A curious dog

Marley is a smart and curious dog. He's always trying to find out what is going on. One of his favorite things is to sit in one place outside for 20 or 30 minutes and watch activity in the neighborhood. You can tell from his concentration and the intensity of his stare that he's learning lots of things. When he's doing this, he won't respond to his name or an offer of treats, so you know something important is going on. Sometimes he'll watch birds for 10 minutes to figure out their movements before trying to catch them. If I didn't keep a tight grip, he might have caught a bird by now.

Marley tries to figure out how things work. If you give him a new toy, he'll try to make it squeak or see if it will bounce or if there's a way to take it apart or get something to come out of it. He has learned how to open closet doors, the non-sliding kind. We have a 42-inch gate to keep Marley out of the kitchen. He watches us going in & out. If he had thumbs, he would have opened the gate already. One of my favorite expressions is, "if a dog had thumbs, it would be over already."

Marley's sense of smell, like all dogs', is truly amazing. He'll sit with his nose in the air, take a few deep whiffs and can tell which people and dogs are coming, what food is being cooked, where the flowers are, etc. Twice, I've witnessed him start barking when Debbie approached in a taxi two blocks away and around the corner. A couple of times, we were on the street & he barked because he smelled smoke, before we heard the fire engines coming.

Marley invents games. I'd roll or bounce the ball away from him in our living room and he would retreive it. After 8 or 10 turns, he pushed the ball under the hutch. I got the ball out and put it near Marley, and he pushed it back under. Then he rolled over on his side and tried to get it with his mouth and front legs. There are also side openings, and Marley will push the ball through the front opening and try to get it by a side opening. Sometimes he lies near a corner and pushes it from one opening through the other and back.