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In reply to the discussion: What is your favorite dog breed and why? [View all]Major Nikon
(36,827 posts)That dog lived to fetch a ball. He would play fetch until he was incapable physically of running anymore without a rest and you wouldn't know he was getting to that point until he just plopped down. We had to limit the number of throws and ration out his play time.
You couldn't say "ball" anywhere in the house without him going nuts. So we started spelling out b-a-l-l. Within a couple of days he figured out what that meant as well. We would use other words in place of ball and he figured those out. You could speak to him in a normal conversational tone and he understood countless commands. You could also use previous commands with words he understood and he would usually figure out what you wanted him to do. He would actually watch TV with us and had some sense of what was going on, and would occassionally bark or growl at other animals on the TV. His favorite movie was "My Dog Skip" and he would sit still and watch the entire thing.
He was huge for a border collie at 80lbs and that was after he lost weight. He was overweight when we got him and we had to slowly ration his food to get him back to a normal weight.
Then one day he got into the trash and ate some chicken bones which gave him pancreatitis which killed him. I miss that dog just about every day.