LIFE WITH MCDUFF: A SCOTTIE WITH ATTITUDE

LIFE WITH MCDUFF: A SCOTTIE WITH ATTITUDE

I’ve owned many dogs in my lifetime, but none like McDuff. Scotties are a breed apart. Their appearance, intelligence and stubbornness set them apart from the other breeds. They have attitude — and plenty of it.

Just the way they walk with that peculiar gait, those protruding eyebrows, flowing beard, and extra-long, erect ears commands attention. And Scottie owners know that they get a lot of that.

Scottish terriers are often described as “dignified.” A neighbor saw me walking him one morning and struck up a conversation. From then on, he referred to McDuff as “the professor.” I didn’t have to ask him why.

I once heard a Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show announcer say, “The Scottish terrier is the only breed of dog that knows it’s smarter than its master.” McDuff’s off-the-chart intelligence combined with supreme stubbornness and frustrated me to tears. I write about the ways he outsmarted me in my book, Life with McDuff: Lessons Learned from a Therapy Dog.

It took me a while to realize what was going on because I thought, he couldn’t be that smart; he’s just a dog. But I soon found out, often to my amusement or dismay, that I had been outsmarted by a canine.

My friends at work clamored for “McDuff Stories” and he provided plenty of them. They howled at his exploits and my frustration. I write about many of them in Life with McDuff.

McDuff was special enough for me to write a book about him. And it is doing quite well. One of the blurbs on the book cover is, “Think Marley and Me, but with an intelligent dog.” That sums it up nicely.