wants someone to play with her, wants on the bed, wants on the furniture, wants in the refrigerator, wants the cats’ food, wants the humans’ food, wants to roll in whatever she can find—dead squirrel, crushed groundhog, rotted bird carcass.…
    â€¢Â Â Single-minded. If you have seen a teenage human hypnotized, transfixed, and obsessed with a video game, you will have some sense—some very small sense—of what it’s like to see a dog willing to chase a ball or stick much longer than the human arm can throw.
    â€¢Â Â Megalomania. What does it tell you when a dog stops and looks around the field if she happens to catch a thrown ball on the first bounce? What does it tell you when a dog insists on walking through the woods with a log big enough to take down a hiker at the back of the knees? Or when the dog insists on bounding past you just as the trail becomes wide enough for one? What does it say to you when a skinny little puppy suddenly tries to puff up like an Arctic sled dog the moment any other dog comes along the trail?
    â€¢Â Â Whining. Whine to get out, whine to get in. Whine to be fed, whine for more. Whine for a treat, whine for a second treat. Whine to get out, whine to get in. Whine to play, whine to