Every dog has its day, even if it's a 'ruff' day

Last Thursday, I highlighted a wacky idea of Hitler's to programme dogs to talk like humans. It was from an article, "Hitler's Talking Dogs", by New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd.

Here are a few more wacky snippets from Dowd's piece, starting with a bit more on the talking dogs saga:

-- The British researcher who discovered the evidence of Nazi attempts to get dogs to talk found a 1943 Nazi magazine piece about the headmistress of a canine school, a Frau Schmitt, who claimed that some of the dogs spoke a few words. “At a Nazi study course, a talking dog was once asked ‘Who is Adolf Hitler?’ and it replied ‘Mein Führer!”

-- Meanwhile, British author Graeme Donald, while researching a military book, stumbled across a story that Hitler was so worried about German soldiers getting sexual diseases from hookers in occupied France that he cooked up a plan for soldiers to carry small blow-up blond, blue-eyed dolls called “gynoids” in their backpacks to use as sex “comforters.” Some 50 dolls were initially ordered but the soldiers were too embarrassed to carry them. “In the end the idea fizzled out,” Donald said.

-- Back to "barking mad" Hitler. Nazi propaganda dwelled on Hitler as a dog lover. He owned two German shepherds named Bella and Blondi. He tested a cyanide capsule on Blondi and killed her just before he committed suicide [Dog lover? My foot!].

-- Finally, it seems that Hitler and his Nazi sycophants were not the only wartime Germans who held the belief in the potential of super-intelligent animals. An Airedale terrier named Rolf was considered one of the leading German intellectuals of the time. Rolf’s owner said she taught him his own alphabet with a system of taps of his paw on a board and, as quoted by the dog-stories researcher, “he successfully dabbled in mathematics, ethics, religion and philosophy.”

[Paw-note: My daughter Lynn tried to name our mini schauzner Dr Schmitt, when he was a newly acquired puppy seven years ago. But he refused to answer to that name (schmutt dog, I must say). One day, frustrated that he had yet to imbibe Doggy Toilet Training 101, she scolded him "You Killer!" He came running towards her. And that was how he got the name Killer.

Anyway, inspired by the stories above, I'm trying to get Killer to talk. Already, when I ask  him "How's your day?", he answers: "Ruff, ruff!" (so far that only works when I just got home, and he's at the door). I'll teach him Hokkien next, and let him tell the Hokkien jokes.]