Featuring Bounder and Jake the Arson Dog!

I got to spend my Saturday with my family and friends of the family, and not one, not two, not even three, but FOUR labrador retrievers, dogs who I love for many reasons. First, I love all dogs, but especially dogs big enough to take me down if they get the notion. Labs can definitely do that. Second, they retrieve. It is their job, they are good at it, and they take it seriously. Third, they come in an assortment of colors, one of which is bound to match your decor. And last, they run the gamut from exceptionally intelligent to not at all, really. It's important to remember, though: however dumb you think a lab may be, he or she is much smarter than you think. Much smarter.
We learned this yesterday with help from Bounder, who is a black lab who belongs to family friends Eddie and Jan, and who is very friendly but gives the impression of being of fairly average intelligence. This is a trick. Bounder is a genius.

A grand total of eleven humans returned to my aunt's house after shopping at kind of a craft and food market run by mennonites near where my aunt lives. So we came home with fruits and veggies and knitted stuff and baked goods and cheese and all kinds of things, among which were two dozen cinnamon sticky buns. With the humans homes, the four dogs were released and allowed back into general population to sniff the people and each other and get overly excited that we'd all come back after two agonizing hours of confusion. Concerned more about her human guests than the cunning plots of sugar-crazed dogs, my aunt put down the bag with the cinnamon buns and went to get drinks for people.

In the approximately seven minutes between putting the bag down and returning to the den, the unthinkable happened. Actually, you already know what happened. Bounder happened.

Bounder's enthusiastic nom-nomming of the cinnamon sticky buns only came to a halt when my aunt discovered him happily munching his way through the second dozen.

"Oh my God!" she yelled. "BOUNDER!"

Bounder succeeded in looking properly guilty for a little while. But honestly, what did he care? He'd just had eighteen cinnamon buns. And I bet they were great.

And so it happened that Jake, who is also a black lab and enjoys taking himself for walks whenever he feels like it, was re-installed as the canine voice of reason for the day, despite the fact that he had already that morning, taken himself on a walk. Sorry, buddy. If you wanted to keep the title, you should have eaten someone's breakfast. All of it.

Jake is probably a genius, too. He's very calm and reasonable, and he knows how to work the stove. This is a pretty hefty accomplishment, when you think about it, for a guy with out any opposable thumbs. But yes, as a teenager, Jake succeeded in turning on the gas stove at my aunt and uncle's home in Connecticut. More impressive still was that the house didn't just fill up with gas, because he managed to get the thing lit. Even more impressive was the fact that a wooden cutting board was sitting on the burner, and Jake managed to get that lit, too. And here's the proof that he's a genius: when he saw that he'd managed to start a kitchen fire, HE LEFT THE HOUSE. Didn't call 911 or anything, just saw what he did, probably thought, "uh-oh!" and left the house.

Because who would believe that a dog had started a fire by accident? Or at all, actually?