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From: gm@trsvax
Newsgroups: net.jokes
Subject: Dave Barry: The New Dog
Message-ID: <53100126@trsvax>
Date: Mon, 30-Sep-85 17:39:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: trsvax.53100126
Posted: Mon Sep 30 17:39:00 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 5-Oct-85 06:33:19 EDT
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Nf-ID: #N:trsvax:53100126:000:6436
Nf-From: trsvax!gm    Sep 30 16:39:00 1985


I know there are going to be few people out there who are going to flame
at me for posting "copywritten" material to the net, but frankly I don't
give a damn. Dave Barry has said he really doesn't care who reads his
jokes, his bosses do. So here is the latest Dave Barry article:

(Tandy Corp. has no knowledge of this and probably doesn't care.)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

				The new dog

							   By Dave Barry

  We have a new dog, which means we're going through this phase where we spend
a lot of time crouching and stroking and going "Yessss! That's a GOOD girl!"
and otherwise practically awarding the Nobel Prize to her for achievements such
as not pooping on the rug.
  Her name is Earnest, which I realize is not a traditional girl's name, but it
describes her very well. Most dogs are earnest, which is why most people like
them. You can say any fool thing to a dog, and the dog will give you this look
that says, "My God, you're right! I never would have thought of that!" So we
come to think of dogs as being understanding and loving and compassionate, and
after a while we hardly even notice that they spend the bulk of their free time
circling around with other dogs to see which one can sniff the other the most
times in the crotch.
  We are not sure yet whether Earnest has a working brain. You can't tell,
early on, with dogs. When we got our previous dog, Shawna, we thought she was
smart as a whip, because she was a purebred German shepherd who had this
extremely alert look. At first we took this to mean that she was absorbing
every tiny detail of her environment with her keen senses and analyzing it with
computerlike speed, but it turned out to be her way of expressing the concept:
"What?"
  Shawna would be sitting in our yard, looking very sharp, and a squirrel would
scurry right past her, a squirrel whose presence was instantly detected by
normal, neighborhood dogs hundreds of yards away, causing them to bark
rigorously, and also by us humans, causing us to yell, helpfully: "Look!
Shawna! A squirrel!!"
  After a few seconds of delay, during which her nervous system would send the
message via parcel post from her ears to her brain that something was going on,
Shawna would turn in the exact opposite direction from whichever way the
squirrel was, adopt a pose of great canine readiness, and go: "What?"
  The only dog I ever met that was dumber than Shawna belongs to my editor.
This dog, a collie named Augie, also looks smart, because you tend to think
collies are smart if you grew up watching "Lassie."
  Lassie looked brilliant, in part because the farm family she lived with was
made up of idiots. Remember? One of them was always getting pinned under the
tractor, and Lassie was always rushing back to the farmhouse to alert the other
ones. She'd whimper and tug at their sleeves, and they'd always waste precious
minutes saying things: "Do you think something's wrong? Do you think she wants
us to follow her? What is it, girl?" etc., as if this had never happened
before, instead of every week. What with all the time these people spent pinned
under the tractor, I don't see how they managed to grow any crops whatsoever.
They probably got by on federal crop supports, which Lassie filed the
applications for.
  So anyway I thought Augie, being a collie, would have at least some
intelligence, despite the fact that when my editor and I would walk into his
house, Augie would not notice us, sometimes for upwards of a half hour. When
she finally did notice us, talking and drinking beer, she would bark as though
the Manson gang had just burst in, so my editor would have to go over and sort
of say, "Look! It's me! The person you have lived with for 10 years!" This
would cause Augie's lone functioning brain cell to gradually quiet down and go
back to sleep.
  But I still thought she was roughly on a par with Shawna, IQ-wise, until the
night -- you may remember that night; it was the longest one we ever had --
that I slept on my editor's couch in his living room, which is also where Augie
sleeps. Only she doesn't sleep. What she does is, first, she lies down. Then
she scratches herself. Then she engages in loud personal hygiene. Then she
thinks, "Maybe I can go out!" and she walks across the floor, which is made of
a special kind of hard wood so that when a dog walks on it, it goes TICK
TICK TICK TICK at exactly the volume you would use to get maximum benefit from
the Chinese Ticking Torture.
   When Augie gets to the front door, which is of course closed -- it is always
closed at night; even the domestic insects have learned this by now -- she
bumps into it with her head. Then she backs up and bumps into it with her head
a couple more times, in case there has been some mistake. Then she senses,
somehow, that there is a person sleeping on the couch, and she has the most
innovative idea she has ever thought of, which is: "Maybe HE will let me out!"
So she walks over to me and noses me in the face, using the same nose she uses
for hygiene, and I say, "Dammit, Augie! Go to sleep!"
  So she lies down for one minute, which is how long it takes for her brain
cell to forget everything that has ever happened to her since she was born. And
then she starts again: SCRATCH SCRATCH SCRATCH SLURP SLURP SLURP (think) TICK
TICK TICK TICK BUMP (think) BUMP (think) BUMP (think) TICK TICK TICK TICK NOSE
"DAMMIT, AUGIE! GO TO SLEEP!" TICK TICK TICK TICK (pause) SCRATCH. . . .
  I don't know yet about Earnest. One day soon I will give her the dog
intelligence test, where you show her the ball, then you put the ball under a
blanket, and then you see if she can find the ball. Shawna could never find the
ball. I doubt Augie could find the blanket. I'm hoping Earnest does better, but
I'm not counting my chickens.
  I am also not looking forward to receiving a lot of violent letters from you
dog lovers out there, the ones with the "I (heart) my (breed of dog)" bumper
stickers, asking how dare I say dogs are stupid when your dog can add,
subtract, land the space shuttle, etc.
  So please note, dog lovers: I never said your dog is stupid. I said my dog
might be stupid. I know for a fact that she can't be too intelligent, because
here I've written a fairly insulting column about her species, and despite the
fact that she's lying right at my feet, it hasn't occurred to her to pull the
plug on my word processor.