Catherine the Great, the Bestest Bulldog in All the Land (Part One of Many)

This is Catherine the Great.

Catherine's guardians live across the street.

I have very liberal borrowing privileges, however.

Catherine, as the title says, is the bestest bulldog in all the land.

Wicked smaht

She's also wicked smaht.

An immediate example: She's quietly lying under my desk. I hadn't petted her in a while. So she put her (hefty) paw on my sneaker. I petted her, but there the paw resides, as she licks it (but hopefully not my shoe).

She wanted more attention, and she knew how to get it.

(Her paw was on my sneaker for a while. The pressure varied and increased periodically. Wicked smaht.)

Other examples

Hot, hot, hot

I went to get her one day in the early afternoon. The pavement was hot, and Catherine was not having it. Once she was "encouraged" to leave the concrete at her guardians' house—stubborn, as the breed name implies—she ran across the pavement, on the most direct path to grass on the other side.

How did she know to do that? Do dogs see far enough into the infrared that she could see the relative temperatures?

Bed

She is food motivated. (Again, no surprise.) I move her dog bed (yes, we have one, at her guest house) near our dining table at dinner time. I usually sit at the table after dinner. (I'm more comfortable on a hard chair than sunk into my usual place on our couch.) One night she was schnorring for food right next to us.

I gestured to the bed… and she went.

(I reinforced that, and taught her the command word "Bed." It works… sometimes. And yes, I have her guardians' permission to educate her, or try.)

Walkies

When I take her out, she sniffs around, walks to the grass, urinates or defecates, sniffs around some more… and then she decides when we're done and going back to our house. No hesitation: She turns around and starts walking. Trudging. (As one of her guardian's dowager guardians said, she's probably usually in pain. Bulldogs and osteoarthritis, like sand in a bathing suit.)

Canine autonomy, I tell you. (I eat a lot of beef and chicken for someone—a lawyer—who uses the expression "nonhuman person.")

N.B.: From that definition, "'Schnorring' is also a respectable and honorable profession – that of fundraising." Speaking of which, she was schnorring—fundraising!—at me about her own victuals, before she splooted on my cool home-office tiles. Growling and loud barking, and the occasional paw. Quite opinionated.

I better go.