Super Animal Sentience

I'm setting a timer and giving myself exactly one hour to write this post. There will be grammatical mistakes, etc., but that's just the way it has to be.

This post is about salient moments I've observed of super animal sentience.

Story #1. Betsy manipulates Zarya into abandoning the front seat.

Zarya, our new dog, was a very large, very entitled, strikingly good-looking puppy. Even though she was the newcomer and the junior dog, she quickly took over the front seat from Betsy, Border Collie / Lab, 12 years old at the time. We'd had Betsy for 11 years. While Betsy was always very smart, she was never especially self-confident, with no sense of entitlement whatsoever. So, Zarya is riding shotgun, and Betsy is in the back (of the minivan).  Also in the back of the minivan are folded up paper shopping bags, for shopping purposes. But Zarya, the puppy, viewed the bags, like everything else, as toys for her own amusement. When she couldn't ride up front, she would amuse herself in the back shredding my grocery bags. 

That's the scene: Zarya is in front. Betsy is in back. And here's the super smart thing that Betsy did: She feigned interest in shredding the paper bags. She had never known the slightest interest in these bags, but now she made gestures of playing with them--just enough to make a noise that Zarya would hear and think, "Oh! Betsy's shredding the bags! I want to shred the bags!" 

So of course, not one to be left out of any fun activity, Zarya vacates her seat of privilege to go check out what's happening with the grocery bags. 

At which point, Betsy abandons the bags and takes over the front seat just vacated by Zarya. 

In other words, the whole rustling the bags thing was a total manipulation by Betsy of Zarya. Betsy played Zarya. She came up with this scheme to lure Zarya into the back of the van with the singular goal of taking Zarya's spot up front. 

Story #2. Belle Performs Her Best Trick to Show Up Tanner (and Get a Treat)

I had my two Quarter Horses, Belle and Tanner, at liberty in the round pen without any halters on them or tack of any kind. My focus had been on Tanner, who was in more need of training than Belle. I hadn't had Tanner very long, so I was still figuring out how much training he had had. One that thing I had recently stumbled upon while grooming him was that someone had taught him to bow. I had unintentionally given him the cue, and he lowered his head way down between his two front legs, and drew his left front hoof back, bending at the knee (as they say). I had never seen a horse do that in real life before, so I was pretty delighted and amazed. 

So here's the scene: I've got treats in my pocket. I cue Tanner to bow. He bows. I give him a treat. Belle is standing in front of me, watching. After Tanner does his impressive trick, and I give him a treat, I look at Belle, and either say out loud or in my head, "Too bad you don't have such an impressive trick, Belle!" But then, without missing a beat, Belle carries herself over to the mounting block in the middle of the round pen. She positions herself next to it, but a few feet away, and then, with no prompting or cues of any kind from me, she performs a perfect side-pass over the mounting block. 

For the uninitiated, this is a very technically difficult and sophisticated trick. The horse has to walk sideways--the outside front foot crossing over the inside front foot, and the back feet tracking a parallel course. Foot over foot in this manner she has to move front and back feet in a highly coordinated way so the whole side view of her body is moving evenly in one direction like a single wave. And the mounting block passes neatly underneath her belly. 

This was a trick I had taught her a year earlier. We hadn't practiced it since the previous summer. But somehow, not only did Belle remember how to execute the trick--what is more impressive to me is that it occurred to her that it was the most technically impressive trick that she knew, and also that it was comparable in its complexity to Tanner's deep bow. 

I mean, what the hell!? This horse, Belle, she had no rope attached to her. She was functioning completely of her own volition. 

I was absolutely gobsmacked. I gave her a treat, of course, and a pat. But I wanted to burst into tears. Because it was offing amazing, what she had just shown me. 

Story #3. Squirrel. 

I fed the squirrels over the winter. February was deadly cold for weeks on end. Every outdoor creature suffered. I fed the birds. I might as well feed the squirrels. I bought bird seed. I bought critter food. I kept the bird feeders full.  I poured the critter food out in a mounded a trail along the tops of the deck rail. The squirrels feasted. 

In the spring, when the snow melted, the squirrels were able to their caches of black walnuts. Our property has many black walnut trees. So I was sitting at my desk, looking at my computer, working, when I looked out my window. 

Important to note: my window is on the opposite side of the house from the deck where I fed the squirrels. 

I'm looking at my computer, when I see out of the corner of my eye, a squirrel. I see him, and then he's gone. And then I see his paw, and then gone. He's jumping up, grabbing onto something to hold, losing his purchase and falling back down to the ground a couple of feet below my window. I look squarely at the window and watch. He jumps up, gets a good temporary purchase, looks right at me. He's holding a large walnut in his mouth. He's waving one arm. I'm not saying he's waving. I'm not saying he's not waving. He's waving an arm. He's got a walnut in his mouth. He sees that I see him. I smile. 

And then he lets himself drop back down to the ground, and that's it. He's gone. 

Now, I'm not foolish enough to tell you, or to insist, that he was there for the sole purpose of showing me that had his own walnut. You can think whatever you like. I'm just saying, that's never happened before.

I was happy for him. 

Story #4. The Poodle.

I've got 5 minutes left, so I can't even read this over to make sure it's not awful, but I have so little time!

The poodle, HANK, you may remember him. If you knew him, you wouldn't forget him. There was so much to that poodle. 

He would feign sleep. Appear to be napping. Unconscious. But as soon as I closed the bathroom door, he knew that he too had FIVE MINUTES in which to commit as many crimes and misdemeanors as poodle possible. Any food on the counter--gone. Access to the trash? Great! 

You can get a lot done in five minutes. 

I fell for it every time. Every. Single. Time. 

Damn poodle, I miss him so much. 

I know I have more stories, but I don't have more time. 

I have to go edit a manuscript. Ha! Isn't that grimly ironic.