你是否曾养过智力超常的宠物（下）

Adam Welch, Just a regular guy with lots of life experiences.

亚当·韦尔奇，有很多生活经验的普通人

Yes and sometimes it freaks me out.
We have no real idea what her breed is, but I'd suspect it's about 5 things. She is the smartest dog I've ever met, so much so that I rarely have to speak to her at all. I'll give you a few examples. Winter's favorite place to sleep is on the ottoman at my feet. I don't always let her though, as I want to stretch out myself. In order to ask permission, she'll sit behind the ottoman and look at me. If I look away then she knows she can't. If however I nod my head, she'll climb up and lay down. The whole interaction is completely non verbal.

是的，有时这让我很害怕
我们不知道它是什么品种，但有5件事让我怀疑它是我见过的最聪明的狗，聪明到我几乎不需要和她说话。我给你们举几个例子。冬天最喜欢睡觉的地方就是我脚边的沙发。而我不总是让它睡，因为我想好好伸展身体。为了得到许可，它会坐在沙发后面看着我。如果我看向别处，她就知道它不被允许。但如果我点头，她就会爬上去躺下。整个互动完全是非语言的。

When I take her out to use the restroom, sometimes I'll let her run around a bit before coming back inside. I don't always because there might be people around and she's very territorial and protective. She'll do her business and sit in front of me. If I turn towards the house, she'll run back inside. If however I lean against the house, she'll take off towards the field to play.
If she's getting into trouble, I can stand up with my hands on my hips and look at her. She'll stop what she is doing and sit down embarrassed. If however I jerk my head towards the bedroom, she'll walk towards the room and lay in timeout untill I whistle for her.
So this probably sounds pretty unremarkable right? I'd imagine most any dog could be trained to do these things by a professional. But that's what's crazy. I've never trained her! I haven't, my wife and kids haven't. I've never taken her anywhere. She just figured out how to communicate with me. I'd love to say it was my doing but trust me it was all her.

当我带她出去上厕所时，有时我会让它跑一会儿。我不总是这样，因为周围可能有人，而且它很有地盘意识和保护欲。它会“询问”我，然后坐在我面前。如果我转身朝房子，她会跑回屋里。不过，如果我靠在房子上，它就会跑到田野里去玩。
如果它在制造麻烦，我就站起来，双手叉腰，看着它。她会停下手里的活儿，尴尬地坐下。然而，如果我把头朝卧室一扬，她就会走到房间里，等待我吹口哨叫她。
这听起来很普通，对吧?我想大多数的狗都可以通过专业的训练来做这些事情。但这就是疯狂之处。我从来没有训练过她!我没有，我的妻子和孩子没有。我从没带它去过任何地方。它刚知道怎么跟我沟通。我很想说是我教的，但相信我都是它天生就会。

Kathie Lee, former park ranger

凯西·李，前公园管理员

This is Milton, a sweet chocolate Labrador my sister adopted from the shelter when he was seven years old. Why he was abandoned we will never know but it’s obvious he was a well loved dog.
My sister had a farm of 200 chickens. Every morning she and the kids collected 200 eggs and sometimes they missed a few. Milton watched their activity every day. He was supposed to be a pet not meant to be a work dog, but I guess Milton had other ideas.
One day I came for a visit and found about half dozen eggs on the floor of the back deck. I brought them inside and asked my sister about it. She said that after she and the kids finish collecting the eggs, Milton will go into the chicken coops and check the boxes, if he finds an egg he picks it up with his soft mouth and carry it to the house. Unless one of the barn cats is around to open the door for him, Milton leaves the egg on the deck floor and returns to the coop to search for more wayward eggs.
Nobody trained Milton to do this, he watched his new family collect eggs and figured that’s what he should do too. From there he decided it was his duty to patrol the property and keep other dogs and foxes away from his chickens. Even he wasn’t able to keep the hawks from making off with one of his chickens now and then.

