Koko and Rico. Vaguely familiar with koko. Never heard of Rico. In general, I'm highly skeptical of these kinds of things - and yet. When I was young, our family had a lot of dogs. By the time I was a teenager I was training them. When I was 15 we moved back to the lower 48 from AK. Drove through Canada and stayed with grandparents in OH for a few weeks. I got bored and decided to try my hand at training my mom's poodle. In a day and a half to three days I trained her to do an entire obstacle course I had layed out in the bedroom. Part of the course consisted of her going around the leg of a chair exactly three times. I was aware that the dog might be drawing subtle cues from me - unfortunately I didn't know how to do a controlled experiment at that time. But I did make every effort not to betray my feeling to the animal.
I've done part of the training on LOTS of dogs and complete training on one or two, but this was really remarkable - not that I was able to do it, but that I was able to do it so quickly. And the going around the leg three times part - well, if a complete amateur like myself could teach a dog this in three days, I reckon it's not inconceivable to me that an animal much closer to human might learn a great deal more. I'm skeptical, but not closed-minded.
k
