Herschel Has Discovered Tool Use. Again.
In january of 2021, deep in the throes of pandemic psychosis, we acquired a Corgi Puppy.
I would like to go on the record that we did not get a Corgi because they're cute. We got a Corgi because they're criminally brilliant and enthusiastic working dogs that were bred to bully cattle, which is the exact temperment a dog living in a house with three ADHD adults should have. Herschel does commit a lot of crime, but he also does his appinted service-dog job of "make everyone wake up, eat meals and go to bed at a reasonable and consistent time" extremely well, as well as his bonus jobs of "Keep the squirrels the hell out of the garden" and "Yell every time the cat does something". I didn't actually ask him to do that last job but it has helped in the "teach the cat to stay the hell off the stove" area.
But even with having a whole pack of humans another dog, and a cat to manage, this pales in comparison to his genetic capacity to manage several hundred sheep or cattle across the fields of Wales, and thus, Herschel has decided on further intellectual pursuits to occupy himself, namely, speedrunning the early phases of human tool use and terraforming.
I realized he has the brains of an entire hunter-gatherer tribe shortly after he got fixed, and within 24 hours and still dpey from anesthesia, he'd figured out that his plastic cone could be used to monopolize the water bowl and his favorite chew toys, and within a week, had learned how to carry three toys at once while leaving his mouth open by tucking the toys behind his enormous ears and under his chin. He also figured out that he could wiggle the cone to rest against his shoulders, and started using it as a shovel by literally running the bottom edge into the ground. But that wasn't making holes effeicently enough, apparently, and I ended up watching him figure out how to rotate the cone around so the two pieces of overlapping plastic were under his chin, then use his chin and the stairs to the deck to pinch both ends into a much more efficient V-Shape that let him gouge huge strips of dirt up in seconds. The anthropologists and animal behaviorists in the audience may recognize this as Tool Creation, a behavior normally only seen in higher primates, crows, and some parrots. Once a hole of suitable length, depth and temperature had been achieved, he very carefully rolled the cone around so the digging side was over his head and the smooth side under his chin, and splooted into his hole to cool his little tummy and stitches off. It was at that point that I realized that I was going to have to teach him how to garden, or he was going to teach himself.
He no longer has the cone (He was beginning to experiment with it as a battering ram), but his morning ritual is now "Wake everyone up at 8AM by screaming, locate everyone in house and jam my nose up theirs to make sure they're alive, go outside and scream at the squirrels. Now that Yard is Secure, go get Fun Parent who has hopefully taken their meds by now, and supervise them while they rifle through the plants (this is apparently KEY to their mental health), eating any pest animals Fun Parent points out, chase squirrel AGAIN, go inside and get Breakfast cookie." and BY GOD if we deviate from it there will be much screaming and destruction. If I am not home, it has been reported that he walks round the garden beds and sniffs the plants in the order I usually check them in before he will agree to come in. He doesn't quite know what the deal with the melons is, just that they need to be checked.
But we're out of the labor-intensive parts of gardening and now into Harvesting Season, and this is a bit boring except when I give him snap peas right off the vine, and he has decided to work on the complex physics problem that is Doorknobs.
And last week, he had a breakthrough.
Sometime in 2020, my mom sort-of taught her horrible crime herding dog Arwen how to open the back door so she could let herself out as she pleased during the day and stop interrupting Mom's Zoom calls. Arwen is a Kelpie, which means she's about 60lbs with full-length legs and horrible monkey paws that are one joint away from being hands, so when Arwen wants to open the back door, she sits up, leans on the door for purchase/to push it, and uses her terrible crime hands to *push* on the knob until it turns. She can pull the knob open by pawing and catching it on her toes, but she's 11-13 years old now and has mild arthritis, so she prefers to catch it on her central pad instead. She taught Charlie, the other equally brilliant but less criminally inclined dog, to do this but he doesn't like to go outside alone, so he rarely does this.
Herschel, ever the observant student, immediately tried copying them, but even though he is actually tall enough to reach the knob, his toes are just too stubby to get a decent grip on the knob, pushing or pulling, and the first few times, gave up and sat down to scream until one of the fullsize dogs or humans came to open the door for him.