这是米尔顿，我姐姐七岁时从收容所收养的一只巧克力拉布拉多犬。我们永远也不知道他为什么被遗弃，但很明显，他是一条深受爱戴的狗。
我姐姐有一个饲养200只鸡的农场。每天早上，她和孩子们收集200个鸡蛋，有时他们会错过一些。米尔顿每天都观察他们的活动。他应该是一只宠物犬，而不是一只工作犬，但我想弥尔顿还有其他想法。
有一天我来拜访，在后院的地板上发现了大约半打鸡蛋。我把它们带进来，问我妹妹这件事。她说，在她和孩子们收集完鸡蛋后，米尔顿会走进鸡笼检查盒子，如果他发现一个鸡蛋，他会用柔软的嘴把它捡起来，带到房子里。除非谷仓里的猫在附近为它开门，否则弥尔顿会把蛋留在地板上，然后回到鸡舍去寻找更多的鸡蛋。
没有人训练弥尔顿这样做，仅仅看着它的新家庭成员收集鸡蛋，并认为这也是它应该做的。从那以后，它决定它的职责是巡逻房屋，让其它狗和狐狸远离鸡。即使是它也无法阻止老鹰时不时地叼走一只小鸡。

Joe Doss, studied History & Religion at Massey University

乔·多斯，在梅西大学学习历史和宗教

My collie mix is so smart my wife and I have to speak an archaic form of English around him and time we discuss anything that might excite him because he learns standard English so fast. At first I thought he was just picking up on single words like walk, park, leash etc so we switched to versions of those that he doesn’t know but he still understood. I thought he must be picking up on words like ‘go to the’ or ‘take the dogs’ so we changed that too, still no good. At this point we use a mixture of archaic words or inaccurate but somewhat fitting words and even put them in an uncharacteristic order to throw him off.
“I’m taking the dogs to the park where is the leash” turns into something like
“Off to the beloved grassy place I meander with the 4 legs, where be his bridle?”
You can’t use the same phase for too long before he starts to learn it. The upside is he is extremely easy to train. I can train him to do almost anything a dog is capable of doing in 5 mins. He also enforces rules on our other dog. If for example she picks up something belongs to us humans the genius will attack(play fight) her. We don’t even tell him what is and isn’t off limits since he was a puppy, he just seems to know what belongs to the dogs and what doesn’t.
If you speak directly to him for a while he will try to mimic our speech. He can’t quite make the right sounds but he gets close and he clearly trying to match the sounds we make.
He tattles on the other dog if she does something he thinks we wouldn’t like. He will come and paw at you and until you follow him and find the mess she made.

我的牧羊犬非常聪明，我妻子和我不得不在他周围说一种古老的英语，每次我们讨论任何可能让他兴奋的事情时，因为他学习标准英语的速度太快了。一开始我以为它只是在学习一些单词，比如步行、停车、皮带等等，所以我们换了一些他不知道但他仍然理解的单词。我想他一定是学会了“去吧”或“带着狗”这样的词，所以我们也改变了，还是没很好效果。在这一点上，我们混合使用古老词语或不准确但还算合适的词，甚至把它们放在一个不寻常的顺序，以迷惑它。
“我要带狗去公园，那里有皮带”变成了这样的话
“我牵着四条腿，漫步到心爱的草地，那里是它的缰绳？”
在它开始学会之前，你不能在长时间内使用同一语句结构。好处是他非常容易被训练。我在5分钟内可以训练它做任何狗能做的事情。他还对我们的另一条狗执行规则。例如，如果它捡起属于我们人类的东西，这只天才狗就会攻击（打）它。我们甚至没有告诉它什么是禁区，什么不是禁区，因为它还是一只小狗，但是它似乎知道什么属于狗，什么不属于狗。
如果一段时间你直接跟它说啥，他会试图模仿我们的语言。它不能发出正确的声音，但声音与我们很似，很明显的是他试图发出和我们声音相匹配的声音。
如果另一条狗做了他认为我们不喜欢的事情，他就会打她的小报告。它会过来用爪子抓你，直到你跟着他，发现一团糟的混乱情况。

Mercedes R. Lackey, Studied ethology under Dr. Eric Klinghammer.

Mercedes R. Lackey, 在埃里克·克林格默博士的指导下研究了动物行为学

I adopted a large 12 year old rescue dog named Sammy Girl. Her owners moved to a rental house where she was not allowed inside anymore despite the fact that she had always lived inside with her owner. they dropped her off at the SPCA. I brought her to a night class at the college where I teach piano classes. She lay down next to an older student and refused to budge. He was not too happy about it as he didn’t love dogs but she would follow him whenever he got up no matter what I tried to do. She was very obedient otherwise, so this was very odd behavior.
She also pulled stunts like laying down in the middle of a busy intersection until I realized that she would only move if I fed her a treat! She was a very smart cookie. I had this beauty for 15 months before she passed.

