At home with Rupert

I truly was not making disparaging comments about Rupert's brain, or lack thereof, in the previous post. Here, you judge for yourself.

His big new crate opens at one end, along the breadth. It's like a door in a rat cage, you lift it to slide it open. And then you can wiggle it a bit so that it sticks out at an angle so that it remains wedged open, instead of sliding down shut.

It's always open so Roop can go in for a nap whenever he wants to. The idea is that the crate is his personal space. So anyway, when the crate arrived, there was not a lot of room for it. If we placed it with the door on the right, it would stick right into a candlestand next to it. If we placed it with the door on the left, it would stick in the way of opening the front door wide.

No choice. Better to open the front door carefully than to have the crate door burnt by candles. And once the Christmas tree was taken down, we could rearrange the end tables and candlestand to make room for the crate.

That was done on Sunday. That was when the crate was turned round, with the opening on the right, instead of the left. On Monday morning, Rupert decided to go into his crate for a nap. He went to its right side -- where the door was invitingly open -- paused, and considered. Then he went to its left side -- where the door used to be -- and started banging his head against a side of wire. He had always gone in that side, and by golly, he will go in by that side, even if it means trying to walk through wire.

It took a few tries before a smidgeon of a thought took root -- that maybe, just maybe, he would go in from the right side -- where the door is.

There's Roop for you. A dog of Very Little Brain. A lot of heart maybe, affection and devotion clad in fur even, but very little brain.