Confused Dog Can’t Fit A Stick Through A Door

A lab and his stick are not easily parted. Who’s having a bad hair day? You are! The yellow Labrador makes a wonderful family pet, but not necessarily because of its brains. The lab is near perfect in every way we expect that a dog should be. Funny, faithful, loving, gentle, eager to please, handsome, and they are even good hunters. But you can see why we don't have any in the ranks of the army corps of engineers.

“What are you trying to do boy? You'll never get in here that way. Tilt your head!”

This guy is just not getting it. What's a poor dog to do?

It must be extremely frustrating for the poor fellow to be so close, yet so impossibly unable to get in to the house. This may be a teachable skill, or it's possible there aren't enough neurons connected in the right places. Alas, we will have to accept that there are just some areas about which our best friend falls short. Oh, well. We can't have everything. There's always a trade-off somewhere.

Labs do love their sticks. It's a Labrador retriever, after all. When two labs happen to be raised together, we often see them in pairs, playing tug of war with the same stick. In the wide open spaces of the outside this problem doesn't seem to come up very much. Come to think of it, maybe we can pin this on the owner, who left the sliding glass door open too narrow. If it was only a little wider, we might not be laughing at this ridiculous display of clownishness.

The solution appears so simple to us, just change your angle of approach! To his credit, the dog looks like he's trying to think of another way, but his cognition is extremely limited in the area of formal operations. He looks down momentarily, as if the floor might hold a clue. He eventually drops the stick, and it is at this point the video clip ends, so maybe he has given up by then. There is a hint of dejection on his face, but as dogs are not really known for being egotists, he’ll probably forget this set back in a very short time.

Why does he want to bring the stick in the house, anyway? With that kind of energy bouncing around, let's hope the house is dog proofed. This could turn out to be the proverbial “bull in a China closet” situation. Fortunately, this isn't serious trouble for either owner or pet.

The owners enjoy the predicament so much, in fact, that they are sharing their mirth with us. He's a pretty lucky boy to have such easygoing owners who take it all in stride, and we're lucky they had a phone cam ready. The poor lab doesn't realize he's quickly becoming an internet sensation. If you think he's bad at bringing a stick through a living door, just wait till you see how he signs autographs.