My Great-Pyrenees might be a super genius
While Argos is the baby and master attention manipulator of my two Great Pyrenees, Luna has always been the smart one.
When we were potty training the puppies, we tried out the bell system. We attached a dangling bell to the knob of the door we most often used to take the puppies out and hit it before every potty break to associate the bell sound with going outside. It took Luna all of one day to figure out a way to trick the system. The house rang with the sound of the bell constantly as Luna attempted to capitalize on her newfound powers. She believed she now had the magical ability to make the door open at her own free will, her human slaves available at her beck and call. She was more than dismayed when we discovered her ploy and removed the bell.
When Luna was an angsty adolescent, she revealed yet another superpower: her penchant for elegant destruction. This revealed itself on a day when my brother made the unfortunate decision to leave his bedroom door open while we went out to dinner.
"Oh, come on!" I heard him yell from his room once we got home. The heavy padding of Luna's paws sounded down the hallway, away from the scene of the crime.
My first thought was that someone had vandalized my brother's $150, over-the-ear headphones with a screwdriver or some other high-grade power tool. The inner speaker had intricately been dissected from the rest of the headphones. Nothing else had been touched. Not the fluffy pads that nestle over the ear. Not the band of plastic that rests over the head, which would have made an excellent grip for a puppy's teeth. But no—Luna chose to mutilate the headphones in the one way that would permanently disable them.
"How did she even do that?" I could only be impressed by Luna's handiwork. "That must have taken skill."
Luna's next feat of genius came once again when my brother forgot to close his door. This time, he left an individually wrapped package of a British-brand of chips, called Hula Hoops, on his bedside table.
"Did you eat my chips?" My brother appeared in my doorway shortly after we got home.
"No, why?"
"They're open and sitting on my bed. Someone ate them all." He looked perplexed and simultaneously, we seemed to form the same suspicion. When we found Luna and showed her the empty bag, she hung her head and tucked her tail low, the guilt written all over her face.
"Are you kidding me?" My brother held the bag out to me, disbelief saturating his voice. "She didn't even leave teeth marks."
The bag looked as if it had been delicately opened by a pair of hands—the one thing a dog most certainly does not possess. How did she do it? Did she step on it, making it pop open? Did she master the next stage in dog evolution and learn how to grip with her paws? Did she use mind control on my mom and force her to open it? We may never know, but the legend lives on, nonetheless.
Luna has since shown her genius and various superpowers by outfoxing me to get treats without sitting (hovering with her butt just above the ground and snapping the miniature bone out of my hand before I realize her deception), stealing various clothing items when she misses someone (for the, what I can only assume, pungent smell of their dirty laundry), and nabbing an assortment of items from all the rooms of the house to amass a horde of treasures (but just enough that it takes us awhile to notice things are missing).
She has chewed only the shoulders off shirts (off-the-shoulder is apparently a more appealing style for Luna to see my brother in).
Chewed only the laces and the holes in which the laces go into my shoes (RIP to my favorite snow boots).
Chewed only the release trigger off a mini can of pepper spray (somehow not getting any of it in her own mouth. but soaking my lanyard in it).
She always knows the most subtle and creative way to destroy something or get what she wants. If dogs could speak, Luna would most certainly be an evil dictator, with a soft spot for Hula Hoops and her humans' dirty socks.