The dog that knew too much

want to tell you about a very smart dog called Tucker. Tucker couldn’t tell you why he was smarter than other dogs for two reasons. One, he was a dog, and they couldn’t talk. And two, he didn’t know.

He just came into the world, with five other siblings, knowing stuff. He didn’t act like the other puppies; he didn’t get excited and bark at the postman whenever he came by. “That isn’t an axe murderer coming to kill them,” he had tried to explain to his littermates, “just a dude dropping off parcels.”

But that didn’t work because then he had to explain what an axe murderer was and then what a parcel was. None of them understood his explanation. And to be honest, they didn’t give a shit, they just really liked barking at stuff. He didn’t chase his tail or fight over food or toys. He did like watching TV, though. His mother’s “owner” thought he might be retarded. Owner. That always made him laugh. Who was following whom around the park, picking up whose excrement? I'll admit, he had a point.

He found this out when he overheard a conversation she was having with a friend about him. The one he thought always smelled like weed. Don’t ask me how he knows what weed is or what it smells like, I have no clue. He just knew. His owner, Lexi, had brought him at eight weeks old. She knew he wasn’t retarded when she saw him but she knew he was special, that’s what she always says.

The other week the cat across the hall told him that in the old days “special” was a politer way to say retarded. He told her he hopes she chokes nine times.

When Lexi had come to the farm, all six puppies were available to choose from, and she had just sat and watched them playing. Well, five played and Tucker sat reading the paper… just joking, although that would have been cool. No, he wasn’t reading the paper, but he also wasn’t running around with the others. He was watching her. When Lexi noticed, he looked away, trying to seem uninterested.

Have you ever seen a dog trying to look nonchalant? It’s ridiculous. They look the complete opposite of what they are aiming for. Lexi said she knew right there and then, he was the dog for her.

When he got a bit older and had learned more from watching TV, he had toyed with the idea that he was once a human and had been reincarnated as a dog, but they had forgotten to wipe his memory. Like in the movie “Chances Are”. But that doesn’t work because he doesn’t remember another life, no memory of being human.

As I said, he just knows stuff. Like the weed thing and how to read, and that Rachael was really hard on Ross because they were on a break! He didn’t just know that. Lexi and he had binged the Friends box set she got for Christmas when the last loser she was dating broke up with her, and she didn’t want to leave the house. That show was comedy gold, in Tucker’s opinion, comedy gold!

When he first went to live with Lexi, he tried to make her see how smart he was, but she didn’t get it. She could tell he was smarter than any dog she had ever seen or heard of, but that was it. Turns out, sometimes he could be smarter than her, bless her heart.

He got to know the other animals in the neighbourhood, with mixed reviews. Animals are like humans, some are smart, some are dumb, and some need to be hung by their bitchy “look at me, I’m a pedigree feline and I’m so much better than you” claws and left to die. Tucker’s words, not mine.

If you are wondering, Tucker does not get on with the Russian Blue cat across the hall.

He decided to stop trying to communicate his intelligence after he watched the Classics Channel and saw E.T. He couldn’t believe what they wanted to do to that poor little bastard with “the big head and glowing finger”, as Tucker described him. He just wanted to go home, for god’s sake.

OK, Tucker didn’t think he was an alien, but he wasn’t ready to totally rule it out. Who is to say he’s not an alien? He thought that would explain a lot and the Sci-Fi channel has a butt load of documentaries about aliens implanting things in humans. He didn’t have an explanation yet as to why aliens would land in the middle of nowhere, go to a random farm, and then implant an alien into a corgi cross/Maltese dog, but he was sure there would be a documentary on Netflix that would shed some light.

FYI, there is a small to medium chance Tucker watches too much TV.

No, no government lab for him, thank you very much. He was sure that when they realised his intelligence, it would be him shot into space instead of a monkey! Nope Nope Nope.

It’s been 3 years since he came to live with Lexi, and life was pretty sweet. She adores him (who wouldn’t), and she is his person. It was all going great….until dog buttons and TikTok.

For anyone living under a rock, or over 55, TikTok is an app where people post everything, like EVERYTHING. The more of the videos Tucker sees, the more he is sure the human race is doomed, and if he can just find a few more animals like him, they could easily take over the world when it happens.

His most hated videos are videos of people watching other people’s videos. WTF. They just film themselves reacting to things, funny, scary, rude, weird. It doesn’t make any sense. I am in total agreement. “No, TREVOR, I don’t want to watch you laugh at a cat falling out of a tree on someone else’s video (although Tucker would if it were the cat across the hall). Why would I give a shit what you think is funny?”

