It was early evening and Stick Dog was asleep in his pipe.
He awoke when he heard a familiar sound. It was the padding of his four friends’ paws as they came toward his home. Stripes, Mutt, Karen, and Poo-Poo rustled leaves, sticks, and underbrush as they made their way to his pipe. This was, without a doubt, one of Stick Dog’s favorite times.
He always enjoyed seeing and playing with his friends, of course. But Stick Dog loved to hear the other dogs approach his home for another reason too.
They often got lost in the woods surrounding his pipe.
And when they did, it was quite amusing to Stick Dog.
Sometimes they found their way to his pipe in five minutes, and sometimes it took them twenty minutes. The record was an entire afternoon.
The best part for Stick Dog was that he could hear little comments his friends made to each other as they sought his pipe. And this day was no exception. Stick Dog could hear them talking fifty yards to the left.
“I think Stick Dog moved his pipe again,” said Karen, the dachshund.
“That’s the third time this week,” Mutt added.
Stick Dog smiled to himself and coughed a couple of times to give away his location a little bit.
“I hear him!” said Karen.
“Me too!” said Mutt. “It’s this way.”
In a couple of minutes—and several more coughs—Karen, Poo-Poo, Stripes, and Mutt emerged from the forest in front of Stick Dog’s pipe.
“Stick Dog,” Karen said, and squatted down to brush burrs from her fur with her front paws. “You have to stop moving your pipe! It makes it too hard for us to find.”
Stick Dog glanced up at the roof of his pipe and then all the way around the rim of its opening. It was a huge pipe. It was probably eight feet high and it ran all the way under Highway 16, which was a four-lane highway about one hundred feet above them.
“I didn’t move it,” said Stick Dog. “I couldn’t. It’s at the bottom of this giant hill and it goes all the way through it. There must be two hundred tons of dirt and rocks above this thing. How could I possibly move it?”
“Well, it’s not where it was yesterday,” said Stripes, the Dalmatian, agreeing with Karen.
“Of course it is.”
“I concur with Karen and Stripes,” said Mutt. “If it was where it was yesterday, then we would have found it much quicker.”
“Yes,” said Stick Dog. “You would think so.”
“A-HA!” yelped Poo-Poo, the poodle. “You admitted it! You’ve been moving your pipe!”
Stick Dog shook his head and wondered if it was worth continuing the conversation. He decided it was. “I didn’t admit moving the pipe—I agreed that you should be able to find the pipe if I hadn’t moved it.”
“Umm, I know a thing or two about logic,” said Karen. She scooched her belly across the ground, trying to scrape a final burr from her fur. “And you just proved yourself wrong, Stick Dog. First, you said we should be able to find your pipe. Second, we couldn’t find it. Therefore, the pipe must have moved.”
“Excellent deductive reasoning, Karen!” Mutt exclaimed. “Way to figure it out.”
“Yes, yes,” Stripes said.
And Poo-Poo pointed a paw directly at Stick Dog. He smiled slightly from one side of his mouth. He squinted one eye and declared in a loud, sharp whisper, “You’re busted!”
Now, Stick Dog could have said, “Maybe you guys just aren’t very good at finding things in the woods.” Or he could have asked, “How in the world could I pull a huge pipe out from under a two-hundred-ton hill of rocks and dirt?” Or he could have said, “You guys are nuts.”
But Stick Dog didn’t say any of those things.
He liked the looks on their faces. They expressed a sense of accomplishment. Stick Dog was often the one who ended up being right about things—whether it was some piece of random information or the legitimacy of a particular food-snatching strategy. And now that the other dogs thought they had gotten the best of him (even though Stick Dog knew they hadn’t), he liked the way they were feeling about themselves.
So Stick Dog let them believe that he had moved his pipe just to trick them. And he changed the subject entirely by saying this: “I’m hungry. We need to find some food.”
Food is, by the way, the one-and-only best way to get a dog’s attention. And I’m not just making this up for the story’s sake.
Do you want proof about this dog characteristic?
Okay.
Find a dog and have some cheese or little pieces of chicken with you.
Now, give that dog a favorite toy—a tennis ball, a chewed-up rope, maybe an old baseball cap . . . whatever. Let him get used to having that toy. Let him gnaw on it and snuggle with it.
We’ll use the baseball cap as an example. Here’s what they’re thinking: “Man, this baseball cap is the absolute best! I can’t believe they gave it to me! They used to wear this thing on their heads and now it’s mine. Why would they want to cover up their only patch of fur anyway? I don’t understand these humans. They’re loony. Oh, never mind. I’ve got this cap and it’s chewy and flexible and everything I love! It doesn’t taste too good, but who cares?! I think I’ll swallow little pieces of it later anyway. Woo-hoo!”
The dog loves this cap, right?
Now, do this: put a single piece of cheese or a little piece of chicken on the floor about ten feet away. Make sure the dog sees you, but you don’t have to call him or point to the food or anything.
Now watch what happens.
Ninety percent of all dogs will drop the cap—that just nanoseconds ago was the absolute center of their universe—and go get that food.
You know what the other 10 percent do?
They’re the smart ones. They take that baseball cap over to the food on the floor. Then they drop the cap right next to the food, eat the food, and pick the cap back up. But make no mistake: it’s the food they want the most. Need further proof for this 10 percent of Einstein dogs?
All right, Mister or Missus I-don’t-believe-everything-I-read-in-a-book. Try this: get the dog to “stay,” then take the baseball cap and put it on the floor a few feet away to the left of the dog. Then take the tasty food morsel and put it on the floor a few feet away to the right. And then say, “Okay” to release this fine beast and see where he goes first.
He will go to the food. Every time. Guaranteed.
If he doesn’t go to the food first, I’m afraid I have some bad news for you. Here it is:
What you have there in front of you is not a dog. I don’t know what it is (HOW COULD I? I’M NOT EVEN THERE?!?), but it is most certainly not a dog. It may be a big rabbit—or a hamster. Or maybe it’s your little sister or brother dressed up in a dog costume to fool you. Younger siblings always do stuff like that.
Whatever it is, it is not a dog. So, you should go to your parents and say, “I want a dog.” And when they say, “We already have a dog,” you say, “No, we don’t. This whatever-it-is does not prioritize food over its favorite toy. Therefore, it is not a dog. And I want a dog!”
Use the highly scientific toy-versus-food test to prove everything to your parents. They might not be convinced, but they will appreciate your scientific methods.
So, yeah, anyway.
When Stick Dog said he was hungry, that was it. There was no more talk of him moving the giant pipe. Now the dogs were focused completely on food—or, more precisely, their lack of food. Rising above the whisper of the wind through the birch and sycamore trees, above the rustle and crackle of leaves, beyond the steady and rhythmic beat of traffic high above on Highway 16, a more pronounced and significant sound could be heard.
The stomach rumblings of five hungry dogs.