My Earnest is Lab and Great Dane. In addition to standard commands, he knows how to close doors from both sides, ring the doorbell, ring a brass bell with a rope tied to the clapper, put his toys away, and put empty pop cans in his wagon (the command is "recycle").
Today he learned a new trick, my son Levi helped him.
Earnest is soooo clever! The other day we went and helped a friend of ours on a job, cleaning out a senior citizen's yard and garage. One of the things in the garage was a mailbox on a post, so we brought it home. Levi sunk it in front of the dog's playhouse today. Now Earnest watched him digging the hole, and examined the mailbox where it was laying in the grass. He started jumping around when Levi got the box standing up in the hole, and he kept pushing at the dirt with both front feet, like he was helping Levi tamp it down.
Levi tied a piece of string to the latch on the mailbox, and put Earnest's "calling all dogs" vinyl newspaper toy inside.
I SWEAR this is true, Earnest saw the string on the latch, knew what that was for from other tricks, and when Levi said "Get the mail" and pointed Earnest opened the box by pulling on the string, grabbed the toy, and brought it to Levi.
It is truly becoming my belief that Earnest is a 5 year old human trapped in a dog suit!
