Nothing is Truly Not For Dogs When Rack Is Involved

 I get it.

There is a level of intelligence in other species that human kind has not yet decided to be aware of.

How is that for a diplomatic way of phrasing it?

I would say that while there are many ways of defining intelligence, being the tool maker is not the only way one can show it.

Mind you this gets involved in my own leisure and athletic activities.

I share a house with Rack, the McNab SuperDog (TM).  I call him a lot of names but SuperDog seems to fit well as does Dingus and Knucklehead from time to time.

I am sure that he has herding DNA somewhere in him, he is a McNab after all.  It does not show often.  That lack of a prey drive is probably why he found his way to us.  He's a very fearful soul, even now after almost 14 years of life.

However if I am at his level, he is involving himself in whatever it is.

In other words, he wants to know what I am doing.  Rack is always watching.

Generally, I tell him he can't help with maintaining anything because he doesn't have any opposable thumbs and needs to operate hand tools. 

It won't work, he will hang out as long as he feels he has to and he enjoys being talked to.  More so than many people.

I sit on the floor working on maintaining the bike or the skates, as I did this week when the winds were up, and I will feel a wet nose on the elbow.  The coffee table is lower than my knees, and the only truly clear place I can get space to work on a bicycle is on the floor.

Luckily he doesn't have the Labrador Retriever Hunger Gene.  That is where that breed will eat anything and everything it can get its paws on.  Keep your food under lock and key.

Rack will, though, have moments of understanding that I am quite surprised at. 

The issue of food has been mostly solved with the phrase of "Not For Dogs".  He understands that he is not getting any of what I am eating, and will even respect that dinner plate of high reward food sitting on the below knee level coffee table as I go out of sight to get the fork I forgot in the kitchen.

But it doesn't mean he won't stand there and stare.  It is after all, his job to observe and if it hits the floor, it's gone.

Just no onions.  That would truly be Not For Dogs, which was what I had in my hand, a bag of French Onion flavored chips.

"Sorry, boy, not for dogs!"

It doesn't mean he won't lick his chops until it's gone.