我收养了一只12岁大的救援犬，名叫萨米，母狗。她的主人搬到了一所出租的房子里，尽管她一直和她的主人住在里面，但她突然不再被允许进入。她出生后，他们把她送到了动物保护协会。我带她去上大学的夜校，在那里我教钢琴课。她躺在一个大一点的学生旁边，一动不动。那个学生对此不太高兴，因为他不喜欢狗，但无论我做什么，只要她起床，她都会跟着那个学生。除此之外，她很听话，所以这是非常奇怪的行为。
她还表演了一些特技，比如躺在繁忙的十字路口中间，直到我意识到并给她吃东西，她才会动!她是一个非常聪明的狗。在她去世前，我拥有她15个月。

Kitty Wood, Library Asst/Branch Mgr

Kitty Wood，图书馆助理/分馆经理
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处

When we were newlyweds and living on an airbase in Montana we went to the local dog shelter and adopted a beagle/lab mix. Named her Boeuffy (French for bull and pronounced “Buffy”). That dog was smart enough to ask permission to sleep with me when hubs was out on duty overnight. She’d walk around the bed and lay her head on the bed and whine. If I said, “Climb on up,” she would jump onto the bed. If I said no, she’d go to her rug, under the bed.
She knew she was not allowed on the furniture but when playing with us while we were sitting on the couch, she would gradually put her paws up onto the couch. We would let it go until she had three paws on the couch and as she would reach up to put that fourth paw up we’d say no…and she would pull that leg down. She knew as long as she had 1 paw one the floor she was good.
She could tell the difference between her various toys. She could bring her ball, bone, sock, etc. on command. If she decided she wanted to play she would bring a toy to you and drop it into your lap. If you ignored her, she would whine a little but eventually she would mouth your hand and drop your hand onto the toy. From there it progressed to frustrated barking.
She loved riding in the car. We had just one car between us at that time so I didn’t get out that much. But she quickly learned that if Dad was not wearing his military fatigues that chances were good that she would get a ride. All she had to do was hear the car keys jingle and she’d come running. If she saw hubs in the uniform she’d lie back down and sigh knowing that she wasn’t going anywhere.
It’s been over 30 years since we lost her and I would swear I’d never seen another dog as smart as she is—that is until we rescued a rat terrier mix named Loki. Loki has the smarts I saw in Boeuffy. He holds conversations with us. He barks and make noises and then waits for us to speak back to him. He loves to initiate conversations. Life is good with a dog—but especially fun with a smart dog!

当我们还是新婚夫妇，住在蒙大拿州的一个空军基地时，我们去了当地的狗收容所，领养了一只猎犬和一只拉布拉多寻回犬的杂交品种狗。给她取名为Boeuffy（法语中公牛的意思，发音为“Buffy”）。那只狗很聪明，在我当班的时候，它会请求允许和我睡觉。她会绕着床走，把头靠在床上，呜咽着。如果我说“爬上去”，她就会跳到床上。如果我说不，她会去在床下的地毯。
她知道不被允许她坐在家具上，但当我们坐在沙发上玩的时候，她会慢慢地把爪子放在沙发上。我们会放开它，直到她有三只爪子在沙发上，当她伸出手来举起第四只爪子时，我们会说不，她会把那条腿拉下来。她知道只要她在地板上有一只爪子，她就会没事。
她能分辨出各种玩具之间的区别。她可以按命令带球、骨头、袜子等。如果她决定要玩，她会带一个玩具给你，然后把它放在你的腿上。如果你不理睬她，她会发一点牢骚，但最终她会用嘴捂住你的手，把你的手放在玩具上。从那以后，它就变成了带沮丧情绪的吠叫。
她喜欢坐在车里。那时候我们只有一辆车，所以我没有经常出去。但她很快意识到，如果爸爸不穿军装，她很有可能会被搭车。她只要听到车钥匙的叮当声就会跑过来。如果她看到人穿着制服，她就会躺下来，叹着气，知道自己哪儿也去不了。
我们失去它已经30多年了，我发誓我从来没有见过其他狗像它这么聪明，直到我们救了一只叫洛基的杂交捕鼠梗。洛基有我在Boeuffy身上看到的智慧。他汪汪叫着，发出声音，我们交谈—然后等着我们跟他顶嘴。他喜欢发起对话。有狗的生活是美好的，但有一只聪明的狗特别有趣！

Niamh Healy, former Supervisor at Holland and Barrett (2013-2015)
Ok so every one is going to think I’m crazy or just straight up not believe me. I would think I was insane if my family and a few friends weren’t around to witness any of this.
Everyone is talking about dogs and cats but my little Einstein is named Gubby and she is a rabbit.
I first came across Gubby 5 and a half years ago. She was in a run down pet shop that our local ISPCA had been trying to shut down for years. Every so often I would go in to document the state of the place. This day I found Gubby in amongst a load of fully grown rabbits. She was so small that she could fit in one hand. She was clearly only between 4–6 weeks old. Far too young to be separated from her mother. When I saw a staff member of the shop dump a bag of carrots into the pen as their food I almost swallowed my own tongue! I’m not sure how well read you are on rabbits but this NOT the way to feed them. Especially a little baby. I didn’t know how she was surviving.

