Tito Talk

The other day I had proof positive that our dog Tito understands conversational language.


Heavy rain squall during his normal mid-day walk time, I turned back as soon as he pooped, saying "if it stops raining later I will take you out again."  He headed straight home at his quick walk-trot, little ears cocked back to make sure I kept pace.

Some time later I am sitting at my desk and feel Tito's little face staring up from between my legs, his feet on the front of the chair.  Something he rarely does. I ignored. Normally he makes periodic visits to my room, soft sneeze greeting, check the floor under my chair for a quick snack, then back to his area in the other room.  This time he settled in behind me on the carpet, using every word he knows to inform me he wanted to go out.  We never go out at quarter to four in the afternoon.  WTF Tito?

Then I notice that the sound of wind driven rain against the side of the house had abated. Tito is demanding that I be good to my word and take him out again.  What else could it be?

I started living with a dog late in life, and am continually surprised at the level of communication between the three of us who live there.  But conversational language, sentences of several words spoken without emphasis, unlikely to create chemical changes in the speaker that Tito can read, doesn't normally appear to be in his vocabulary.  Until now.

On days when I am home Tito gets his poo walk at eleven-thirty in the morning.  When we did eBay full time, I worked in the office on photography and ads all morning, then the half mile walk with Tito, catch a twenty-minute nap, then spend the afternoon in the shop outside, packaging sold items for shipment or working on inventory that needed attention to make it marketable.  He never goes out again until bed time.  Asking to go out at a quarter to four in the afternoon, and he is not moaning sick at the door is unusual indeed.

Out we go, have a normal smell every mailbox on the way up the street, sniff back and forth to find the perfect spot, then B-line home at a fast trot*.  I am following along at the end of the tether thinking about further testing Tito's newly revealed ability to understand more language than I had previously imagined.

Later I came up with a more plausible explanation for Tito's behavior. We are no longer on the eBay / junker business schedule.  Both MJ and I have been going out to work in schools every day lately, and Tito is home alone from eight in the morning until I get back at three-thirty - quarter to four.  His mind probably didn't even notice that I said something about another walk earlier in the day.  But his little bowl remembered four-o-clock poo every day lately.  Week home on spring break and he is back to the midday schedule, and it doesn't matter what anyone says.

He is an amazingly smart little guy, but not quite up to conversational language.