Last week, we were up at my parent's again, and I watched him hunt around the living room until he found his slightly-sticky orange rubber ball (It's clean, it's just a kind of rubber that's always a bit tacky), carry it across the house, stand up on his hind legs at the back door, put the rubber ball on top of the gap between the knob and the wall, and then push down on the ball, which caught the doorknob and turned it for him, thus opening the door. He let himself out, had a merry time yelling at the squirrels, came back in, stopped a few feet inside the door, went back out, grabbed his ball, and brought it back into his kennel, a place he can leave toys if he doesn't want the other dogs playing with them.
This means he somehow worked out how doorknobs work, how fucking levers work, and that his orange rubber ball specifically was the one that would work (none of his other toys are the correct size/texture), that he'd need that ball specifically to open the door again, and yesterday he did the same trick with the bedroom door, so he knows that the rubber ball/skeleton key can be used on all doorknobs, not just that one.
I wonder if I can teach him to sweep.
___
I can't believe I wrote this and then forgot to include a picture of the little man for a solid 24 hours:
Behold, my Crime Tube.
It's two and a half in the morning and I have no words or brain capacity to process the joy I feel right now, so I'm going to reblog it and look at it again later.
Thanks for reminding me about this post because The Crime Tube has bullied me into doing a garden this year, with the kind of patient positive re-enforcement and blatant emotional manipulation that would make a dog trainer or Hannibal Lecter would admire.
I wasn't planning on doing a garden this year because we just moved house, had an extremely expensive plumbing event and I got spayed this spring, so I had neither time, money, nor core muscle fortitude for starting a garden this march, which is usually when the beds have to go in if you're trying to establish a garden out here. But we have had an extremely wet spring so everything's running a bit late and I was on the fence about starting a little one, and put some of the plastic bins from the Pandemic Patio Garden out to see what kind of sun exposure they'd get.
Once sighted, Herschel realized that A Garden was a possibility and started on a campagin of psychological manipulation.
Herschel loves the garden, because he likes green beans off the vine but more than that, the garden attracts squirrels to the yard and his bloodlust has been left wanting of late. He also loves activities and I think was maybe a little sad that he wasn't getting to do his morning patrol of the yard with me this year.
So he stopped going out in the mornings.
He clearly wanted to. Charlie, who very much likes having his little helper dog around, wanted herschel to come out too. but instead, Herschel would run to the far end of the house where he can still see the back door, and watch me.
...he wants something. I try offering a treat. Nope. I try calling Charlie over and heaping attention on him, something that usually makes Herschel's jealous little ass hustle on over. Nope. Still waiting for something. I put my shoes on. ZOOM. Ah. My presence is wanted outside. I step out with them. I step back in. Herschel stops MID-PEE to turn around and come back in, and stands at the far end of the house. I go back out. Morning yard activities resume as normal.
He continues this nonsense of running away from the back door until I put on my shoes and go outside with them, and immediately stopping what he's doing if I go back inside before some internal metric of his is met for the better part of a week.
Then it's herding me outside, and jumping on me for attention, running nine feet away, stopping, and looking over his shoulder at me, which has previously been established as his "Are You Following Me? Please Follow Me." I follow. He has shown me carrion instead of just eating it before and I gave him a whole piece of turkey about it because that was VERY good behavior and I am eager to re-enforce it. Instead, he patrols around the plastic bins, doing a "Follow Me?" check every few feet.
Yesterday I returned from the nursery with 70% off annual plants for a mini-garden and not only were there extreme yard zoomies of excitement, I got three toys piled on my foot as a reward for the desired gardening Behavior.
Now, This is the kind of behavior I got and trained Herschel for- Herding dogs are good at remembering load-bearing rituals like "Take your meds" and "It's time for food!" and other stuff my ADHD Brain struggles with. So I'm very proud of him.
...I just didn't realized this memory and enforcement behavior extended all the way to "IT'S TIME FOR THIS ANNUAL BEHAVIOR I'VE ONLY SEEN TWICE BUT IS APPARENTLY CRUCIAL AND I WILL BE A LITTLE ASSHOLE AND ALSO FLAGRANTLY DOG-TRAIN YOU TO DO IT, BECAUSE THAT'S HOW YOU TEACH ME THINGS".
Great job, little Crime Tube. I got extra green bean plants for you.