I will teach my dog to read: then I will add my own presentation.

• Author: Wiesner, Pat
• Position: On MANAGEMENT - Column

How can I justify writing about a dog trick in a business magazine? Well, there might be a couple of reasons like, a) I'm on vacation in a foreign land (Florida), and it's the only thing different I've seen in the last month or, b) watch the cool way I try to develop a business application from the dog trick.

But probably the real reason is that it was the best dog trick I have ever seen, and I want to tell you about it.

We were staying in a condo in South Florida, and one of our neighbors asked us to come over for some wine and a visit, which we did. These were nice people whom we had met a couple of times before and who had this beautiful blue Weimaraner with piercing, intelligent eyes that seemed to be uninterested in and disdainful of whatever the people present were doing. When you arrived on the scene this dog would look up at you in inspection, then lie back down and continue doing nothing.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

In our neighbor's home the dog did the same thing - checked its out and went about its business. I could never have guessed that it was anything but a normal dog. Certainly not the smartest dog I had ever met. I did not realize that I was in the presence of dog greatness.

During our visit, the conversation somehow drifted to the dog, and its owner said, rather matter-of-factly, "Our dog Bella can read." After some "no's" and some "yesses," our hostess went to a drawer and produced two 8-by-I 1 white cardboards and some dog biscuits. The dog knew something was up and got a little excited while we all circled around. Each card had only one word on it, and it was large, black hand-printed about three fourths of the card in height. The two words were "SIT" and "DOWN."

Our hostess would show one or the other card to the dog, after which it would either sit or lie down, depending on what was on the card. Each time the dog would stare at the card for a couple of seconds as...