Hetty the very clever girl

Hetty the cockapoo is a very clever girl. She is a crossbreed of a cocker spaniel and a poodle, which are both intelligent breeds of dog.

She understands a lot of words and will even respond to words she knows when they’re said quietly or in conversation – rather than delivered straight at her. (One of her favourite words is ‘bin’. She goes crazy with excitement when my husband empties the bin.)

My kids aren’t so sure she’s clever, but they don’t spend as much time with her as we do. My son doesn’t think she even understands ‘sit’ or ‘blanket’. (She has a blanket on the settee where she is supposed to sit on, but she often chooses to sit elsewhere, even though she isn’t allowed.)

But Hetty is a bit like a child. Sometimes she understands and deliberately ignores us. Sometimes she also has selective hearing. She will hear my flip flops land on the floor very quietly and will appear from anywhere in the house in the space of a second because she knows I’m going out to the garden. But somehow she won’t hear us saying she needs to get her lead on or come in from the garden.

Recently, we went on a trip to Barry, because we’re big Gavin & Stacey fans and my daughter really wanted to go. There’s a beach at Barry. Hetty doesn’t go on the beach that often. Even when we’re on holiday, she might only go on the beach twice – because the weather is usually not great. She last went on a beach in September last year. But she loves the beach and she remembered what she does there.

She plays with balls.

Playing with balls is Hetty’s absolute favourite thing to do. My husband throws balls in the garden for her every single morning. Every time I go into the garden to feed or clean Zebedee the guinea pig, she drops the ball for me to get me to throw it. While we’re sat at the table eating, Hetty will often be stood in the garden with her ball staring at us all through the window, waiting for someone to play.

But we didn’t have a ball with us in Barry. We walked along the beach and Hetty was just jumping up at my husband’s pockets, because that is where he would keep the balls. She didn’t understand why he wasn’t throwing the ball. She was getting quite agitated.

So he went to the beach shop and bought two balls (we always have to throw one and have another ready to throw). The balls are the same size as her usual balls, but heavier and plain red. Most of her balls are two colours – pink and blue, green and orange etc. She has lots of balls and they are all different. She has also inherited a couple of old tennis balls and a kids’ cricket ball.

She had a great time chasing the new balls on the beach. Of course, we took them home with us.

The next day, my husband said to her: “Where’s your beach ball?”.

I thought: “Yeah, right!”. But she brought the red ball to him.

A fluke?

No. She did it several more times.

My daughter was sceptical, but then she was very impressed.

Hetty knew the word ‘beach’ and knew the new ball had come from the beach. She knew it was a ‘beach ball’ and was different from her other balls. Nobody had said to her ‘beach ball’ and shown it to her. She’d made the connection herself.

Hetty is a very clever girl.