Danny's Friend Chuck

Hello, my name is Andrew and I am Danny the Dog’s human. I will be writing his blog today because Danny went to the beach with his girlfriend. He wrote about her a few days ago, so you know all about her. Danny has asked me to tell you about Chuck the Wonder Dog. This is a true story.

Chuck roomed with a human by the name of Jeff. Now Jeff is a good enough guy, but we have different outlooks on dogs. Jeff thinks dogs should be well trained while I take a more lackadaisical approach to dog training. Actually, Danny has me pretty well trained after ten years of being together. Anyway, when Chuck and Jeff first got together, Chuck was just a puppy and Jeff started right in on the training. Once the basics were covered, he began teaching Chuck to count. Yeah I know, but Jeff is a boat captain and he has plenty of time on his hands.

The way he did it was to hold up one finger and get Chuck to bark once. When Chuck got the one finger, one bark down, Jeff went to two fingers and so on until Chuck would bark ten times when Jeff held up ten fingers. And that was as high as Chuck could count unless Jeff wanted to take off his shoes and even Jeff ain’t that anal.

So now, Chuck will bark the requisite number of times for the number of fingers held before him. Eight, six, four or whatever, got the picture? Then Jeff started in on teaching Chuck how to add, subtract, multiply and divide. No fooling! I don’t know how he did it; I think all the credit should go to Chuck for being so smart. But in the end, Jeff could hold up, for instance, two fingers and say, “Two plus three,” then hold up three fingers and Chuck would bark five times. Or Jeff would show Chuck seven fingers and say, “Seven minus three.” then hold up three fingers and Chuck would bark four times. Chuck could do any combination of numbers up to ten.

Now we come to the kicker. As I said, Jeff is a boat captain and he hangs around the docks with the other captains. And if you know anything about boat captains, you know they are a languid breed. So while these lay-abouts hung out at the local bar, Jeff would entertain them with Chuck’s math skills, they were all duly impressed. All that is except on guy.

So one day this guy sees Jeff on the dock and comes up to him and says “I’ll bet you I can give Chuck a math problem that he can’t figure out.” And Jeff replies, “As long as it’s doesn’t involve a number higher that ten, Chuck can handle it. So they bet a case of beer.

Now picture this: the guy is in front of Chuck and Jeff is standing behind the guy. The guy bends down and says to Chuck, “What is the square root of nine?” Chuck looks up over the guy’s shoulder and Jeff holds up three fingers. Of course, Chuck barks three times. The guy turns around real quick, but not quickly enough. Jeff is walking away like he had nothing to do with anything. The guy scratched his head and headed out to buy a case of beer.

Well . . . it’s been fun taking over for Danny for one day, but he’ll be back on the computer tomorrow. And thank God for that. I’m not a very good storyteller, Danny could have told Chuck’s story so much better than I did.

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