My dog is smarter than your honors student

Okay, not really. But I have to say I am often impressed at how smart my dogs appear to be. Two cases in point:

1. The other morning I was standing in our walk-in closet getting dressed for work, as I usually do. Riley, our maybe-corgi-and-shepard-but-who-really-knows? mutt was laying in the bedroom. As I was getting dressed I heard him let out a low woof. Followed by a couple more. He must have heard something he didn’t like (which was probably a neighbor leaving for work or something). At that point he got up and came and sat in the closet doorway, facing out, ears perked, looking left and right, clearly protecting his master from an unknown threat. This instinct never ceases to amaze me.

2. Same dog, but a couple evenings prior. I’m sitting in the family room reading my school assignments. The basket full of dog toys is on the floor next to this particular chair, and I watch Riley come over and stick his head in the basket and sort of root around. Then, quite methodically, he began to remove the toys one at a time and place them on the floor next to the basket, putting his head back in and rooting around a bit more after each one. Finally he apparently found the toy he wanted and grabbed it and amused himself for a while, even attempting to get Annabelle to play some tug of war with him. Riley knew which toy he wanted, and he knew which toys in the box were not the ones he wanted. Smart, that dog.

And since I’m on a kick about the dogs today, stay tuned for a posting later this week about the self-righteous, ignorant jackasses that make up PETA.