Most of the time Toffee our golden (delicious) Labrador finds it hard to resist getting her teeth into the children's toys, especially if they are of the of the soft toy or ball variety, and even the odd puzzle (who else to blame for the missing pieces?!). Unsurprisingly she is not remotely interested in plastic space craft , or the Nintendo DS, and thinks that the Wii is an invitation to join in on the home workout!

But when the robot dinosaur and the giant hairy tarantula appeared at Christmas, Toffee put her paw down and protested: the hackles went up, she snarled and barked clearly trying to establish that she was top dog and these alien intruders were not welcome! My first Labrador Jazz, would have a face off with the vacume cleaner whenever it came out of the closet, so that I even tried lying down next to the vacume culprit and patting it, trying to convince Jazz it was not a threat to her...never won that one, but I was amused to read the article from the WallStreet Journal by Andrew LaVallee which recounts similar dog-robot encounters some of which needless to say have ended up on YouTube!

The article is entitled "When Dogs and Robots Collide, Somebody Needs a Talking To"

To read on here is the link:

http://biz.yahoo.com/wallstreet/080611/sb121314664909963011_id.html?.v=4&printer=1