Sparky surprises me. Again.

I didn’t think Sparky could surprise me anymore, but I’ll be damned if he didn’t do just that.

Anybody who has read my Sparky stories knows how smart he is. The little dude does things that boggle my mind, and my mind is not easily boggled. However, recently he’s been doing something so amazing that I’ve hesitated telling anyone other than my most dog-loving friends for fear of being viewed as a lunatic. Here’s the dizzle . . .

One cold winter’s day a few week’s ago I was driving down the road as Sparky lounged on the passenger seat. Suddenly he got up and began rooting around the dashboard area in front of the gearshift, like he was looking for something. I thought maybe he smelled some food or something that had fallen into a little storage area there, but alas, nothing.

He did this a few other times, just poking around for no apparent reason. I was confused because he was sort of poking his nose at the dash. It was weird.

Then, one day it hit me, but my suspicions were so outrageous that even I couldn’t believe them. No, surely not. No way. Impossible.

But I had to find out.

The next frigid morning Spark and I hopped into my Jeep. Well, I climbed, he hopped. Anyway, he got into his spot in the passenger seat as I watched closely. Soon he rose up and poked around the lower dashboard area again, just like he’d been doing. At that point it happened . . .

As I watched, I witnessed my dog press his nose against a button on the dash.

The button that turned on the heated seats. The seat on the passenger side. His seat.

He’d apparently made the connection between seeing me hit the button and the seat getting warm. He’d decided to take matter into his own paws, so to speak.

Listen, I know some of you are questioning my sanity, but I don’t really care. This is a dog, after all, that puts the windows down in the car when he wants to and helps keep our house tidy by putting his toys away with regularity, all on his own and without being taught. He also wakes me up occasionally by dropping various items on my face, but that’s another story.

So anyway, yeah, my dog has been turning on the seat warmer in my car so he’ll be more comfortable. Man, that sounds really weird when I actually read that sentence.

Just another experience in my life with Sparky.

Note: And yes, I know what you’re thinking. I’d been warming his side all winter, that’s how he made the connection. Why would I warm the seat for a dog, you ask? Because he clearly liked it and would lie down on his belly ever time I turned it on. Hey, I love the guy, what can I say?