Story O' Teh Week

I know it's only Monday, but Gene Weingarten's tale of old Harry is about as good as it gets.

While Harry lacked the wiliness and cunning of some dogs, I did watch one day as he figured out a basic principle of physics. He was playing with a water bottle in our backyard—it was one of those 5-gallon cylindrical plastic jugs from the top of a water cooler. At one point, it rolled down a hill, which surprised and delighted him. He retrieved it, brought it back up and tried to make it go down again. It wouldn’t. I watched him nudge it around until he discovered that for the bottle to roll, its long axis had to be perpendicular to the slope of the hill. You could see the understanding dawn on his face; it was Archimedes in his bath, Helen Keller at the water spigot.

That was probably the intellectual achievement of Harry’s life, tarnished only slightly by the fact that he spent the next two hours insipidly entranced, rolling the bottle down and hauling it back up. He did not come inside until it grew too dark for him to see.

Gus used to sit on the front porch practicing his many barks. I can only assume he was also listening for pertinent responses from the surrounding neighbors, learning their language and educating them on his.
He also used to amuse himself for hour (no, not hours) tossing old carboard, old towels, old anything into the air and catching it. Our only other dog refused to play with him and refused to allow him to keep any dog toys, stashing them instead under his bed.
He's nine now and shows no signs of slowing down, although he seems resigned to the fact that he cannot outrun the new dog with very short legs. He lopes after her, but refuses to really run, having learned that executing one of her hairpin turns will make him fall and feel ridiculous.
He does not allow the other big dog any toys of her own either, and he buries his extra treats on the property, while she follows far enough behind to undig them just as he used to do to his predecessor alpha dog.
Inspired by the puppy, he has become somewhat interested in Frisbees, but has no idea why any dog would retrieve anything. Except rocks. Sometimes he brings those back.
He has his big balls outside and the Giggly indoors, which has become much more interesting since the arrival of the puppy and her infatuation with indoor squeaky balls.

Two weeks ago, he killed some neighbor's chickens that had been running freely for years, so now he is kept close and in touch, a practice he is grudgingly growing accustomed to.