Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Dude Rocks The House Down...



This is Dude. Dude is the smartest dog I know. He belongs to my sister Sandy, who is going through chemo.

If Dude were a child, he would be that kid in class who always knew the answer to everything. The teacher would look around the room and see no hands, and there would be Dude, arms folded, rolling his eyes at the rest of the class.

"It's a sarcophagus, of course!"

In the second picture, Dude is demonstrating the proper form for awesome begging. He even begs better than everybody else.

Dude, you might say, is a bit of a nerd dog. If a ball is lost because it ricocheted off of the house and then careened off of the pump house and then rolled into a gopher hole, Dude would do the calculations in his head and dig the ball up out of the ground.

Dude is just like that.

So when my sister sent me this short but sweet story of how Dude did it again, I immediately understood. Jumping into water from four feet above the water is likely to cause stinging of the belly. Atta boy Dude...

Sandy's email-- OK, so here is a video of how it is supposed to be done. Splash dogs-- a dog jumping contest into the water.

They came to our county fair this year and had opportunities for “regular dogs” to practice and compete. So, today, the last day, I took Dude and his ball over to show them how it was done.

As usual, Dude had a better idea. He would get all excited on the stage and run along as I threw the ball in the water. Then, after a few tries at sliding gently into the pool (about a 4 foot drop) the old guy decided it was too far down for him and ran down the stairs and up the ramp that was supposed to be used for exiting the pool, where he slid gently into the water and grabbed the ball. He was all excited that he had gotten the chore done

and wasn’t hurting himself. I had given up to go home because the competition was about to begin and the Labs were all lining up, but the guy running the thing begged me to stay. He wouldn’t even charge me the entry fee.

“The audience loves dog’s like this!” he says.

So Dude and I became the laughing stock/crowd favorite for the big Splash Dog show today. To make it even better, in between our 3 jump attempts he would roll in the dust and dried grass and come out looking like a scarecrow, only to take it all in the pool with him the next time. We even had audience members coming over to ask if we were part of the show because he was just too perfect at cheating and seemed to love it when the crowd went crazy.


I sure know how to pick ‘em…
sas

6 comments:

Stucco said...

Is his real name Lebowski?

fairyhedgehog said...

What a wonderful dog!

Cheesy said...

Begging pic looks like doggie school and he DOES know the answer!

Jeannie said...

Cool dog. And smart.

Anonymous said...

Poor Dude. He was just misunderstood. He looked it all over and figured out that the other dogs were just too dumb to know how it was supposed to be done, so he showed them.

That's one very smart dog!

kario said...

Thinking outside the box! Good boy, Dude.