Mary-Anne was the Dog Trainer and Kennel Head where I got Charlie and she had a theory about Dog Intelligence, which went like this:

There’s four types of dogs, rated by how smart they are:

Type 1: Dogs that go through life on a placid river of blissful obliviousness. Type one dogs are so dumb that they are unable to concieve that thier lives may ever come across any form of distress. You look at them and see their minds are full of love, elevator music and Lint.

Type 2: Dogs that are smart enough to cause themselves problems. Where a Type 1 Dog might never notice that there are different kinds of flooring, Type 2 will notice that suddenly the floor has gone from CARPET to TILE. This is weird and new and POTENTIALLY DANGEROUS. Type 2 dogs go through a lot in life, able to percive the vast uncaring void of the Universe and are unable to muster the Mental Horsepower to make any sense of it



Type 3: “Normal” Dogs. Dogs that can tell the floor has gone from Carpet to Tile but understand that they can expirimentally put a foot on the tile and find out it’s safe. Like the average human, they struggle against the senseless void but are capable of gleaning the occasional insight into the workings of the universe, like how the Tile is safe to walk on, or that food happens at the same time every day.

Type 4: Bastards. Dogs that can not only see and solve problems for themselves, but extrapolate from that data and actively improve thier enviornment AKA Cause Problems for everyone else. Type 1 has never noticed the door. Type 2 Is baffled by the door. Type 3 knows about how the door works and to get a human to Operate it. Type 4 knows how to open, close, lock, unlock, and slam the door in the face of anything they despise, like your other dog.

Type ???: Things which are allegedly dogs but do not act in a way that does not correlate to the priorities of any known canine. Dogs that understand the tongues of men better than humans do. Dogs that sit outside at night, staring into the heavens for hours at a time. Dogs that eat anyong but organic matter. What are these? Poorly-disguised aliens? Angels in the only skin that will fit thier anomalous bodies? Cats suffering fomreincarnation glitches? We don’t know. But they are still Very Good Boys.

