Day 66: Saved

Gracie and I have a smoke detector that we use for practice, an extra one we found in a drawer when Martha was here back in May.  I keep it by my bed and when I push the button, Gracie jumps up on me.  Sometimes, I wait until I hear her snoring in her little bed beside me and then set it off.  She wakes immediately and leaps on me.  She came with this skill, and we were told to practice this daily.  I have to confess that while we practice regularly, lately our practice has not been daily.  We do some sort of practice of her skills every day but not every one.  This is the one though that she takes most seriously, possibly, I have thought, because the sound for those who can hear it is so awful.  I can't hear it; but when I put the thing right up to my ear, it makes my ear hurt...a lot. 

My hero!

This morning, we got up as usual and took our walk.  We ate breakfast and then moved to the sunroom where I have my computer.  I have started working on organizing my classes for fall and was totally absorbed in looking for errors in some printed text on the machine when Gracie galloped into the room and jumped at me (the touch).  I was surprized because I thought she was snoozing on the couch behind me.  Her feet were wet from our morning walk, and she was very excited.  "What?" I said.  She jumped away again and then came back.   I was a bit resistent because, after all, I was searching for errors in text.  "Okay," I said.  "Show me."  She took off and I followed her into the kitchen where I smelled burnt toast.  Sheepishly, Bruce admitted that he had burned his toast and set off the smoke detector on the ceiling in the hallway outside the kitchen.  Gracie had come to warn me! 

"She just saved your life," Bruce said.

And the amazing thing about it is that our smoke detector--the one we practice with--doesn't sound like the one in the hall.  Everyone kept telling me this.  "She won't know what that sound is," they said.  But she did.  Not only that, she came and got me instead of jumping up on the bed.  Can there be a smarter dog anywhere?  I can't imagine it.  She was very proud of herself too.  So proud that when we then went out for another short walk to celebrate, she immediately located the chicken bone she has been trying to snap up for over a week.  I almost let her have it because, after all, how smart is it to remember each time just where I tossed the darn thing after talking it away from her?  But that would be bad for her, so, of course, I took it and tossed it again.