Trying to prove that dogs are smarter than cats is no longer as simple as having ol' Fido rescue a baby from a burning building or something. No, now dogs are driving cars — real cars — to show off the fact that they aren't as dumb as they look.
Remember that poster about half of your guy friends had on their walls in college; the one with a bunch of dogs sitting around playing cards? It's kind of like that, but with cars.
A New Zealand-based charity has been teaching rescued dogs how to drive in order to show people that they are trainable. One of the dogs they put behind the wheel was given up for adoption by his prior owners because they said he was unmanageable. As Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a bit of a live wire when he wasn't churning out some of the most beautiful music the world has ever heard, so Monty is a car driving ace between bouts of rug peeing and furniture chewing.
Someone should do this in the U.S. Can you imagine how much time and money you would save if you never had to park your car? You could just drive somewhere, then send the dog off with the car. Maybe you could also outfit a shock collar to a cell phone so that when you were done with your errands, you could just text Fido a little zap and he'd come get you straightaway.
The only problem I could see with all of that is that your steering wheel might be all chewed up when you got your car back. On second thought, it would be better just to buy the dog his own car and have him chauffeur you around in it. Before you know it, we'll also have canine bus drivers who'll work for kibbles and save municipal public transit funding for more buses. It's a brave new world!
Photo credit: BBC