好吧，所以每个人都会认为我疯了，或者干脆不相信我。如果我的家人和几个朋友不在场见证这一切，我会认为我疯了。
每个人都在谈论狗和猫，但我的小爱因斯坦叫古比，她是一只兔子。
我第一次见到古比是在5年半前。她住在一家破旧的宠物店，我们当地的防止虐待动物协会多年来一直试图关闭这家店。每隔一段时间，我就会去记录这个地方的状况。这一天，我在一群成年兔子中间发现了古比。她很小，一只手就可以放得下。她显然只有4-6周大。太小了，不能和她母亲分开。当我看到商店的一名工作人员把一袋胡萝卜扔进围栏里作为他们的食物时，我差点吞了自己的舌头！我不确定你对兔子有多了解，但这不是喂养兔子的方法。尤其是一个小兔子，我不知道她是怎么活下来的。

I picked her up in my arms away from the small children trying to grab her. She just cling to me, desperately trying not to be put back in that hell hole. I had wanted a rabbit for 5 years at this point and had just finished up college. I went straight home with photos of this tiny little girl and told my parents that come hell or high water I was going back to get her the next day.
My father drove me to a good pet store many miles away so that I wasn’t giving my money to that disgusting shop. We quickly for everything I needed and headed straight back to the pet shop that Gubby was in. I marched in, told them to put her in her carrier, threw the €30 at them, gave them a piece of my mind and left. I know paying them for her seems wrong but calling the ISPCA to do something about it would have taken days or even weeks at which point she would have definitely been dead.
Gubby was horribly sick for months. I found a great vet about 25 miles away who was wonderful with small animals. A lot of time and money was spent getting my new baby healthy. All this time she sick but ridiculously easy to train.
She was litter box trained in a day, knew her name, came when called and went back into her cage at night time when I told her to. She also “danced” every time a particular song came on, it was her favourite .
This was all well and fine until the little tyrant got behind a book shelf and bit through the internet connection (as bunnies are wont to do). She got a shock off of it. I was terrified that she would be damaged from this.

我把她抱在怀里，远离那些试图抓住她的小孩。她紧紧地抱住我，拼命地想不被放回那个鬼地方。在那时，我想要一只兔子已经5年了，而且刚刚完成大学学业。我带着这个小女孩的照片直接回家，告诉我的父母无论遇到什么困难，第二天我都要回去接她。
我父亲开车送我到几英里外的一家好宠物店，这样我就不会把钱给那家恶心的商店。我们很快就找到了我需要的一切，然后直接回到了Gubby所在的宠物店。我大步走了进去，告诉他们把她放进她的行李架，把30欧元扔给他们，狠狠地揍了他们一顿，然后离开了。我知道为她付钱似乎是错误的，但打电话给防止虐待动物协会做点什么可能需要几天甚至几周的时间，彼时她肯定已经死了。
古比病了好几个月。我在25英里外找到了一位很棒的兽医，他对小动物很在行。我花了很多时间和金钱让它恢复健康。一直以来，她是生病状态，但训练起来却出奇地容易。
她在一天内接受了猫砂盒训练，知道自己的名字，叫她时就过来，晚上我叫她时就回到笼子里。每当一个特定的歌曲出现，她也“跳舞”，这是她的最爱。
这一切都很好，直到小暴君躲到书架后面，咬断了网线(（兔子们习惯这样做）。她被吓了一跳，我害怕她会因此受到伤害。

Nope.
After this she seemed to become addicted to the shock of electricity. I had closed off any possible wires in the kitchen where she was living a free roaming rabbit. She just had a little dog bed and a litter box.
One night I was away from home. She was a bit bigger now. The lock on the door between the kitchen and hall isn’t great in my house and so in the middle of this night she figured out how to open the door by bumping off it and pulling at it with her paws. (Again you’d have to see it to believe it.) This particular night she went looking for me as she hadn’t seen me for a few hours. My father woke up to a noise coming from under his side of the bed. It was Gubby.

