Young Einstein

I read in the paper this morning that Canadian animal psychologists have found that dogs are as intelligent as the average two-year-old child.
They used tests designed to show the development of language, pre-language and basic arithmetic in kids and found that dogs could understand up to 250 words and gestures, count up to five and do simple mathematical calculations.
Golden retrievers are apparently among the most intelligent and, the report said, dogs can rival apes and parrots for their ability to understand language.
I don't have an ape or a parrot but I do have a golden retriever (pictured above with my husband's jumper on her head, pretending rather cleverly that she's invisible).
Ella, who also answers to the names Bumhead and Nuffnuff (because that's the noise she makes when she spots next door's cat through the window), doesn't have quite the vocabulary of your canine high achievers but she will very soon, because now I know what she's capable of, I'm going to start intensive vocab lessons.
The words and phrases she knows already are no, sit, stay, walkies, catch, go get it, drop it, good girl, dinner, breakfast, biscuit, chewie (aka Schmackos), yummy medicine, Paul and Kate (our kids), Mummy and Daddy (I nearly didn't include those, so embarrassing), squeaky bone, hot dog (the shape of her favourite squeaky bone), car, let's go, go and do wee, give me a cuddle (when I say this she jumps up on my knee and stays there for hours or until I can no longer feel my legs, whichever comes first), where are my socks, and lie down.
Here is a picture of Ella understanding and obeying the command "lie down".

And here is another picture taken after my husband thought she looked too comfortable lying down and said, "Cat!"

You'll notice that the TV in the background of picture 2 is showing an image of a man in a silly costume. This is because it's the History Channel, to which my husband is connected intravenously.
Some time this week, I'm going to teach Ella the words "History Channel" and this will be the signal for her to grab the remote control and bury it in the garden.
Now I know how clever Ella is, I'm sure she'll have no problems learning this.
Next week I'm going to teach her Pythagoras' Theorem. I'll let you know how it goes.

PS: In case you're wondering, the most intelligent dog breeds were found to be border collies, poodles, German shepherds, golden retrievers, doberman pinschers, Shetland sheepdogs, labrador retrievers, papillons, rottweilers and Australian cattle dogs.
The least intelligent were Afghan hounds, basenjis, bulldogs, chow chows, borzois, bloodhounds, pekingese, beagles, mastiffs and basset hounds.

My First Dictionary

Many thanks to JudiJ for sending me a link to My First Dictionary, a blog by British librarian Ross Horsley, who comes up with definitions like the one above most days of the week.
Horsley's blog is very dark and very funny and I love it. You'll find it here.

Up the garden path (2)

