Genius: Food Critic Has Her Dog Grade a Grill's Pup Menu

Dogs are not only welcome at Besa Grill in Florida, they're catered to. We've turned a corner!

Besa Grill, a Mexican-fusion bar and grill in Clearwater, Florida, has the sort of keen-eyed, big-hearted general manager we wished worked in all restaurants. According to a story in the Tampa Bay Times, Sam Haupt noticed an uptick in people in the pet friendly patio section ordering for their dogs. 

He was concerned, knowing that dogs shouldn't regularly imbibe in human good. High levels of salt, fat, and sugar ... the possibility of onions, grapes, raisins ... you know the drill.

So what did he do? Haupt created a "pup menu," and he did it full bore, testing recipes, tweaking dishes, even running them by veterinarians. Emboldened by the fact that dogs have only a fraction of the taste buds we do, he launched his puppy menu. 

And Laura Reiley, the food critic for the Tampa Bay Times, dropped by -- with her dog, Ollie. 

It was a big moment for everyone. Was this the first time a restaurant reviewer had her dog review a restaurant for her? We don't know. Perhaps. Who cares -- a dog is reviewing a restaurant! It's like a New Yorker cartoon come to life. 

Ollie tucked into Backyard Hash (diced steamed fresh vegetables, mashed sweet potatoes, and a savory drizzle), K-9 meatballs (ground beef, diced carrot, and rice with a natural pan gravy), the Brunch Bark Bowl (scrambled eggs, brown rice, and mashed sweet potato), Chicken "Mutt"loaf (chicken, carrots, peas, brown rice, and eggs), and Fido's Finest (diced filet mignon tips with gravy, brown rice, and a side of sauteed shredded carrot). 

After all that, did Ollie slam face-first into a food coma? Did he unbuckle his collar? Did he swear off food for days (or hours or minutes)?

No, he finished his feast off with an iced carrot-peanut butter muffin. Good boy. 

Wisely, Reiley refrained from shoving your typical food-reviewer adjectives into the dog's mouth -- like "bold," "delish," "yummy," and "disgusto" -- and merely informed us whether the dog ate the food happily or not. Which he did, except for some rice and sweet potatoes, which he turned his nose up at, probably because of all the incredible things the waiters were setting down in front of him, Ollie, the luckiest dog in the world.    

Kudos to Besa Grill for not only welcoming dogs, but serving them out of its kitchen. Are you listening, Bobby Flay?

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Chaser the Genius Border Collie Understands Grammar

The brainy Border Collie might soon be smart enough to go in the kitchen and make you a sandwich.

A new study shows that Chaser, who gained fame by learning more than 1,000 words a few years ago, is a lot smarter than any of us knew -- he's maybe even smarter than I. You see, he knows grammar.  

In the study, Chaser's owner, Dr. John Pilley, set out to measure the ability of his genius Border Collie to learn the "syntax and semantics" of sentences consisting of three elements of grammar: a prepositional object, verb, and direct object. Chaser had to give consistent responses to commands containing those three elements (like, "to ball take Frisbee") were mixed up ("to Frisbee take ball").

And guess what? Chaser took the Frisbee to the ball, and then he took the ball to the Frisbee. Meaning he gets verbs, prepositions, and direct objects. He knows what fun things to take where, depending on where the words "take" and "to" land in the sentence.  

Imagine the possibilities. In particular, imagine this possibility: "Chaser, to me take sandwich."

"Chaser intuitively discovered how to comprehend sentences based on lots of background learning about different types of words," Chaser's owner, a retired psychology professor at Wofford College in South Carolina, told ScienceNews.

Chaser was tested with familiar and unfamiliar objects, and even took the right object to the right object when he couldn't see them as the command was given. 

Dr. Stanley Coren, a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia and an expert on canine intelligence, and who had nothing to do with the study, is not surprised. 

"Roughly speaking, the average dog is equivalent to a human two-year-old in terms of mental abilities," he told The Huffington Post. "And the 'super dogs' are equivalent to maybe a human two-and-a-half-year-old.”

Which are the super dogs? Border Collies, followed by Poodles and German Shepherds, according to Dr. Coren. 

Dr. Coren stresses that when teaching your dog commands, repetition is key. "I always use exactly the same words and I always use the words to precede an action," he said. "I’ll say to my dogs 'upstairs' when I’m going upstairs or 'downstairs' when I’m going downstairs. And so, next time you say 'upstairs,' they'll start looking for stairs to climb."

One day, they'll start looking for a sandwich to make. 

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