Dave the Math Dog Goes Back to School

We need to stop and take a deep breath, folks. Dogs just aren’t that smart. Mr. Ferris has, from what I’ve seen on the net, behaved well by not exploiting the dog for commercial gain. But think it over – it is a dog, not a math student!

I’ve found nothing on the web specifically to dispute the behavior of the genius dog but here are some thoughts.

The dog has demonstrated his ability to tell time without a clock. This indicates that the dog is not acting on visual clues. Dogs’ poor vision would confirm that the dog is not acting to subtle visual clues and certainly not to written instructions!

It is also known that dogs respond to human emotions and, considering the long period of time that the two species have been together, this is quite understandable.

And now we have dogs that can detect when its owner is about to have a seizure. These dogs are smelling something that occurs just before the event.

All this leads me to the hypothesis that Dave the Math Dog, and some other dogs as well, may be responding to some combination of human scent and human emotion. When Mr. Ferris becomes aware that the dog is about to have touched his hand the correct number of times could it be that he produces some scent that our super sniffing canine friends can detect? If so, isn’t it more reasonable to conclude that is what triggers the dog to stop paw touching than the conclusion that the dog has done the math?

Wow, who'd a thunk it?