Our little black dog is a conundrum. Kizzy was a feisty wee puppy who was a whole lot of work. Now she is a fabulous dog - full of charm and character. Unlike Gordon MacDonald, who is very straightforward and a bit dim and easy to love, Kizzy is complicated. She looks into your face a lot, trying to read your expression and follows me around the house if I am busy, checking out what I am doing. She likes to bring me things occasionally, normally a shoe or a sock and has recently taken to speaking to me in a serious of grunts and whinnies, the meaning of which I am not quite sure of. I often think that the arrogance of humans means that they never really appreciate what kind of intelligence animals in general have. How much dog do you speak? I am struggling with 'woof' because its a bit like Japanese where one word can mean many things dependent on context and inflection. But the Kizzy dog can understand a lot of what I am saying and seems to understand other things with acute precision - for example, I didn't realise that I raise my eyebrows when I am telling her to go to her bed and now I only have to do that single thing, without even speaking, and she will go straight to her bed. Nor that before I tell her off I draw my breath in sharply, so if I do this she runs off because she thinks I am about to tell her off for something. This means that if I am hammering in a nail and hit my thumb and draw my breath in quickly my dog runs off! How can she know so much about me and I so little about her? Why for example, does she like to be wrapped in a cover when she is sleeping? Why, if she is asleep in her bed and Gordon MacDonald wanders in, does she immediately come and sit right beside me? And how does she know, when I am three streets away, that I am on my way home?
