Dog and I by Roy Macgregor Page A

play, whine to play, whine to play.…
    â€¢Â Â Stubborn. Approximately once a week does as she is told. Other 4,587 times it’s a toss-up. Shall I “come” or shall I scoot? Shall I “sit” or shall I lunge? As for “stay”—don’t even think about it.
    â€¢Â Â Driving. Insists on sitting in best seat. Would prefer driver’s seat if available. Wants windows down so she can hang head out.
    â€¢Â Â Clumsy. Fine to hang your head out the car window, but not so fine, she will surely eventually realize, to place paw on automatic window and set reverse guillotine in motion.…



Pawprinted Legacies of the Great

    I have started reading to my dog. Not stuff I have written— there is, after all, a Humane Society in this town—but self-improvement books. Her self-improvement.
    And why not read? Everyone talks to the dog. I even saw a poll somewhere that claimed one out of every three of us telephones the dog—homesick travellers calling back to have whoever answers hold out the receiver while the deranged traveller tries to coax a bark out of the poor dumbfounded thing. Reading, however, has a far more honourable purpose than the self-gratification of a business traveller feeling sorry for himself. I want this dog—this one-year-old mutt called Willow, who is just beginning to come into her own—to become something special, not just something I call home to talk to when nobody else will listen.
    The dog needs inspiration. It lay, asleep, legs in the air, the other morning while one of the many unemployed in this house watched The Ellen DeGeneres Show . A man was on talking about how, out walking one evening with his Labradors, he had fallen into a diabetic coma. The yellow Lab lay on him to keep the man warm while the black Lab—I’m not making this up; I’m not allowed to—grabbed the flashlight the man had dropped and began running about the field with it in its mouth until a policeman noticed the dancing light and came to investigate.
    Thanks to the dogs, the policeman’s CPR, and an ambulance, the man’s life was saved. When he came back from hospital, he told Ellen, the dogs began to weep.
    This dog sleeping on the floor, on the other hand, would pick up a flashlight only if someone first threw it. And then she’d want it thrown again and again and again and again until, frankly, the thrower might welcome a diabetic coma.
    Perhaps it’s the breed. A couple of months ago, while travelling in the United States, I came across an advice column for pet owners. A woman had written in to say her new dog’s constant staring had “weirded” her out to the point where she’d decided to take the little border collie back to the kennel where she got it. The advice columnist, bless his heart, gloriously ripped into her, saying the breed is supposed to stare like that. Such dogs, the expert said, are extremely bright. It wasn’t staring but rather looking for a signal to do something—like fetch, or round up the sheep—and the only thing dumb about border collies is that they think humans have enough intelligence to offer direction.
    This dog isn’t quite a border collie, but she is enough of one to stare endlessly in search of a stick or ball that might fly through the air and have to be instantly returned for the next throw. And the next. And the next …
    So, being a fairly bright human compared with the woman who took her dog back, I have decided to take that columnist’s sage advice and offer direction. Which is why I have started reading to my dog. The book we have chosen is The Pawprints of History by Stanley Coren, a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia. Subtitled Dogs and the Course of Human Events, the book was a gift from a friend—and we are most grateful for its inspiration.
    I have explained to Willow that I expect great things from her, but I am