pet connection

Since the day almost four years ago when she arrived here as an 8-week-old puppy from my friend Mary in Texas, McKenzie (a/k/a McKutie) has always been an uncommonly bright and inventive dog. She learned everything I taught her as quickly as I could come up with the lessons, and usually improvised her own imaginative twists.  Like the “5-10-21″ trick, which started out a simple “gimme your paw.” We kept building on the silliness, until a pawshake went from a high-five and then  to a three-stage display: At “Gimme 5″ she slaps her left paw on my upright right palm. “Gimme 10″ is right paw to left palm. “21!” is both paws, both hands and a kiss on the chin.

I swear she came up with all this herself.

Some “tricks” turn out to be much more than mere fun, and McKenzie has a repertoire of those, too, primarily her delight in picking up whatever I drop.

Like many if not most retrievers, McKenzie loves to pick things up and carry them. She also loves games where she finds things. This has become “find it” and “fetch it up.” Toothmarks? Not ever.

I love to show off this useful little behavior, “dropping” all kinds of items from keys to remote controls so McKutie will help me out. One time I bragged to my veterinarian that McKutie would pick a quarter off the tile floor of the exam room.

“Please don’t!” he begged. “I picture myself removing that from her surgically after she swallows it accidentally.”

OK, but she can do it. A quarter off a tile floor. Really.

This morning, I knocked my glasses off my face flipping a towel to fold.  I didn’t hear my glasses hit solid ground in the bedroom, but other than that I had no idea where they landed — and I’m very nearsighted. The bed? The area rug? No idea.

I called McKenzie.

“Go find!” I asked her, waving at the room. She wasn’t really sure what I wanted since she hadn’t been in the room when my glasses flew off. First, she brought a stuffed dog toy. I thanked her, and asked her to try again.

She got ‘em, second try. Sniffed them out in the laundry basket, a good eight feet from where I had been standing when I knocked them off. Heaven knows how long it would have taken me to find them there.

Now that’s a useful dog.

(Image: McKenzie, eight weeks. Smart puppy.)