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October 17, 2005

Weekend of Discovery

--We discovered a great deal on a swing set for WildChild....a demo for dirt cheap so we got it for him. He will be so tickled when he sees it this weekend. Maybe now it won't be so difficult to pry him away from the computer to go play outside.

--We also discovered it's a really bad idea to take a pug into the basement. Sollie wanted to go while Mike was doing some work down there (Sassy & Smokey were already down there poking around), but he's afraid of the stairs. So I got the bright idea to carry him down there. Bad idea. He was so excited by it all that he refused to come back up the stairs....or he would've if he could've found them. I was at the top of the stairs calling him, and he promptly went underneath the stairs and sat looking up trying to find me. The dog is dumb, what can I say? It took both of us to corner him & drag him back up the stairs. Sheesh. We'll not be doing that again.

--While we were in the basement, we discovered why our bedroom hadn't been cooling properly. The ductwork had gotten disconnected somehow. A little beating & banging, a little tape and wow. It was amazing how much better it worked when it was actually, you know, connected. D'oh.

--Finally, I discovered there's a good chance the new kitty is one of these. He's starting to look exactly like the first cat pictured there, and meets almost all the criteria of the breed standard. His eyes are not a 'vivid green', at least not yet, and he has a tiny little patch of white on his tummy. But otherwise, that's our kitty. The coolest thing about him is his coat. It's so soft & plush it's almost like petting a velveteen rabbit. And it doesn't trigger my cat allergy, so far anyway. If he is really a Russian Blue, that would explain his penchant for sitting on my shoulders, apparently that's a breed characteristic. He does it so often that Mike says he's a pirate cat and we should've named him Polly.

But my favorite thing about him is the way he purrs when he's excited or very happy. He sounds like the world's smallest idling Evinrude. It's this really fast rrrrrr-rrrrrr-rrrrrr-MurpMurp-MurpMurp. Cracks me up.

Can you tell I'm getting really attached to the little stinker?

I've some recent photos of him that I'll post if I can ever find one of the memory card readers....which are still in a box somewhere.

Yes, that's right. There's still a pile of unpacked boxes in the living room. And yes, it's driving me crazy.

They are going somewhere today. I'm not sure where yet, but they're going.

Posted by Rita at October 17, 2005 07:31 AM

Comments

Hi Rita: While reading your post I remembered an dog intelligence by breed listing that I found several months ago. Couldn't find the same list again but found lots of similar ones, and all use the same criteria - number one of which is that the most intelligent dogs follow a first command 90% of the time. According to the report I am now reading, Pugs, #57 out of 79 (the barely functional Afghan hound), respond to a first command only 30% of the time. Now I'm wondering if willingness to follow orders is the most important indicator of intelligence. Pugs might just be more independent.

Posted by: kenneth [TypeKey Profile Page] at October 17, 2005 06:55 PM

That's definitely part of it. Pugs, especially the males, are very independent...and stubborn. There's many times that he understands what I want him to do. He just doesn't want to do it.

But bless his heart, he's just not very smart sometimes either. And the stairs have him completely confounded. He'll catch on eventually, it'll just take him a while.

OTOH, Sassy (the Akita) is entirely too smart. I have to keep the doors locked now because she tries to turn the doorknob with her teeth when she wants to go outside. She's pretty compliant on the first command most of the time too. But that has more to do with the fact that she's a pack animal & I'm the alpha female than her intelligence I'd say.

Probably the best intelligence test I've seen is to take a favorite toy or a treat & hide it under a cup or bowl. A smart dog will immediately try to turn the cup over to get the toy/treat. A dumb dog will just sit & look at it like "where did it go?"

Guess which one Sollie does? lol

Posted by: Rita [TypeKey Profile Page] at October 17, 2005 07:16 PM