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It didn't take long for Rascal to make himself at home. He'd jump up and do a happy dance when Kurtis brought him a dish of food; dutifully barked at the neighbours when they walked their dogs down the road past our house; and slept contentedly on his little bed in the house that Kurtis had built him.
All warm and cozy so far, but it didn't take long before we realized that Rascal was no ordinary dog.
His penchant for no-nonsense housekeeping quickly revealed itself in the form of carefully placed food and water dishes inside his doghouse. Any stray bits of kibble were promptly nosed into a corner and tidied up. He frequently moved his water dish around for reasons we didn't entirely understand at first. Then we started paying closer attention and noticed that he was digging himself a sleeping pit right in front of his doghouse. By now it was summer and the ground was quite hot, so he went to work.
This industrious little mutt dug a snug pit for himself in the dirt and then grabbed his water dish in his mouth and neatly spilled some water into it. After pouring the water into the pit, he placed the dish back on the ground and hopped into the pit, scratching the dirt to distribute the water. It occurred to us that the water spillage was for evaporative cooling. Stunned, we just shook our heads in disbelief. Could this dog really be building an air-conditioned bedroom?
Not only that, but he used his food dish as a shovel to scoop out loose dirt from the deepening pit, and would deposit the dirt onto a growing pile next to his doghouse. We watched in amazement as he then trotted off to flatten out the pyramidal dirt pile that had accumulated, levelling it out with the ground.
And that was just the beginning. Shortly thereafter, he began scavenging in the huge pile of renovation debris that had assumed a life of its own about 30 feet from his doghouse. His tether line allowed him full access to the pile of discarded treasures, some of which he proceeded to claim as his own.
One day, we were playing with Rascal near his house and discovered a pillow on his dog bed. We exchanged perplexed looks and a simultaneous "Where did he get that?" and both swore that we hadn't brought him a pillow from the house. A determined search of the pile of debris provided the answer: An overturned old sofa cushion had been ripped, its contents removed. The source of the pillow cushion! But how the heck did he know that the flipped piece of furniture housed a retrievable cushion? And how did he tear it so neatly along the seam?
These unanswered questions will rattle eternally in the cavernous precincts of our clearly inferior brain boxes. We did note that while his food dish was relegated to shovel detail, the kibble that had occupied it was neatly snouted into a corner of his doghouse for later retrieval.
Next installment: Meet Dog #4, Part 3: Housekeeper, contractor and now a builder of fine furniture.