Clever Dog, Stupid Dog

Lily the dog learns quickly, including (of course) things we don’t want her to learn, and even things we don’t even know we’re teaching her.

For example, she’s become very good at knowing when we’re getting ready to take her for a walk. Clearly we’re doing something that gives our intentions away. But we don’t know what we’re doing that she’s cuing on. Very clever dog.

Unfortunately, she’s also impatient. So as she learns to detect our happy intentions earlier and earlier, the delay increases between when she detects our intentions and when she gets the payoff, she ends up spending more time being frustrated due to her impatient anticipation.

And when Lily is frustrated, she sings. She sings long, weird, beautiful melodies in her little doggie falsetto. And we love listening to her singing. So we learn to give away our happy intentions on purpose, so she’ll anticipate, so she’ll be frustrated, so she’ll sing.

That’s surely not what she wants. Stupid dog.