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Sunday Punch By Steve Johnston
Tricked AgainIn our house, we keep forgetting who's really being trained
JUST THE OTHER day I realized my dog was smarter than me. This doesn't come as any surprise to the Truly Unpleasant Mrs. Johnston, who also says the family cat is smarter than me. But it's taken me a few years to come to this conclusion. For the first eight years of his life, I thought Rex was addled. He didn't show much enthusiasm for things most dogs like to do, such as play "fetch," that mindless game where you throw a ball or stick and the dog chases it and brings it back. Rex would play, but only if the item being thrown had meat attached to it. There is one trick that Rex is good at doing. When I say "Sit" or "Lie down," he can do that because he's already sitting or lying down. He also knows the question: "You want a treat?" But if it requires doing something for the treat, he usually passes on the treat. Instead, he waits patiently until you get tired of holding the treat and throw it to him. So rather than being trained to do tricks, Rex has trained us to do tricks. His favorite is: "Fetch me a treat." As I've told you before, Rex is a Labrador. I like Labs for many reasons, but one of the big ones is that they are good with kids. Over the years, I've seen my kids climb over, under and across our Labradors. When the children were little, they would grab ahold of the dog's droopy ears and swing on them. The poor dog would just have a look on his face of, "When is this ever going to end?" I got hooked on Labs when I was growing up in Everett and we had a golden Lab named Butch. Unlike Rex, Butch was a functioning dog who could do all the things regular dogs do: run, fetch, sit, stand and so on. We never expected our dogs to do anything useful like hunt or get dead ducks out of the water, mainly because we didn't hunt. I always hoped that our Labs would get help if any of us ever fell down a well or got trapped under a fallen tree like in the TV show "Lassie." ("Go get Pa, Butch," we'd croak out.) But no one ever fell down a well or got trapped under a tree. I can only remember two negative experiences with Butch. Like most Laboradors, Butch liked to swim. Once when we were swimming with him, Butch decided he was too tired to continue paddling. He needed a place to climb on to rest. Unfortunately, the nearest object was my brother, Bill, and Butch climbed up his back. Not only did he dig his claws into Bill's back but we were swimming in saltwater and you could hear the screaming for miles. The other negative experience was our own fault. We used to play a game with Butch where we threw something to him and he would keep it away from us. It was usually a stick or ball. But one time he got ahold of my fancy-pants Little League glove and started running around the yard with it in his mouth. Of course we started chasing him. And, of course, Butch started running with my glove. He was playing his favorite game. He would run to a corner of the yard, sit down and start shaking and chewing on the glove. We'd come after him, screaming and yelling. Butch would throw the glove in the air, catch it and race off to another part of the yard, a pack of kids hot on his tail. When I finally got my glove back, it was chewed up pretty good. But Butch had enjoyed himself. When we got Rex, he was stepping in for another black Lab, Duke, who had died of old age. Maybe it was because Duke was so old at the end that we forgot dogs are supposed to do more than sleep and eat.
Rex was a perfect replacement for the old dog. He settled into Duke's spot and took a nap. Steve Johnston is a retired Seattle Times reporter. His e-mail address is stevejonst@aol.com. Paul Schmid is a Times news artist.
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