Really Smart Puppy

[sheepdog 10]

I love it when I get calls or emails from my customers bragging on their new puppies. I got a great call the other day, thought I’d share it with you. I always tell people how smart Standard Schnauzers are, but I’m sure many people really don’t understand when I say that they can be so smart it’s almost scary. I suppose they just think I’m pitching them a line of BS to sell them a puppy. But then along comes a brilliant little dog to make a believer out of them. Such is the case of one of my recent puppy sales. The brilliance this young 3 month old pup showed is pretty amazing, even to me. For the sake of privacy, I’ll change the names of the person and puppy involved. We will call the customer Bill and the female Standard Schnauzer puppy Willa. Bill and Willa got off to a bit of a rough start. She bit him when she first arrived when he was trying to get her out of her shipping crate. Standards are smart, but they are also not very trusting of strangers. She spent a few hours sitting in the middle of his yard glaring at him and refused to come to him or let him catch her. Eventually she decided that he probably wasn’t a puppy-eating Ogre and made up with him. Over the next several days she bonded very closely with him and became his constant shadow. Her general training and house breaking went exceptionally well, when he called he informed me that she as yet had not even had an accident in the house.The day before he called me, Bill got Willa a tennis ball to play with. She really like this new toy, and played with it with a sincere passion. She would drop it, bounce it, and chase it and just had a great time with it. During the course of the playing with the tennis ball, it rolled under Bills couch. He told me the couch sat very low to the floor, and he really didn’t think she could get it back out. Apparently it wasn’t easy to do, Willa worked at it for quite awhile, but finally she flattened herself on the floor and twisted around to where she could finally reach her ball and got it out. She went back to playing with her toy for a while, when as you might guess, it rolled back under the couch. This time Bill felt sorry for her, so to save her all that squirming and struggling, he went to the closet and got a broom out, and used the broom handle to reach under the couch and knock the ball out for her. She happily went back to playing with her ball, until, yes, you guessed it, it rolled back under the couch one more time. But Willa was no fool. This time she went straight to Bill, sat down in front of him, looked him right in the eye, and barked one time, and then ran straight to the closet where the broom was! Now who says dogs can’t communicate with humans? After only one time of seeing Bill get the ball out for her with the broom, she knew just exactly how to show him what she wanted him to do. I suppose it does make you wonder just exactly who is training who in this situation. That is sure one smart little dog! I’m sure proud of her. And, more importantly, Bill is too. I’m sure glad I could be a part of something that could bring so much joy to another person.