[Gpdd] Misc: Piggies and Stairs

[Ruth Leibowitz]

I haven't been able to see the stair video yet because the website is 
blocked by my computer system at work.  However, I wanted to say that when I 
was a child I had a guinea pig named Penelope who I taught to go up and down 
stairs from an early age.  She was an only pig, and I was going through a 
difficult and lonely time during that period of my childhood, so we bonded 
very strongly and were one another's best friends.  I would walk down the 
block and she would follow me! (No leash needed!) Then we'd come up to the 
house, and she would jump up the front porch stairs, jump up the one stair 
leading into the house, and run to the refrigerator where she would await 
her treat.  One timeI was in the backyard with her as she munched on grass.  
I  ran into the house for something, forgetting that I had left her there on 
her own!  When I remembered I panicked -- but when I opened the back door 
there she was -- she had run off the lawn and up the back porch stairs, and 
was waiting patiently at the back door for me to open it for her.  Then she 
jumped up into the kitchen and -- you guessed it -- made her way to the 
refrigerator and wheeked until I gave her enough veggie treats to make up 
for my lapse.

I think that as adults we often assume that non-human animals are much less 
capable than they are.  As a young child, I didn't have those notions.  I 
loved Penelope as a fellow being and ASSUMED she was smart and capable, so I 
treated her as if she were.  Now when I look back and I think of the walks I 
used to take with Penelope, I realize that she must have simply thought of 
me as a large fellow guinea pig, and followed me much the same way that my 
two guinea pigs now do with one another during floor time.

Ruth in Portland

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