Letter From America: "Timmy's Down The Well''
So was canine film-star Lassie really talking when she went "Woof, woof, woof-wooff''? Ronnie Bray has his doubts, but his Border Collie Frankie-Belle does tell him things he needs to know.
Like many a sceptic, I found Lassie’s barked but intelligible sentences a bit of a joke. When she said, "Woof, woof, woof-woof!" and the bright-eyed lad’s father translated it as "Timmy’s fallen down the well," I was unable to distinguish it from when she said, "Woof, woof, woof-woof!" which was interpreted to mean "The old barn’s on fire!" I know I was not the only one.
Lassie was played by a series of boy and girl doggies, each one equally intelligent, and capable of abstract thought and growled speech, and, because she was a Rough Collie and, therefore, highly intelligent, the scam worked.
I never met the owner of a Rough Collie that wasn’t sure their dog was a superbrain. I have met and loved a gentle, intelligent Rough Collie who was the spitting image of Lassie, and that was Laddie Brown of Lenoir City in Tennessee.
Even so, having been blessed to share my life with three Border Collies at various times, I can say without fear of contradiction that dogs don’t get any smarter than Borders, and most don’t get as smart.
I have looked into the good-natured eyes of Borders and wondered what they were thinking. It is well known that they think, and that they do so abstractly. Without that facility, they would not be able to work as well as they do as sheep and cattle dogs.
They understand the motions of a flock or herd, and of individual animals, and will round them up and gather them to the rest of their fellows, whilst maintaining dominance of the flocks with their eyes and body attitudes.
But talk! Huh! Even though they always look as if they have something to say, I have never heard one speak. There have been times when Frankie-Belle seems to speak when she chirrups and grumbles her madcap dash from the house when she is given permission to "Go!" She will not leave the house in chase of bluebird, robin, or even a chattering squirrel before she asks me if it is OK for her to do so.
Her ears are normally laid flat, drooping down from her head, but when she requests permission to go on the chase, her ears are erect, she stands her full show dog height, and she looks directly into my eyes.
If I am not facing her, she will look at the back of my head at the place where my eyes would be if I was turned around.
When I feel her brown eyes burning into the back of my head, I turn around and she looks more intently as if to underline her supplication. The magic word, "Go!" being given, she puts her head down and chirrups as she speeds out into the wilderness and the chase is on.
The remarkable dog-man bond between her and me is revealed every few minutes when she runs back into the house and strikes her solicitation pose to ask if she can go back out again.
I have no proof, but I suspect that this was part of the high energy behaviour pattern that made her former owner turn her in to the Libby animal shelter. Gay and I, far from being discouraged by her high jinks, find it engaging.
But talk! Well … I am softening my hard stance on that matter. I won’t say she actually speaks English, but she does have her little ways of making clear what she wants me to know. She has fooled me several times by telling me that "Timmy’s fallen down the well," but when I am on my way to look – just in case - I realise that Timmy would have to be Tiny Timmy to fall down the six inch pipe that rises from our well, and I also, somehow, grasp the notion that there’s no one called "Timmy" within a twenty mile radius of our place. I go back and sit at my computer, and Frankie comes to sit at my side, look into my eyes with her twinkling brown melters, and smile genially.
However, there are times when, after she has come inside to ask if she can go out, she only runs around the coffee table and comes back to me, even when she has been told to "Go!" I eventually thought that maybe a cat called Timmy that has managed to unscrew the well cap, crawled inside the pipe, and got stuck fast. In spite of her past lies, she is so delightfully insistent that I have to go and look.
As soon as I step outside the door, I see a small herd of Whitetail deer, standing and looking towards the house, and I know it is feeding time.
Frankie accompanies me, looking with murderous intent at the corn bin, just in case there is a mouse inside, then trotting dutifully at my side, as I take the pan of corn by the trees and spread a few piles on the ground.
She does not chase the deer, and they do not run from her, but start to step daintily forward as soon as the piles are spread.
Some people are sceptical when I tell them what Frankie tells me. But they have never had a Border Collie, and they do not know what I know, they have not seen what I have seen, and they have not heard what I have heard.
Once, Frankie came to me and said … Oh! Sorry. I gotta go. Frankie wants to tell me something!
Copyright © 2004
Ronnie Bray
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
