You'd Think They Were All Just Dogs

Luky has lots of "cousins." Well, he calls them cousins. They are not blood relations. They aren't even Malamutes. They are dogs, though.

You've got to understand this about Luky and his ilk. Malamutes are really philosophical, but they aren't very smart. Take Luky for example. He can pontificate on the weightier issues, but he is all but totally incompetent at the basic tasks - calling Mellow Mushroom (http://www.mellowmushroom.com/) for a pizza, answering his fan mail, driving the car . . . you would simply NOT believe his idea of parallel parking.

Now, comparing Luky with his cousins - and I have to try to be discreet here since you-know-who will definitely be verifying this post - but, come-on, Luky, they are pretty smart dogs. Before I unintentionally raise additional hackles I'd better quickly recognize that Luky has other cousins, but they are even more distant. For now I'm comparing him to just the four cousins with whom he has spent enough time for such comparisons to be made. Okay, two of them are Yellow Labs (www.akc.org/breeds/labrador_retriever/index.cfm), one is a Flat-Coated Retriever (www.akc.org/breeds/flat_coated_retriever/index.cfm), and the fourth is a Doberman Pinscher (www.akc.org/breeds/doberman_pinscher/index.cfm).

Each of these dogs, as you might imagine, has a distinct personality. We'll get into all that later on, if I know Luky, but the only point I wanted to make today is that they are ALL smarter than he is. The three retrievers are sporting dogs . . . that's Barney and Blondie, the Yellow Labs, and Spanky, the Flat-Coat. The Doberman, Onyx, is a working dog like Luky, but Dobermans are (I think) smarter. Luky's going to be reading over my shoulder any minute so I can't write everything I want to write, but suffice it to say that whole sled dog image is really blown way out of proportion.

So it all boils down to this - Luky's cousins are all smarter than he is, but they don't bother with the spacey, universal stuff the way he does. None of them seems to mind that much. They all like chasing the same sticks and balls, and diving into the same kibble. Indeed, to watch them on any old Sunday afternoon you'd think they were all just dogs.