Ok, not really.
Over the weekend I conducted a test. It was a test to see how much Yaris understands where her beloved dot friends (read: beam spots from either a laser pointer or flashlight) reside. It turns out, she has a very good understanding as to where they live.
On Saturday, Yaris was hanging out by my side as LeeEv and I were conducting some business for the day, when Yaris decided it was time to play. So she put her head in my lap. And when I looked down at her, she sat back and look expectantly at me. Then I ignored her and we repeated this process a few times. Since Yaris was not going to be put off, I decided to distract her for a bit by letting her sniff various things that were lying on my desk.
A pen? Sniff, sniff. Yes, it passes muster.
A notepad? Meh.
Some junk mail? She tried to delicately take it from me and run off with it, since stealing the mail and running away is one of her preferred games, and I had to quickly put the mail out of her reach.
How about a cube of Buckyballs? This was a new thing she hadn’t encountered before as I had only gotten them on Friday. This warranted a more involved investigation. There was a lot of sniffing and prodding. I think Yaris deemed them acceptable and sat back to wait for something else to inspect.
She was very interested in the box of cookies. She was not so interested in the various cables I had.
And since I was running out of things on my desk for her to inspect, I decided to see if she really knew that my wireless mouse was also home to the laser pointer. I wanted to see if she would sniff the mouse first or know immediately what it was. I also wanted to know if she knew the difference between my wireless mouse, which was inactive at the time, and my wired mouse, which was the one I was using. The wired mouse probably wouldn’t be terribly interesting to her since it doesn’t have a laser pointer in it. But it does have a red LED and its shape is pretty similar to my wireless mouse. I thought maybe she would be fooled by it for a little bit.
Turns out, she is not at all interested in the wired mouse. She wouldn’t even give it a second glance. She was waiting for the wireless one. The moment it came in sight, she stood up and readied herself to start chasing the beam spot. No need to sniff and investigate the mouse. She knew the red dot lived inside. She would check to see if I was pushing any buttons then look in the general direction of where I was pointing the laser pointer and back at me. Basically, she wanted me to get on with it so she could chase the laser pointer for awhile. Apparently, Yaris is smart enough to know what produces the dot, where the dot should be, and that whoever is holding the laser pointer is responsible for the dot. She doesn’t think the dot is some weird creature that should be killed and eaten.
And yet, trying to bite the beam spot is still one of her favorite activities.
Random moosages as I see fit. 