DOG ACTS AS VALET.

Matamata Record, Volume XIV, Issue 1193, 5 February 1931, Page 6

DOG ACTS AS VALET.

AN INTELLIGENT ALSATIAN. xi ' Has Mr Kipling exaggerated the intelligence of dogs in his book* Thy Servant, a Dog ” ? is the question on ■all his readers.’ tongues. No. Boots admittedly tells his own story, but beyond that he is only a very attractive, ordinarily intelligent dog. A hundred examples might be collected of dogs with clever tricks, but here are two instances which prove as surely as is possible that dogs do and can understand human speech (says the London Daily Mail).

Tara is an Alsatian wolfhound, owned by a man who breeds dogs in Gloucestershire; and she acts as her master’s valet. She is spoken to very quietly, and however many people are about she always understands perfectly. She will shut the door, mount the piano stool, and strike the notes, and, what is more remarkable, she will select any newspaper she is told from a heap of others on the table and bring it to her master. She has learnt to know the different papers by their thickness.

She will guard any of her master’s belongings, from his motor car to his walking stick, for any length of time, day or night, indoors or out. She is the perfect servant. The Hon. Arthur Holland Hibbert, who lives in Hertfordshire, has some

Labrador retrievers which have become famous.

When their master opens the kennel doors in the morning-only the dog called for will come out. The others will stay in their kennels all day with the doors opsn until called. When out together the dogs will each answer a different note of the whistle, and whether working for a bird or retrieving one at a gallop, will drop like a stone at a single word.