Scottie Intelligence, Human Intelligence

Volume 2 Issue 1
April 1, 2008
Author: Laurie Haight Keenan

It's happened again. Just last week, one of my Scotties outwitted me--almost. It was Maddie this time. I was in the kitchen, taking out the homemade chicken-liver treats we use to encourage cooperation during nail trimming, Duncan's allergy shots, and grooming sessions. The bag slipped from my hand. Treats bounced across the floor. Maddie was on them in a flash. I backed her away, flailing my arms and saying "No, no, no," then grabbed a baby gate from the hall and used it to shepherd her into the hall, beyond the kitchen door. I secured the gate across the hall, feeling smug. A glint came into Maddie's eye. She did a 180-degree turn and shot down the hall. Her tail disappeared around the corner into the dining room before it registered: She was making an end run.

Our condo is divided into north and south halves by a long hall. The kitchen with its double-wide door is on the north side, in the middle of the hall, just past and opposite the bedroom on the south side. At the back of the condo, the hall ends in the dining room. An immediate sharp left through the dining room, then another sharp left into a small pass-through leads into the rooms in the south half of the condo: the half-bath, then the bedroom. It's a tricky zigzag to the bedroom's other door, which opens--voilá!--into the mid-front of the hall, opposite and just before the kitchen door--and, in Maddie's case, to the other side of the gate, with access once again (she hoped) to the kitchen and those delectable chicken livers.

By design we keep not just one, but two gates in the hall. While Maddie made her dash there was just enough time to grab the second gate and lock it across the hall opposite the other gate, between the kitchen and the bedroom door. Whew! The kitchen was blocked from both directions, and I could clean up chicken livers in peace.

Our Scottie, Ted, made a similar but more successful end run several years before he passed away. Ted had a passion whose true depths were unknown until I tried to thwart it. He loved to watch men at work. If there was a male with a toolbox, Ted wanted to be right there, nosing through the tools or sitting next to the man, enraptured by the twisting of a wrench or the driving of a nail. When a plumber came to fix our dishwasher, I gated a persistently snoopy Ted into the back of the condo, using the single gate we kept in the hall at that time. As the gate clicked into place, Ted's eyes registered "bright idea," but I underestimated dear Ted, who was epileptic and (I liked to think) a wonderfully innocent and naïve soul. He had neurological challenges that made him do strange things, like run happily in the opposite direction when he was called for a treat, and I imagined that the glint in his eye that day meant he was chasing some neurological phantom. I was relieved when he trotted delightedly down the hall, away from the plumber. Big mistake...