Scary Smart

Both Emme and Rudy are smart dogs. They observe and pick up things that are uncanny.

They both have a sense of time that is amazing. They always know when it is time to eat or go to bed. It is a good thing that we are creatures of habit. They know the exact order of things at their meal time. They know which dogs gets which pills, before and after the meal.

When Ken and I are getting ready to leave the house, they know that we are leaving, because they recognize click the lock on the back door makes. They hear that sound and they both run to their crates with no command from us. Rudy knows that he is going for a ride in the car if we leave his collar on after he has gone outside to "hurry up." If we take them out in the car, both dogs know when we are arriving home. Rudy recognizes the bumps on Oak Hill before we even get to our street. He gets excited and stands up eager to get home. Emme recognizes the house as we enter the garage. She tries to stand on my lap and look into the garage. They both know the exact routine we follow before we go upstairs to bed.

But recently Rudy has outdone himself. When I am finished playing my Nintendo DS and shut down the machine, it plays the same ending music. Rudy has learned to recognize the music and knows that I am ending my game and will be going on to do other things. He jumps up and is eager to participate in whatever comes next. So I decided to get around this by turning the sound off. Now when I am ending the game there is no music to clue Rudy. Instead he has learned to listen for the sound of the stylus clicking in place in the side of my DS as I finish playing. So now he gets all excited when he hears the stylus click into place. Scary smart!