Always watching, always learning…so very smart.
Okay, I gave you a teaser on my story this morning (@justdogswithsherri). So here goes.
Early this morning Riggs came to wake me up; but let me go back to last night first. My hubby and I piled in the bed with 4 fans blowing in our bedroom, the AC on and two standard poodles on the bed with us. As I struggled to get cool, I could hear the pain in my husband’s voice as he moved. He has thrown his back out really bad and just turning over is extremely painful. Turning over in our bed with Riggs and Elsa leaning, pushing and just taking up space is difficult at the best of times.
I decided to go sleep in another of our 4 bedrooms to give him more room; or the dogs more room so that he could actually move in bed. We are a pretty tight gang when the four of us are in bed making it very difficult to move even when you are perfectly fine.
I told my husband that if he needed anything at all, just shout. So off to bed I went, leaving Elsa and Riggs on my side of the bed. This of course made it much easier for Steve to move around if he needed.
With the AC going and my fan blowing I slept pretty good with the whole bed to myself. Around 5:30am I felt Riggs jump on the bed, run around it, dive off and tear off. I grabbed my phone to see what time it was thinking he might need to go out. As I got out of bed I found his “stomp all over Mom” behavior quite strange; that is until I got to our bedroom.
Steve was standing (sort of) and had been calling me to lift Elsa off the bed. I hadn’t heard him with the fan blowing. In the recent months Elsa is not allowed to get off the bed on her own and Steve was in so much pain he needed me to lift her off. When he called me and I didn’t come; Riggs took matters into his own hands (paws). He ran to where I was sleeping, jump up, stomped all over me and took off to where I was needed.
Riggs has shown a natural ability to know who is who and show that he knows who is who. I often ask him to “find Elsa” for me and he does. He is very good at finding things, people and other dogs. Just last weekend I asked him to find her (Elsa) then “find Daddy,” which he did. If I call Elsa and she either doesn’t come or doesn’t hear me, he will run and get her. He is also very good at ratting out Elsa when he thinks she is doing something that she shouldn’t be doing. Of course she never is doing anything wrong (she is an angel); but it is something he thinks she might get in trouble for. :)
He has also learned the sound that our Ring cameras make. When he hears them he either alerts us or goes straight to the source, the front door. I have to admit that I was very surprised at how fast he learned this one.
So this morning when I went into our room I asked my husband “were you calling me?” When he said yes, I shouldn’t have been surprised that Riggs came and got me but I was. I know how smart dogs are but sometimes they even surprise me. For Riggs to know that he needed to come get me, is pretty amazing. Lassie style? Oh yes.
Never underestimate the power of a canine mind.