Willie and his squirrels.
Willie is a young Jack Russell from Fayetteville, North Carolina, who recently spent a weekend at my grandpa’s house in very rural West Virginia. Willie lives with my aunt and uncle, and he’s very smart. He is dead serious about retrieving things, which is more than I can say about Miley.
Like many of his breed, he is likes to chase small furry things. At home, Willie and Madeleine, the other Jack Russell who lives at that household, can be launched with the mere mention of the word squirrel. They take squirrel hunting very seriously. It is as if it is their main duty to keep the bushy-tailed rats off the lawn.
However, they are contained in a fenced yard, allowing the squirrels an easy escape from the jaws of these small brown and white wolves. In all the years they have been chasing squirrels in North Carolina, they have caught only one squirrel. (Of course, dogs have a hard time catching squirrels, whether they are fenced in or not.)
As I have mentioned earlier, West Virginia’s trees have not produced enough mast this year to feed the large numbers of squirrels, turkeys, and white-tailed deer.
My grandpa has taken pity upon the squirrels, in part because he actually wants to keep their numbers high for next year. He hunts squirrels, and he knows that if they squirrels go into winter without a bounty of nuts from the fall, there will be fewer squirrels next year.
So he has set up a massive squirrel feeding operation. One of his feeders is on the deck in full view of his sliding glass door. Here, the vast hordes of fox squirrels and normal and melanistic grays fight over the corn in the feeder all day long. It is quite entertaining to watch.
And when Willie and Maddy were at his house a few weekends ago, they very much agreed. They would stand by the sliding glass door like wolves staring down a herd of caribou. Maddy would quiver all the way down to the tip of her docked tail, and Willie would stand like a pointer with one foot raised. When the sliding glass door was opened the first time, Maddy ran right off the deck after the squirrels, and Willy chased them out of the yard and across the old pasture into the woods. This was Jack Russell heaven.
Getting to watch and chase so many squirrels really had an effect on Willie.
When they returned home, Willie went to his toy box and took out three of his stuffed toys.
Now, Willie has a collection of toys. He has more stuffed toys than many children do. He had a wide selection to choose from.
So it was very interesting that Willie picked out the three stuffed squirrels that were in his box.
Willie was expressing himself with his toys. I don’t think it takes a genius to recognize this.
He was showing his people that he really liked watching and chasing those large numbers of squirrels all weekend.
And it is really quite remarkable. He was using objects that represented the animals that he saw. It is obvious that he knows those stuffed squirrels aren’t the same as the real ones, but he does know that they somehow represent the real ones.
***
Willie is not the only dog to use toys to represent things.
I saw this program on the National Geographic Channel a few years ago. This doberman had been abandoned and had trouble trusting people. He eventually came out of his shell, but what was really interesting is that he also used toys to express himself:
Willie here on the innerweb, these were not toys, I caught
them in WV and had them stuffed and are adding them to my collection.
It’s hard to gauge or qualify smart in dogs, but I think Jack Russell’s make most lists. Of course a smart dog is often a pain in the ass, as Sir Francis Galton once noted :)
P
In some field trial circles, there is the standing joke question, “Do you want a Gump, or do you want a MacGyver?”
It’s been my observation that the handlers who love to TRAIN and HANDLE want the MacGyver –the ones who love to WIN first and foremost go for the Gump.
That’s not to say that MacGyvers don’t win–often they do, in style, esp. under the more difficult or unique circumstances–or that the ones who want a Gump want a dumb dog–they don’t, because a dumb dog won’t win, either.
But the PIA factor, I think, looms large when one wants the blue a little more than one enjoys working with the dogs.
I’d love to see this casual shorthand on pedigrees–I bet there would be a lot of “Gump/MacGyver” crossbreedings in the search for the ultimate Lab!
I prefer the MacGyver.
I have to admit that sometimes I’m not as smart as a dog.
My Lab is smart when he wants or needs to be–otherwise, he’s perfectly happy to let others do the thinking. I guess I’d call him a lazy MacGyver.
The flat-coat is a MacGyver. Anything that could be turned into bomb-making material is in the loft of the locked garage, and she is crated when I’m gone.
I love her dearly, but she can be a real PIA.
I’ll take either kind, by the way, so long as they have drive and talent–each has its merits.
Willie is super smart. You can ask him to go get his ball, and he’ll get it.
He’s not very big (11-12 pounds), but he has Miley under total control. He will play with her, but he can tell her when it’s time to quit. Maddy tolerates the big blond dog just a little bit.
Maddy is really different from most JRT’s. She was purchased in Arizona. She has just a little white on her, but the rest of her is the color of a border terrier. She’s smooth-haired, but her coat is thick. I am wondering if she might be a Fell-JRT cross or a Border-JRT cross.
5.00 gpa at vt in che, but it is easy school nothing like glenville state
5.00 is pretty good in chemical engineering.
I’ve no doubt about the intelligence of JRTs. Some of the intelligent stunts they pull are amazing. I now have two. One is 7 years one is 7 months. I can tell you one thing, it’s a lot more of a challenge to own a “smart” dog (which is why “Bad Dog Talk” is posted on the JRTCA/CC sites). They manipulate, figure out things, think about what they’re doing, know how to take advantage and it’s amazing to watch.
My sister came out to watch the dogs while hubby and I were on vacation. My little girl JRT knows where her food and toys are kept, and used to worry the cupboard where her beloved ball was like mad until we put a stop to it. She hasn’t done it since, and it’s been years. While my sister was watching the dogs, she worried that cupboard, crying, shaking and carrying on until she forced my sister to get the ball for her – didn’t want food or the other toys, just the heavenly ball. She absolutely knows who she can take advantage of, and she does it with gusto (on many occasions). Not-so-smart dogs won’t do this, just ask my bulldogge. Much easier, in that sense, to live with (we’ll minus out the drool and the bullheadedness). But gawd I love the challenge of a JRT!
I love stuff like this. JRT are indisputably smart, but it’s always amazing when they choose to express themselves in unexpected ways.
That doby is amazing, too. I know a lot of dogs, including my friend’s shih tzu, who know at least a couple of their toys by name, but it seems more like a training thing. They do it to please, whearas the doby seems to do it mostly for himself.
The closest my own dog comes to that is purposefully moving her toys to the center of the hallway where I’m most likely to trip on it. I’ve kicked them out of the way, only to see it moved back to the center again a few minutes later.
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