Tricky

They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks. But sometimes they invent goofy ones. By doing lots of mental arithmetic (at which I stink), I've estimated that my dog may very well be 10 years old. Incredible!

[Reminds me of a Jeeves/Wodehouse snippet:

"Incredulous!" I said.

"I believe you mean 'incredible,' sir," said Jeeves.

Or something like that.]*

Anyway, my dog has, thus late in life, developed a taste for tissue. Bathroom tissue. Facial tissue. Or, for something with a bit more roughage, paper towels and napkins. It started when he used to chew up such items when they were infused with food, oil, or nameless substances, but now he doesn't care whether the paper is flavored or plain, he just likes to chew on it and ingest shreds of it (evidence of which he later presents while we're on our walks).

But here's the tricky part. He attempts, sometimes successfully, to pull kleenex out of the box. And he has learned to unroll toilet paper. I may be sitting in the living room or kitchen, and I'll hear him nosing around down the hallway, and when I walk there I find a long strip of toilet paper extending from the spindle in the bathroom across the hall into the library or my bedroom.

On the one hand, for a dog, it takes some intelligence to figure out how to pull tissues from the pop-up box and unroll toilet paper from the hanger. On the other hand, both are darn silly behaviors, consistent with a certain level of stupidity.

Smart or stupid? You decide.

*