It seems our dog, Othello, has rather acute spatial awareness. Several months ago, when he was just a puppy (not that he isn't still a puppy), he was playing with a toy in the kitchen. Before putting in a built-in pantry, we used to have a strange "hallway" from the kitchen into the main hallway of the house. The "hallway" was about 3 feet by 3 feet, and was little more than dead space behind the coat closet. At the time, we had a stand-alone cabinet in the space, which didn't quite fill it. His toy rolled behind the cabinet. He couldn't fit through to get at the toy, so he went out of the kitchen, around the other side of the coat closet, and to the other side of the "hallway" to look for it.
More recently, we were playing "tuggies." Essentially a mini tug-of-war between his mouth and my hand. I was letting him win the territorial part of the war, so he was going backward, with all of his visual attention focused forward on the toy and me. He backed out the door of a room, into the hallway, and knew exactly when to turn so his butt didn't run into the opposite wall of the hallway.
Othello is the first dog I've ever had, so I don't know how remarkable this ability is, but it seems pretty amazing to me.
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