He IS a massive fan of the videos of the dogs being adopted and how excited they get when the man puts the “I’m adopted” card on their cage. He can tell what the dogs are saying, and 99% have no idea what that card means, but he still likes them.

Lately, there has been a new trend on there. Buttons that your animals can push to say something. Mainly dogs and a few cats. Someone tried it with a pet goose, but it was just embarrassing to watch, for everyone involved.

I recommend watching it. If you’re feeling down about your life, you can at least think, “Well, at least I’m not trying to teach a goose to talk, so I’m not at rock bottom yet!” Unless you are, and your rock bottom has a basement.

Of course, Lexi went straight out and brought a bunch. Now, they were sitting in the middle of the lounge room, and she had been trying to get Tucker to use them.

I guess you’re probably thinking, Awesome, Tucker can finally speak. And that thought makes sense, Tucker had the same one. Until he noticed Lexi with her iPhone out, about to record him. The last thing he needs is to become the next big thing on TikTok

He knows the world will adore him (who wouldn’t!), and if he uses the buttons like he is capable of, they will own the internet. He could also end up in a hundred different test tubes in a secret lab somewhere. So far, he hasn’t worked out how to use the buttons, much to Lexi’s disappointment. Although he has had immense enjoyment pushing the one that says “Hey Bitch” every time Lexi is on the phone to her mum or her boss or anyone or not on the phone or not even home. Fine, he’s just constantly pushing that button because it’s a swear word and it’s hilarious.

Lexi has reached the conclusion that the videos must be fake because if Tucker can’t do it, then it can’t be done by a dog. Basically, her thinking is that Tucker can’t be dumber than their dogs; they are all liars. End of story. Tucker is really looking forward to when Lexi becomes a parent. She will make a great soccer mum. “What, my kid isn’t offside, the whole other team is offside” She would be throwing the orange slices at the ref, and then tackling the coach. He can hardly wait. He gives it a month before she’s banned from coming to the games. I give it two.

It had been a couple of weeks, and Lexi had just about given up trying. Every now and then, he’d get her hopes up and push the right buttons but as soon as the iPhone came out, it was back to only the “Hey Bitch” button. He was glad she was losing interest; he didn’t want to have to go to extremes, like he did with the Crocs.

Last year, Lexi had brought herself a pair of Crocs, pink Crocs. Hands down, the ugliest shoes ever invented. If Lexi were 60, fine, he could live with that, but at 23, wearing Crocs in public was a fashion disaster. He almost died when she wore them to the park. The cute Pekingese twins that lived in the apartments on 38th Street couldn’t stop laughing at her. Lexi didn’t know they were, but he did. She was making a fool out of both of them, and it had to stop. Now, he wasn’t proud of his actions; it wasn’t his finest moment, but he stood behind it, and it got the required results. He started peeing on them. Not while they were on her feet, he’s not an animal. Well, he is, but you know what I mean. The first time he did it, she just washed them off. That alone should have told her they are not quality footwear. Could you just wash off a pair of Jimmy Choos, no? You know what you can just wash off, gumboots! By the third time, she got the message and threw them out.

She still liked to watch the videos of the dogs pushing the buttons, even though she was sure they were fake, and that’s how he saw HIM. Lord Fluffington. “What a ridiculous name. He wasn’t even that fluffy,” Tucker scoffed. And Tucker was sure he didn’t have the paperwork to back up the “Lord” title. But he was pushing those buttons and having full conversations. There must have been 30 buttons to choose from. Maybe 40! Could this be real? Was he maybe like Tucker? Hadn’t he watched any documentaries? Didn’t he realise he was probably one video away from being snatched up and cut up?

But, as the weeks went on, more videos got posted. Lord Fluffington had not only not been snatched up by men in suits and shoved into a van with fake number plates and blacked-out windows. He became the most-watched dog on the internet. In light of all this evidence, Tucker started to think, could he have been wrong? Did the government not care about a smart dog as much as he thought? Maybe the government didn’t watch TikTok videos, could that be the reason? But when he saw the dog food commercial that featured none other than Lord Fluffington, pushing the no button for every other dog food and then yes please for the advertised brand, he realized he had screwed up.

