We have a Coton de Tulear named Bailey.  For those of you not familiar with the breed, it’s a small white dog with straight hair named for the city of Tulear in Madagascar, where they were bred.  The breed is known for being loving, affectionate, playful, happy go lucky, and endlessly charming.  Bailey is of course the cutest, sweetest, most adorable little animal in the whole wide world, much like your dog.  But what I find most interesting is how much I’ve learned from Bailey over the years. So he must be pretty smart, too.

Bailey sleeps on our bed (yes, I admit it), but rarely gets up with us in the morning.  He just looks at us somewhat quizzically and wonders why we would want to get up at 5:30am.  When it’s time for breakfast or dinner, he would rather eat what we eat, and not what is otherwise prescribed for dogs.  When he sees us getting showered and dressed, he knows we’re probably going out for part of the day.  So he retreats to the window seat in the living room where he has a vantage point of looking outside for when we come home, and also protecting the house on the inside.  At 15 pounds, it’s not like he would be able to accost a burglar.  He’d probably lick the guy to death.  And when I put on my shoes, reach for my phone, and put my Bluetooth in my ear, Bailey goes crazy because he knows we’re going for a walk.

I tell you all this because Bailey is an expert at observing things around him and recalling patterns of habit that tell him what is going to happen next.  He has mastered many of the sensory skills dogs need to survive, but he also is loving, yielding, and full of joy.  Bailey acts and reacts a lot better than most humans do.  He takes cues by looking intently at us with those big brown eyes and seems to know what is going to happen almost before we do.

It might be a good exercise this week to observe your dog if you have one and see what you can learn from him or her.  Dogs seem to be a lot nicer than most of us, and equally observant as well.  Could it be that they’re smarter than us in some ways?  What else, or who else, could get us to do what we do for our dogs?

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