Dogs' hearing...dogs' thinking. Always a puzzle

Sometimes I have to wonder about the fantastic, if selective, hearing that our canine companions possess.

If I accidentally bump the box that holds Lagniappe's treats, Lagniappe can hear that from anywhere in the house (and he comes running). However if he's chasing the neighbor's cats, I can yell at him to stop at the top of my lungs, but he doesn't appear to hear that.

If I whistle, he runs to me instantly from wherever he was in the house. And if someone else whistles, like Dean Martin in the movie El Dorado yesterday, he turns up in response to that, too.

He can hear a siren on the main road a mile and a half away. It's so faint that I can't hear it, but he starts howling just the same. Sirens on TV? Yep, those too. But in both cases, it's only fire trucks and never ambulances or police cars. He differentiates. My last Shepherd, Oliver, was like that, too. If he heard German Shepherds barking on TV, he'd run in and park in front of the set to watch them. But only German Shepherds. Any other dog, he couldn't have cared less. But if a police Shepherd barked just once on an episode of COPS, you'd be watching the rest of the show around his head, because he was in the mix.

And doorbells. If a doorbell rings on TV, Lagnaippe runs to the door and barks. I can't figure that one out. I don't have a doorbell. I've never had a house with a doorbell. Where's that coming from?

And how exactly does he know if I'm popping popcorn in the kitchen when he's out in the yard? He does, though. And he knows when I'm not feeling well and he shadows me and doesn't pester me to rough house with him. He knows which cars are going to turn into the driveway well before they do, and he even knows which cars belong at all of the neighbors' houses and lets me know when a strange one pulls into one of their driveways...and he does it differently than if that car were to pull into our driveway.

He also has a different bark for a cat in the yard, a squirrel on the porch, a deer, or a person approaching the house. When he sounds off, I don't even have to look. I can tell what he's looking at without even going to the window.

Living with a dog can be quite interesting at times if you really pay attention to them. They're definitely not "dumb animals" by any stretch.