Smart? Not half



Border collies surprise constantly. They're all smart, but some are smarter than others.
Take Rosie.
She, sadly, is gone. She will never be forgotten.
Rosie displayed all the usual high-brow collie traits: she'd learn a new behaviour in minutes.
Dog trainers rate dog intelligence by the number of times a dog has to be told/shown something before picking it up.
Most collies can learn something new - a new command, a new trick - after being told or shown just two or three times.
That's smart - and they never forget.
But they learn, too, by watching.
Consider this.
In our old house, for no particular reason, I mowed our lawn from left to right, in strips.
No big deal.
Rosie, one day, put a ball at my feet as I walked behind the mower.
I kicked it, and the game was on.
But here's the amazing part.
After fetching the ball, she took it away and placed it on the piece of lawn I was about to mow, on the other side of the lawn.
She had watched my pattern of mowing.
More surprising was that she placed the ball just to the edge of the strip to be mown, just where I could kick it without veering off my path. She knew enough not to put it on the actual strip to be mown, but just to the left.
Oh, of course she'd worked out I preferred to kick with my left foot.
I kicked it again.
She then took it to the other side of the lawn, right in the ''kick'' zone but not in the path of the mower.
I obliged, of course, giving the ball a gentle kick each time.
After the first mow, the game was locked in.
If I went near the mower she brought the ball.
If I started the mower, she was waiting with the ball, ready to play.
Collies love to play, and Rosie loved the mower-ball-lawn game, playing it to the end.
And because she was collie, I even took the game to the roadside grass verge.
I could do that safely because I knew she would never run off the grass on to the road.
She ''knew'' not to. I didn't teach her that.
We could stop anywhere on a car trip where there was grass. She'd run and play without us having to worry about her ''playing with the cars''.
Rosie learnt many, many tricks, and we reckoned she knew up to 60 commands.
Was she exceptional?
To us, yes.
But any owner of a border collie will have similar stories.
Here she is. Smart, sassy, and achingly loyal.

Rosie in action

Those clever collies

We know dogs are smart; we've seen the TV clips about the border collie who could identify up to 1000 items.
Any farmer who uses dogs will tell you how smart they are.
But it is not just their ability to learn, it is their ability to anticipate.
Sheepdogs do it by second-guessing the moves of a sheep, reading each tiny movement of a limb, or the inclination of a head, to try out-think their quarry.
Our collie Tui is proving day by day how smart she is, though she is anything but trained in the way a sheepdog is.
Tui's proving it with a frisbee. At first, her attempts at trying to catch a frisbee were poor.
How that has changed.
But first you have to realise there are many ways to throw a frisbee.
Only frisbee experts can really direct a frisbee's path.
I'm no expert, but I do know that you can alter the flight of a frisbee by releasing it earlier, or later, or by changing the angle of release.
A frisbee released late, with the arm nearly straight, is more likely to fly in a direct line from the body and then glide to earth.
One thrown with an arm slightly crooked may fly high and then, without warning, drop sharply.
I know that because I have thrown a frisbee a thousand times.
Tui know it, too.
She knows it because she has learned to watch its path closely in flight, while running, and putting herself into a position to snatch it from the air mid-flight.
In short, she is anticipating the frisbee's flight.
That's smart.
I've seen experienced cricketers who often forget that a ball cut or pulled, when it pitches, may spin away from its aerial path.
Fielder after experienced fielder has been left grabbing mid air as the spinning ball hits the grass, grips, and changes directions.
Some fielders never seen to learn that - and they've probably been told time after time by frustrated bowlers as yet another one rolls to the boundary.
Yet a dog, albeit a collie, without coaching, can work such things out.
Tui, no matter which direction I send the frisbee, will take most frisbees mid-flight.
She probably gets 18 out of 20.
That's not bad. No coaching. No training. Just a sharp brain working out angles.
And she doesn't watch the frisbee from the hand, as a batsman might from a bowler's hand; she is usually running at the pointr of release, leaving her less time to work out whether the frisbee will dip, veer left or right, or soar up before sliding back.
But if you think that's smart, I'll tell you soon about another dog's trick.
Yep, another collie, the late, lamented Rosie.
Anyway, below is Tui the super frisbee catcher in a quieter moment.
Cute, eh?