The Amazing Skidboot

A friend emailed me this video of an amazing dog named Skidboot and his owner/trainer/friend, David Hartwig.

The video is a little more than eight minutes, but worth the investment of time to watch it through.

I have no idea how you'd go about training a dog to respond like Skidboot did (he passed away in March 2007), but it must take a combination of love, patience and a really smart dog.


My first dog, Tyler the Rottweiler, was able to pick out balls from his toy box, by color, on demand.

He had an orange ball and a yellow ball, identical in every way but color. I'd ask him to get one of his balls, mentioning the color, and, every single time, he'd pull out the ball I'd asked for.

Tyler could also open the back door by twisting the door handle with his nose.

But, his most impressive trick was what we called, "self-service automatic goodies". He liked ice cubes and we had a refrigerator with an ice/water dispenser in the door. He would walk up to the refrigerator, press his nose against the ice dispenser and catch the ice cubes as they shot out.