Back in May we asked a bloke to come over and quote a price for laying the garden paths around the house.
This man, who I'll call Mr Can-Do, was very friendly. All over us like a rash, truth be told. Nothing was too much trouble, he could do everything from go to whoa.
The price he quoted for the job was amazing, almost too good to be true. We accepted straight away and, yes, he could start some time in June and, yes, he'd put the quote in writing and leave it in our mailbox the next time he drove past.
He never did give us that written quotation, even though we asked him twice, but this didn't bother us too much because, for some reason, a lot of tradesmen down here won't.
Besides, Mr Can-Do was a nice bloke, wasn't he? Friendly. Trustworthy.
As it turned out, Mr Can-Do didn't start in June. We were also having the house rendered and he agreed with our renderer that it would be better to lay the paths after the rendering was finished. Just ring when you're ready for me to start, he said. What a guy.
So, once the rendering was done - brilliantly, I might add, by a lovely bloke called David Cook - I rang Mr Can-Do and left a message on his phone.
When he didn't ring back after a few days, my husband called again.
And what my husband got this time was a very different bloke. A bloke who was rude and surly and whose conversation consisted of words like "nah" and "dunno" and "maybe".
Now, we're not idiots. After that phone conversation, even Blind Freddy could see that Mr Can-Do had lots of other work and didn't want to lay our garden paths any more. But we decided not to worry about it until after the weekend because, well, sometimes you just get sick of this shit and need to stick your head in the sand for a while.
Then, lo and behold, on Saturday, in the middle of the footy, there was a knock on the door and there he was, in the flesh. He thought he'd better have a look round, he said, before he started the job.
He was friendly again, talking in words of more than two syllables but, unfortunately, he'd morphed into Mr Can't-Do.
There was a lot more work than he'd originally thought when he gave the quote, he said. Before he could start we'd have to do all sorts of things: dig up and redistribute the clay and have compacting sand delivered and put it on the paths and compact it and remove a section of fence and dig up heaps of plants so the barrow could get through because he wasn't having his blokes pushing barrows uphill.
Now, my husband works five days a week, so on Monday he rang Mr Can't-Do and asked if we could pay extra to have some of his labourers do this unforeseen prep work.
"Nah, can't help ya, too busy."
Did he know of anyone else we could pay, then?
"Nah."
It was like dealing with Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Then, lo and behold, we got a call Monday afternoon saying his two labourers would be coming over the next morning - as in, yesterday morning.
So I arranged for the sand to be dumped in the driveway by 9am and dug up the plants and put them in pots and got money out of the bank to pay these two blokes direct.
My husband got up at six yesterday morning to finish things off and the two labourers turned up at quarter past eight.
My husband showed them what we wanted done, then headed off to work, and the two labourers drove off to pick up their tools.
And they never came back.
I waited and waited and waited. The sand was delivered. I waited some more.
In the end, because I had to go out, I rang Mr Can't-Do at 10am to see what was going on. This was the conversation.
Me: Hi, it's Michele. Your two blokes left to pick up their tools at 8.30 and haven't come back. I have to go out and I was wondering what was happening.
Him: Dunno.
Me: Do you know if they picked up their stuff.
Him: Yeah, they got it.
Me: Well, they haven't come back here. Do you have a mobile number for them?
Him: Yeah, hang on. (Pause 10 seconds). Look, I'll have to ring you back.
Me: OK. My number's...
Him (interrupting): Listen, I'm on the road. I don't need this. I'm too busy for this.
Me: Yeah, well, we're all busy. It's not just you.
Him (shouting): Don't you get uppity with me.
Me: I'm not, I'm upset they haven't come back. You'd be upset too if you were treated like this.
Him (shouting louder): Shut up. Just shut up and listen.
Me (shouting back): What? Don't you...
Him (screaming over the top of me): I don't have to put up with this. You can shove the job. I don't need your money.
And then he hung up.
When my husband found out, he phoned this prick and said things to him that could never be printed here.
And that's what Mr Can't-Do wanted all along because now he'll be able to tell whoever's interested what nasty, difficult people we are. He'll be able to justify not doing the job for us.
But only to himself. Everyone I've told about this (everyone I can think of, basically) thinks he's an arsehole who didn't have the balls to say, "Look, I agreed to do this job when I had no other work but now I've got lots and I'm pulling out."
Which is why this post is headed "Up the garden path (2)". If you look at the post below you might see some similarities.
Footnote: we now know that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. And if you've got this far, congratulations and a big thank you for bearing with me. I really needed to get it off my chest.

Up the garden path (1)

I have a very dear friend, single for a long time, who for the last three months has been in a relationship with a man who is witty, intelligent and passionate.
We're talking about passion with a capital P, both physically and emotionally. He even sends her e-mails from work along the lines of, "Only six hours until I can touch you again."
The last time I saw her, which was the last time I was in Perth, the two of them had just spent a particularly lovely weekend together.
That was four weeks ago. He hasn't spoken to her since.
He doesn't return her calls, nor has he replied to her e-mails.
He's not dead. She knows this because she rang his workplace. Apart from that, though, she doesn't have a clue what happened.
So, for the past four weeks she's been through various kinds of hell, starting with puzzlement, going through bleak disappointment and hurt, and ending where so many women end up: It's probably my fault.
It's not, of course. The guy's an arsehole. A gutless wonder who didn't have the balls to say, "I need a break" or "I'm having second thoughts" or whatever it was that was disturbing the universe that is him.
My friend recently entered the next stage of this awful affair: anger.
Now, I've seen her when she gets angry and feel that someone should probably say to this bloke, "Be afraid. Be very afraid."
It won't be me because I think he deserves whatever's coming. I'm now waiting with bated breath to see if it makes the evening news and if it involves his testicles and a mangle.
She's already talked about hiring a skywriter but I suspect it may go way beyond that.

Things I won't hear in my lifetime

"Hi, this is your dedicated garden path person.
"I just wanted to let you know that the price I quoted for the job is firm and inclusive of absolutely everything to do with garden paths.
"There'll be no nasty surprises.
"Yes, honestly. Absolutely. Swear on a road accident. No need to worry about a thing.
"Have a lovely day."