That could have been him, he thought. He could be the one in the commercial, he could have had millions of views on TikTok. My god, Lord Fluffington probably had his own trailer on set! He could start doing it now, but what would that make him? The Lord Fluffington what-a-be.? The second most-watched dog? Second place is just the first loser! OOh, what had he done? Lexi and he could be living the high life, private jets, and penthouse suites. Side note: I’m not sure how much a dog gets paid for an advert, but I’m pretty sure Tucker was overestimating it. He was very upset with himself. He just kept thinking about how they could be living somewhere amazing instead of in this dingy apartment. Again, another side note: they do not live in a dingy apartment; it’s a lovely apartment, with great lighting in a nice area. But as you may be realising, Tucker can be a tad dramatic.

He told his best friend the following week about it and said they had to come up with a plan. Yes, he has a best friend, his name is Ozzy. He was a Golden Lab. He lived in the same apartment building, and they had bonded over their shared dislike for “that cat”. That cat had a name, but they had both watched Harry Potter when their owners had a movie night together and had decided she was worse than Voldemort, and since you shouldn’t say his name, they decided the cat couldn’t be named either.

Ozzy was smart, for a dog, but not Tucker smart. He could understand his owner, to a certain extent. He knew the words food and walk, but he couldn’t understand a full conversation, and he certainly couldn’t read.

Ozzy listened to his tale of woe, and after a long pause, he asked. “Is this like that time you watched Cats & Dogs and tried to convince us we were secret agents who needed to save the world? Because that didn’t end well! Boomer from the second floor still has a nervous tick.”

If you haven’t seen the movie, here is a quick rundown. Cats and Dogs is a movie about a dog that was a secret agent and had a hidden bunker and lots of cool gadgets. When Tucker saw it, to say he got a little out of hand would be an understatement.

“In my defence, I did not realise that was not a documentary. How was I to know Disney had such good SGI? I’m smart, but I’m not Einstein smart,” Tucker snapped.

Ozzy gave him a weird look. “Einstein isn’t smart, he’s an idiot?”

“I’m not talking about Mr Wilson’s Gerbil, oh, don’t worry about it, but no, it’s not like that time”. He always tried to shut the conversation down whenever that “misunderstanding” was brought up. I don’t blame him, just between you and me, he had looked like an idiot.

“We need to find out if that dog is just a dog or super smart like me”

Ozzy sat there pondering that statement. Tucker had always said he was smarter than the rest of them. He said he knew more stuff, that he could understand the humans and could read. But Ozzy didn’t know if that was true. He didn’t know if what Tucker said the humans were saying was what they were saying. Or what he said he was reading was what the squiggly lines on the paper meant. But Tucker seemed very sure he was right, and Ozzy liked having a best friend, so he had decided to believe him.

“So, how can we do that?” Ozzy asked.

“We have to break out and find him,” said Tucker.

“Oh No,” Ozzy said, “it IS just like the Cats and Dogs thing! I am not jumping into random people’s backyards again and digging up the floors of their dog houses. There is no secret door to a spy lair anywhere, let it go”.

“No,” Tucker said, " No B & E, I promise”

Tucker had learned that acronym when he was in the joint (the pound). They had been caught digging in someone’s yard, and the owners had called the POPO (the ranger). Another term he had learned there. There were some tough dogs in the pound, he had to fight to survive. Whenever he talked about his time in the “Pen”, something he did a lot more than his friends wanted him to. He always said how much being locked up had made him harder; it had changed him. It was the longest 45 minutes of his life. He had also learned about sniffer dogs while he was there. He thought back to the time he knew what weed smelled like. Surely he wasn’t once a police dog? No! In no lifetime would he ever be a nark. He never mentioned this to Ozzy; he didn’t think Ozzy would tease him about it, but he wasn’t taking any chances. Ozzy wouldn’t have teased him, he was a lovely dog.

“How can we find him? The city’s huge. How do you know he is even in the city?” Ozzy questioned.

Now, if this conversation had happened before Ozzy knew Tucker, about finding someone they had seen on the TV or computer screen, Ozzy would have suggested breaking the screen to get to them. Until Tucker had explained how those things worked, Ozzy thought everything he saw on the screen lived in there. He wasn’t sure how they all fit. It was another reason he believed Tucker was smarter, his explanation made more sense. He had never told Tucker how often he had sat talking to the TV when his owner was out, thinking someone was in there. He didn’t think Tucker would tease him about it, but he wasn’t taking any chances. Tucker would have 100% teased him, sometimes, he could be a bit of a dick.

“Because the person who owns him has other videos on her page, and it shows this city”, Tucker replied.

“Well, find the address, then I’ll think about coming”, Ozzy said in that tone Tucker had learned he couldn’t argue with.

“Fine, I will,” said Tucker in a tone that Ozzy had learned meant he hadn’t heard the last of this.