Our Bilingual Dog, Top

I don’t know if our dog Top could bark in both German and English, but he had a fluent understanding of the two languages.

Cathy and I adopted Top at a dog pound in Würzburg, Germany in 1980. We went to the pound on a Sunday, and knocked on the door. We are both fairly fluent in German, and when the door opened had a conversation that went something like this (in German):

“We want to adopt a dog please”.

“Sorry, we have no dogs”. (We can plainly hear many dogs barking in the background).

“Perhaps I spoke incorrectly. We would like to adopt a dog”.

“We have no dogs”.

We’d previously heard the Germans didn’t always let Americans adopt dogs, because they often left the dogs behind when they returned to the US. We explained to the man we were good people, wanted a dog forever, and it would return to the States with us.

“We have no dogs”.

We saw this was going no where, and dejectedly walked away. We must have looked sad, because the man suddenly said: “Just a minute, I may have one dog”, and told us to stand by an outside cage, which we did. A couple of minutes later, a door to the cage opened and out came the ugliest dog I have ever seen. It didn’t matter, we wanted a dog, and were planning to take it, when the door to the next cage opened and out bounded ‘Topsy’ (Top’s name at the pound). We knew immediately Topsy was our dog. After paying the fees, we took him home, and promptly shortened his name to Top.

Over the next month, we worked with Top and tried to train him. To be honest, he was our first dog, and we didn’t exactly know what we were doing. He knew his name, and he finally responded to “sit”, but that was about it. His face looked inquisitive, as if he wanted to learn, there just wasn’t any follow through. We thought perhaps he was just one of those dogs who didn’t learn as fast.

Top

One Saturday morning, I took Top to the Bäckerei (Bakery) near our home in Helmstadt, and tied him to a post outside, while I went inside to buy bread and some pastries. When I came out, a little old German lady was standing by Top, petting him. I came up and said “Guten Morgen” (good morning), and we had a conversation in German. She said what a pretty dog Top was, and wanted to know if he knew any tricks. I explained we’d only had him about a month, and so far all we’d taught him was how to sit. I then said “sit” and Top sat down. I looked proudly at the lady.

The woman bent down, looked at Top and said “Gib mir deine Pfote” (Give me your paw). As she extended her hand, Top promptly shook hands with the lady. She gave the command a couple of more times, and each time, Top responded. The lady then looked at Top and said “Platz”. Top lay down instantly! She then bent over further and had a small love fest with Top – “Ach, du liebe! Du bist so schön … Du bist en braver hund… ach, so schön…”. (Oh you dear, you are so cute/handsome. You are a good dog, oh, so cute…) Top just lay there, wagging his tail for all he was worth.

It turned out Top wasn’t slow. We were. We’d been speaking with him in the wrong language! We soon found Top understood many commands – they just happened to be in German. He knew, among other phrases:

• Setz dich – sit

• Platz – lay down

• Bleib – stay

• Kommst du – come

• Nein – no

• Braver Hund – good dog

• Gib mir deine Pfote – Give me your paw (shake)

After that, we continued to train Top using both German and English. He began to respond to the English commands as well, although if truth be told, for the rest of his life when we needed to get his attention quickly, we spoke in German.

We had many adventures with Top over the next sixteen years. Our German friends, Res and Jim, always said Top was ‘einmalig’, which translates to unique, or one of kind, and I have to agree. In addition to being bilingual, he was incredibly friendly. Living in Europe, he had his own passport. He crossed the Atlantic three times, and also visited France, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg with us. Yes, he was bilingual, but his good nature and personality were understood everywhere. We were lucky to have him in our life.

Addendum:

Top was our first dog, but not our last. When he died in 1997 at seventeen years of age, I think we cried for three days. We still have a book with all of the sympathy cards our friends sent us. If you want to know a bit more about Top, here’s the eulogy we read when we spread his ashes at Tibbet Knob, on the border between Virginia and West Virginia. It captures something of his life. https://mnhallblog.wordpress.com/2017/01/09/top/ .

Thanks to my Uncle, Don Grubaugh, for suggesting this Top story would make a good blog – he was oh so right!