Bill's Musings

Lately, my dog John has been waking us up occasionally, howling away because he’s having a nightmare. By howling, I mean screaming as loud as a person. It’s quite startling.

Now you’d have to know John to understand just how truly startling this is. John is almost, but not quite, completely deaf. Consequently, he does not bark. Actuall he barely makes a sound. The odd squeak here and there, and on one occasion he meowed like a cat…but rarely does he make a sound. And because he’s completely black, the only way we know he’s around is because of the licence on his collar. That little tinkle sound has saved us countless times from being scared by his sudden presence.

John is also quite dumb. Not ‘silent’ dumb, which he also is, but dumb like a stump. He’s no Lassie, let’s say. In fact, he’s so far below Lassie that Lassie probably wouldn’t have John as a pet. Now that’s dumb. I don’t mean this in a derogatory way, because he’s very loveable. He loves to snuggle with us, he’s the first one to greet people enthusiastically at the door, and tries not to be a burden. He just does dumb things. And he’s okay with that.

That said, let’s get back to the nightmares he’s been having. I’ve researched this on the internet, and everything I’ve found says that a dog having nightmares denotes a certain degree of intelligence in the creature. John? Intelligent? Those two words in the same sentence are kind of like saying ‘moon landing’ and ‘pancake batter’ together.

Here’s an example: when we call the dogs in by the back door, two will run to the door to come in, but John will look at the garage door, thinking you’re there. He regularly gets confused about the most mundane things, and I think he even forgets to drink sometimes, and then wonders about the dry sensation in his mouth. If breathing wasn’t wired into the brain by default, he might at times forget to do that. Poor John.

We here in the Gingras household believe in proving things scientifically. And if they say that John must have some sort of intelligence to be able to have nightmares, we wanted proof. Proof, I say!! So, in order to do this, we set up some simple, yet effective, tests to prove John’s I.Q. (or lack, thereof). After all, if Einstein here is going to wake us up by screaming like a little girl, we want to know why.

On to test number 1. We wanted to see if John actually had feelings. So, we proceeded to give our other two dogs, Leroy and Moonie, a snack, while John was left out. Well, at first, he looked a little confused. Then he licked himself. Then he appeared to fart. Then he fell asleep.

Not such a good start.

Alright. Test number 2. It was time to see if John could discern the difference between food and garbage. We put some of his dog food in a bowl, then left an open garbage bag filled with the day’s trash on the floor. We left him there, and waited in the living room. If he goes for the garbage, and not the food, this would surely be enough proof of a lack of intelligence.  After a few tentative moments, we could hear the trash bag being searched. Aha!!! Go, Dumbo, go!!

John eventually came loping out of the kitchen, licking his chops. We looked in the kitchen. No food left in his bowl and garbage all over the place. We spent the next ten minutes cleaning up, and I’m pretty sure I saw John smirk, although it might have been gas (again). He was starting to look smarter than we thought. We should have quits then and called it a draw, but no. One last kick at the cat (so to speak).

For our third and final test, we wanted to see if he could tell the difference between a real dog, and a stuffed one. Leroy was asleep on the floor. We placed John’s favourite stuffed animal two feet away. Then, we told John ‘Go get him!’. Oh yes. Forgot. John is sort of deaf. Before we could reset the test, both Leroy and the stuffed toy were dry-humped then licked to the point of extreme dampness.

So I now realize why poor John wakes up screaming. He’s living with a bunch of doofuses (or is it Doofi?) Poor dog.