Herschel is doing that extremely smart dog thing of "I'm bored and don't understand why I can't just go running in the middle of wildfire haze and/or thunderstorms, so I'm gonna teach myself some tricks" and it's been an interesting selection of behaviors:

• Sit in front of the fridge and bark until someone comes over, then stand on the fridge to indicate he wants an ice cube. He is exactly one inch too short to push the ice cube dispenser lever himself and this frustrates him to no end. The fact that dragging Charlie, who is perfectly capable of hitting the dispenser but Does Not, no matter how much Herschel points at it, also bothers him.
• Follows me around the garden to pick off the locusts I startle when watering. I have taken to pulling the larger ones off my tomatoes where they are munching, and tossing them for him. About half the time he can catch them before they hit the ground.
• Picks up random objects and steps into husbeast's peripheral vision to see if they are FORBIDDEN OBJECTS and will make husbeast chase him around the house. This has necessitated re-training husbeast to only chase him if he's holding a Herschel-safe object.
• Micromanaging the cat. I need to get him something to herd.
• Pushing the chairs out and using them as steps to get all four of his little puppy crime feet onto the dining table, less because of potential snacks, and more a sense of indignation that "THE CAT IS ALLOWED UP HERE, WHY NOT MEEEE??"
• When we're walking and he sees another dog he wants to meet, he goes into a sheepherding stalk-crouch, which I was not sure about at first, but now he stalk-crawls a bit and then lies down completely like a pancake until the other dog approaches him and then he pops up and does normal dog-greeting behaviors. I think he started this because the neighbors have a dachshund that Herschel likes but is half his height and a bit intimidated by a corgi puppy. But this is a great behavior because it keeps excitable dogs from friend-charging him, shy dogs aren't as intimidated, and he hasn't launched himself at anyone. It is a BIT alarming when he starts pancaking on a night walk at a random bush and I have to figure out real fast of he's got dog pareidolia or the bush has raccoons before Charlie notices and launches himself into the bush because Charlie had also learned that pancaking is Herschel's version of pointing.
• Speaking of Charlie, the vet has confirmed that while there's nothing wrong with his eyes per se, Charlie apparently has pretty bad night vision for a dog. Which means that he's started letting Herschel take the lead on night walks, and waiting for Herschel to spot something before literally blindly launching himself at it. Unfortunately, this works, and Charlie had caught two toads (retrieved and released unharmed) and almost caught a rat doing this.
• Like most millennials, I don't have an active land line, and husbeast and I both have show theme songs for cell rings, so Herschel is unfamiliar with landline phone rings. My parents have a landline and the last time I was up at their place, Herschel heard the phone ring for the first time, and immediately ran for the front door too look for whoever was there, because as far as he knew, that was the doorbell. This has become a bit of a problem when watching older shows with landline phones, because he'll hear them *on tv* and run for the door
• ALMOST knows how to be a lap dog. Fell asleep on me for a bit yesterday. After like 10 minutes of stomping all over me with his terrible puppy crime feet.