Mini, Pookie, and Petey
By Bob
January 16, 2000
Mini, Pookie, and Petey
On the TV show, Late Night with David Letterman, they often do a segment called Stupid Pet Tricks, in which people from all over the country show off their pets' talents, like the dog that skips rope with the little girl who owns him, or the dog that can shoot baskets and play billiards.
While Mini, Pookie, and Petey have never been on the Letterman show, each of them is very smart and can do things that I think are even better than the tricks that the pets do on TV.
Like many other dogs, Mini can sit, lay down, and shake hands, and dance on command. She used to be able to roll-over on command also, but for some reason she forgot how to do that and gets scared if I try to remind her. Mini does at least one thing that I don't think any other dog knows how to do. It took me a couple of weeks of patient training to teach her about 3 years ago, but ever since then, she has been able to tell me when she has to go out (to go to the bathroom). She comes and sits quietly, facing me, and pokes me in the chest with one of her front paws, as if to say, "Hey, Bob!" I ask her, "Mini, do you have to go OUT?" She excitedly jumps up onto the back of the sofa, and stands with her front paws on my shoulder. She sneezes a couple of times, and then starts growling really low. After a couple of seconds of low growling, she slowly and carefully opens and closes her mouth, saying, "rrrrrrrr-OUUUUUU." I rub her little head and tell her, "Good girl, Mini! Let's go out!" Sometimes when I come home after being gone for several hours, Mini greets me at the door, emphatically telling me, "rrrrrrrr-OUUUUUU, rrrrrrrr-OUUUUUU, rrrrrrrr-OUUUUUU, rrrrrrrr-OUUUUUU!"
Pookie always tells me when she wants me to give her a little bit of milk in her food bowl. She positions herself in the hallway, so that I'll see her as soon as I walk down the hall. She waits until I see her, then she looks right at me and quietly says, "Mmm--rack." Then, she immediately turns around and walks away from me. A few feet further away, she turns back to me and says, "Mmm--rack" again. I ask her, "Pookie, do you want a little MILK?" She replies, "Mmm-rack," and heads into the kitchen, being careful to stay where I can still see her. I follow her into the kitchen, and once again, she turns around and says, "Mmm--rack." As I reach for the refrigerator door, she jumps up onto the cabinet where her food bowl is, and sits silently, waiting for me to give her a tablespoon of skim milk.
In the past two years, Petey has figured out a whole series of different ways to wake me up in the morning, so that I will get up and feed him his breakfast. First, he runs around the bedroom, revving up his little kitty engine. If that doesn't wake me up, he runs back and forth across my back several times. If I don't react to that, he jumps up onto the back of an overstuffed chair and starts shaking the metal Venetian blinds that cover one of the bedroom windows. If I ignore that loud clattering, he comes over to my nightstand and meticulously pushes each item on my nightstand onto the floor. If I still don't wake up, he goes to Bonnie's night stand and takes the phone receiver off the hook. One morning, I heard him rattling the phone receiver, but I decided to ignore him and see what he would do. After a few seconds, I heard a dial tone. Several seconds later, I heard a mechanized recording that said, "If you'd like to make a phone call, please hang up and try again..." Then, I heard more rattling, as Petey somehow hung up the receiver again! About 20 seconds later, I hadn't heard anything else from him, so I half-opened one eye to see what he was up to. His little kitty face was only about 1/2 inch from my nose, and he was staring at me, sending me little kitty "wake-up rays." I closed my eye and waited. A few seconds later, I felt one paw gently brush my cheek. Petey stroked my cheek about 5 times, and then started to stroke my hair. A few seconds later, I started laughing, and Petey knew that he had finally woken me up! The next morning, Pookie was sleeping on my back when Petey started stroking my face to wake me up. I could feel that, each time Petey reached for my cheek, Pookie lunged at him from my back, as if to say, "Leave Bob alone!" After his third touch and her third lunge, I woke up laughing again.
Mini, Pookie, and Petey don't know how to play basketball or skip rope, but they each know something even more important -- how to communicate what they want and need -- and I think that shows a lot more intelligence than just knowing how to do "tricks!"