Is Man’s Best Friend Smarter Than Its Master?

I am grateful for the many letters of advice I have received about containing our runaway dog.

I am less gratified, but not surprised, by the vituperation I have received for suggesting that dogs are not as smart as they are made out to be in movies and dog books.

Many readers suggested that I am less intelligent than our dog, which, in the contest between us, I seem to be.

Suzie is about 5 years old. She is, basically, a German shepherd. Very big and very strong. She has a thrust like the Notre Dame line. Trying to walk her on a leash is hopeless. Our large yard is enclosed by a 5-foot chain-link fence. She gets out and roams the neighborhood. Being spayed, she is not likely to get into that sort of trouble, but our neighbors don’t like her tramping through their gardens.

Readers suggest that she is lonely and I ought to take her for walks. No way. I can’t restrain her and I can’t keep up with her. To keep her from escaping we have been tying her up in her yard. She naturally hates that. So we let her in every night.

Still, it is not humane to keep her tied up in the daytime. In the recent hot spell, biting flies attacked her ears, leaving them bloody and scabbed. The vet said the flies lay their eggs in the ravaged tissue. Since then we have been keeping her in most of the day. Putting salve on her ears is like trying to throw a rhinoceros. She doesn’t like it.

We did not ask for Suzie. We did not ask for Fluff, our mixed Yorkie. Like every dog we have ever had except Fleetwood Pugsley, my Airedale, Suzie and Fluff were deliberately left in our yard. Fluff must have been 15 years old when she vanished. She was deaf and blind. She lived only to eat, and when I put her bowl out she had to find it by touch. She had even lost her sense of smell. We never figured out what happened to her. She simply disappeared. We never found her body. I suspect coyotes, but I don’t know how they got in.

We can’t expect coyotes to make off with Suzie. She is too big. Several people have recommended “invisible fencing”--that is, an electric wire that runs around the perimeter of the yard and keeps pets in. I’m afraid of it. They say the system is harmless, but I don’t know. I remember that woman who was electrocuted in Whittier years ago by a hot wire her husband strung up around her flower bed to keep dogs out. She turned on the hose one day and zip --that was it.

In a typical letter, Teddy Cole of Beverly Hills wrote: “Your dog is telling you he does not like being isolated. So, cleverly he outsmarts your fencing and you.

“He doesn’t run away--he goes visiting. How would you enjoy being jailed? How would you like being alone hour after hour? How would you like being chained up? If all these treatments were wished upon you, I can assure you you would go mad.”

I am not jailed. I’m free to go down the hill for a beer or a sandwich. I’m not chained up. But I am alone hour after hour. Now, of course, my lonely hours are lightened by the sound of hammering and sawing on our remodeling project. I am aware that there are other human beings nearby, going about their work.

It seems to me I should get some credit for having taken in a long string of mongrels that were left in our care by unidentified neighbors who were shirking their own responsibilities. Every dog we have had was going to be our last dog, but fate was against us.

Violet M. Ashton of Huntington Beach suggests that my dog’s stupidity is merely a reflection of my own. “If your own personal dog is dumb--well, animals do pick up the traits of their masters. Animals are superior to people. They don’t send their young out to kill or be killed. They don’t ruin their environment by poisoning earth, air and water. Given love, they are faithful unto death. So who’s stupid, Mr. Smith? Them or us?”

I do think sometimes that I may go mad, unless I am already.