不。
此后，她似乎对电击上瘾了。我已经切断了厨房里任何可能的电线，她住在那里，就像一只自由漫游的兔子。她只有一张小狗床和一个猫砂盒。
一天晚上，我不在家。她现在大了一点。我家厨房和门厅之间的门锁不太好，所以在半夜里，她想出了如何用敲门把它打开，用爪子拉门。（再说一次，你必须看到它才能相信。）这个特别的夜晚，她找我，因为她已经好几个小时没见到我了。我父亲醒来时，床下传来一阵响声—是古比。

Now the next part of this story still boggles me and slightly enraged me as she could have died. My father having found her (and knowing I wasn’t coming home that night) put her into my room instead of bringing her back to the kitchen! There was no litter box, no water bowl, no hay or anything she needed in my room but worst of all? I was sleeping on a mattress on the floor at the time (my own choice). My hair dryer was still plugged into the wall from when I was getting ready before going out. Naturally Gubby was drawn to this and bit straight through it! When I got back home the next day to find her and the chewed through wire in my room I almost had a heart attack. I went to pick up the hair dryer and got the biggest bang from it that I’ve ever gotten in my life. I screamed and dropped it. This happened to me. So how was this little thing still completely fine?

现在这个故事的下一部分仍然让我感到困惑和有点愤怒，因为她可能会死。我父亲找到了她(知道我那天晚上不回家)，把她放进了我的房间，而不是把她带回厨房！我的房间里没有垃圾箱，没有水碗，没有干草或者她需要的任何东西，但最糟糕的是？当时我睡在地板上的床垫上（我自己选择）。我出门前准备的时候，吹风机还插在墙上。当然，古比被这一点吸引到，并直接咬它！当我第二天回到家发现她和我房间里被咬断的电线时，我几乎心脏病发作了。我去拿吹风机，从中得到了我有生以来最大的一次爆炸。我尖叫着把它摔了。这件事发生在我身上！那么这个小东西怎么还完好无损呢？

William Strinden, Medical Doctor (1988-present)
My father bought a horse when I was about 13, mainly because he was very placid in the sales ring. He was an exceedingly nice and smart horse, a very good riding horse who loved people. He would respond to spoken instructions such as, “go and get the bucket and I will give you some oats.” I did not teach him that, I just said it one day and he brought me the empty bucket. Ten years later I was home for a visit and a car stopped by our pasture. A man of about age 30 got out and walked out to the horse who whinneyed and ran up to him, acting like a big dog to his favorite master. The man told us that he raised that horse from birth, but his father sold him when the boy was sent to Vietnam. He started giving him subtle signals and the horse would dance, kneel down, stand up on his back legs, and even gave that fella a kiss on the cheek.

我父亲在我13岁的时候买了一匹马，主要是因为他在销售圈里表现得很平静。它是一匹非常可爱和聪明的马，是一匹爱人的好马。他会回应口头指示，比如“去拿桶来，我给你一些燕麦。”我没有教他，我只是有一天说了，他给我带来了空桶。十年后，我回家参观，一辆汽车停在我们的牧场旁。一个大约30岁的男人从车里出来，走到马面前。马嘶鸣着向他跑去，就像一条大狗在他最喜欢的主人面前一样。那人告诉我们，那匹马是他自己养的，但他被送去越南时，他父亲把它卖掉了。他开始给他微妙的信号，马就会跳舞，会跪下来，用后腿站起来，甚至在那家伙的脸颊上亲了一下。

Jean Lamb, works at Klamath County Library

Jean Lamb,在克拉马斯县图书馆工作

My husband’s dog knew when it was Christmas, and what it was all about. One year, though, we all forgot his present under the tree because of family problems (dad going through open-heart surgery). The dog, he pouted. He sighed. He flopped on the floor, pouted *and* sighed.
Then my sister-in-law thought about it, and put a can of dog food under the tree. The dog came in, happy and all…and then he saw the can. He pouted. He sighed. You know the rest.
Then my husband realized what was wrong, He got a stick on decoration and fixed the problem.
Then the dog was ecstatic, just as happy as that dog has ever been.
See, it’s not Christmas if your present doesn’t have a bow on it.

我丈夫的狗知道圣诞节是什么时候，知道圣诞节是怎么回事。然而有一年，由于家庭问题，我们都忘记把他的礼物放在树下（爸爸正在接受心脏手术）。狗撅着嘴、叹了口气。他一屁股坐在地板上，撅着嘴，叹了口气。
然后我嫂子想了想，在树下放了一罐狗粮。狗高兴地走了进来，然后他看到了罐头。他撅嘴。他叹了口气。其余的你都知道。
然后我丈夫意识到出了什么问题，他拿出了一根装饰棒，解决了这个问题。
然那只狗欣喜若狂，像以前一样开心。
看，如果你的礼物上没有蝴蝶结，那就不是圣诞节了。