My black and white Border Collie Jenny is partially blind, having been born with a small optic nerve in one eye. Consequently she likes to communicate with me by earnestly staring me in the face, the closer the better. Two days before her first birthday, she was doing this as I drank my after dinner tea with my husband, and at the same time patting my chest with her paws. She was more exuberant than usual and her paws came very close to my face. Seeing this my husband said ‘She is being very stupid now, very stupid’.

Jenny then looked at him, stopped her pawing, and trotted into the living room. She came out almost immediately with a single plain brown paper envelope in her mouth, one of the dozens of identical envelopes I had placed on a shelf for sorting and filing later. She dropped the envelope on the floor between my husband and me. She then sat down and looked at us expectantly. When my husband opened the envelope he found only one item, a photocopy of the magazine article ‘Dog IQ Ranking’ (from The Canine Journal, September 2002, pp. 34-35), in which Border Collies rank number one in Obedience and Intelligence. My husband could only say, ‘Well, she certainly made her point!’

Author: Dr Glenda Susan Marsh-Letts
Country: Australia
True story: Yes
Rating: 1 paw up
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