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Smartest Pets - young reader & writer series - Cover

Some animals are so smart! In this book you will read 25 funny and exciting true stories about our favourite pets. More!

Talia the dog

Talia has always been a very clever dog. As a young puppy she couldn't sleep through the night without needing to go to the toilet. Every night at roughly the same time, Tali would go to my Mum's side of their water bed, put her little front feet up on the side and rock it until she woke up to take her out.
Tali has just turned 12 which is quite old for a golden retriever. She has been treated for cancer twice during her life, and is developing cataracts, but now her biggest worry is arthritis. She has trouble getting up and down steps, and spends most of her time lying on her side. Needless to say, Tali is sleeping inside again. Still, she likes to go outside during the night, go to the toilet, and take a walk on her well worn track around the house to make sure everything is ok. When she wants to go outside she barks once, and another single bark to come back in.
Recently my Mum woke up and Tali had her front paws on her side of the waterbed rocking furiously. The first thing that occured to her was: how did she manage to get up there? It must have been a huge effort and caused her a lot of pain. As my Mum put it "she insisted that we both get up and follow her out into the lounge". When they got there they noticed that the smoke alarm was going off. Luckily there was no fire, the battery was just flat. If there had been a fire, Tali would have saved their lives as they hadn't woken up when the smoke alarm went off. Why go to all the effort to rock the waterbed when someone always gets up when she barks? Well, then they would have thought she wanted to go outside of course. Better to not confuse the humans I guess.

Author: Gina Sturkenboom
No country specified.
True story: Yes
Rating: 12 paws up
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This is a very interesting story.

Posted by Joyce Elphick 16 months ago  x

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