What's that, Fido? You have to go out? Go right ahead!

At just past 8am this morning, never a good time for me but even worse today considering that I'd been up till past 1am, I pressed the button for the elevator. A few seconds later it dinged open, and my still-half-asleep self took a step forward before my animal instincts kicked in and told me, and this is just a rough paraphrase, "HOLY CRAP THERE'S SOMETHING IN THERE AND IT'S GOING TO EAT YOUR FACE OFF."

My animal instincts are not known for their eloquence.

Right about then, the more rational side of my brain elbowed its way to the front and said, "Oh, it's just a dog. Wait, a dog??"

I looked around the elevator, as if I might have somehow missed seeing the dog's owner in my first scan and expected to see him standing there, nonchalantly waiting me to get on the elevator so we could get a move on. Or, you know, waiting, for me, poised on the ceiling.

But no: there was no one. Just a medium sized white dog with pointy ears, standing in the middle of the elevator with his tongue hanging out and no apparent intention to get off at my floor.

So I joined him.

At the bottom floor, I stepped out and turned towards the parking garage before looking back at the dog who, like me, apparently had places to be and people to see, as he was trotting out into the courtyard.

I already knew that dogs know how and when to cross the streets around here--you can see them waiting at the crosswalk just like everyone else--and many are scooter-trained to stand or sit on the foot rest portion of scooters while they're moving (this is not, in any way, an intuitive dog trait--just ask my dog Zoe, who I once tried to get to ride a go-kart with me...), and I blogged only last week about my first elevator ride with a dog. And now I know that, somewhere on the floors above me, lives a dog that can use the elevator on his own, right down to differentiating which floor he should get off on--and an owner who knows this and apparently thinks it's no big deal. Meanwhile, I still can't remember which light switches go to which lights in my apartment.

No sooner do you think you've seen it all, than you see an independent elevator-using dog. And that's certainly one way to ensure you're fully awake before you make it to the parking garage!