No Tugger

Yes, no Tugger in the park today as FP & I were unaccompanied by the mightiest 'Tugger Tosser' in the land - ST! 

You can tell why I wanted to qualify the term tosser by keeping Tugger in there, can't you? And this reminds me of something I was reading today about free listing as a research method to help with information retrieval. If I ever catch up with Resolver Hound, I'm planning to question him on the size of his vocabulary because he seems very capable at finding his way around.

You might recall my past post about a collie who had around 340 words and got on TV because it could fetch its toy from the next room. Well, I dare say most collies out there when invited to bring their toy from the next room would probably end up bringing the one they have most fun with (often it's the one which exercises their humans the most!), so I don't think that collie is SOOOO special on this evidence. 

I would however be impressed if that collie had made a list of toys. And more impressed still if it had displayed its preferences for the toys by placing them in a hierarchy - most fun at the top, tooth-snagging rags at the bottom. If it happened that a reasonable number of collies had done this listing, we could then compare lists and derive from the results the ultimate toy for collies*. Then, if collies were also librarians**, they could use this technique to make sure that all the collie catalog users had appropriate keywords to search with so that they could locate the toys on the shelves***. BTW, this catalog would have nothing to do with cats & would be called something along the lines of 'Golden Information Retriever'.

*You couldn't do this with spaniels. I've seen spaniels who were just happy to splash in puddles.

**It could happen.

***Shelves are no obstacle to collies.