Maybe you can teach a dumb dog new tricks.

Little Bear has a favorite tree. I know it must be his favorite tree, because in the approximately 1.5 years we’ve lived in the Secret Lair he has wrapped his cable around it approximately 1,430,826,973 times. I know this, because each time he did it he patiently lay down and waited for me to come straighten out the situation. He’s very trusting.

And every single time, my own patience permitting, I tried to talk him through doing it himself. “Go ’round, Little Bear! Go…no, the other way! You’re going the wrong…hang on, let me…” Let me drag him around the damned tree by the collar. Every. Damn. Time.

Until a few months ago. A few months ago LB almost stopped my heart with shock, because I said, “Go ’round, Little Bear!” and he did. The right way. He untangled himself. It’s happened several times since then. Not every time, God knows, but a significant percentage. More than random chance. He finally almost figured it out.

But now it’s summer, and we’re deep in an unusual early heat wave. It’s been mid-nineties every afternoon for days, and Little Bear is a corpulent, shaggy black dog made for tundra. So Little Bear doesn’t want his favorite tree anymore. He wants under the Lair, where there are – count them! – nine concrete piers just right for wrapping your cable around. Last summer he was a nightmare. A few times he was so wrapped up I had to climb under there and rescue him.

This afternoon we were all outside, trying to find a breeze. LB went under the cabin at the front stairs, and just lay in the shade for maybe an hour. And then he saw something that urgently required barking at, out in the wash. So he blasted out from under the side of the cabin and did his watchdogly duty. And I came around from the other side of the house where the shadow is, and he wanted to say hey. And so he…precisely reversed his course, and came back out beside the stairs, right where he’d gone in.

Could it be?