Bonnie The Dog Mechanic

Way back in the 70's we had a small property a bit out of town where all the local kids used to come on weekends and ride their mini bikes. On the property there was a large shed just near our house and I spent each day repairing various small engines. We had two small children so we decided to get a little pup to teach them responsible pet handling. I managed to obtain a little Kelpie/ Collie pup from a nearby farm and we named her Bonnie. Because I spent every day with small engines and repairing fire pumps, chainsaws, lawnmowers etc. Bonnie grew up with, and became very used to, all the noise and smoke. She used to get all excited whenever I would attempt to start any sort of engine, she would skid off and race in circles around our small home barking madly until the engine burst into life. She seemed to calm down then, it was the starting of the engine that intrigued her so much. Well some years later we moved to a small seaside village and I started repairing boat motors. I operated a service van and I was often called to the waterfront to do emergency repairs for broken down tourists and fisherman. One day I was called to help start a rather large boat at a small jetty in the town. Of course Bonnie was with me, she loved sitting up on the wide front passenger seat in the van and she would hang her head out of the window, carefully watching all my repair activity. On this particular day I arrived at the jetty to find four very dejected fisherman. They had spent most of the morning trying to start their boat without success. They had given up and abandoned the boat and each were sitting on the boards and leaning against a jetty post all feeling very miserable. So miserable in fact that they didn't even bother getting up when I arrived. They just told me to help myself, I think they thought that a "Country Bumkin" mechanic would not be able to get their engine going. Well as they sat there I climbed into the boat and had a good look at the engine. It was actually an automotive type V8 so I removed the distributor cap to check the ignition points and noticed that they were not opening at all. This made it impossible for the engine to start. As everything else was in very good condition I reasoned that if I adjusted the point gap the engine would start straight away. After I had adjusted the distributor I checked for a spark which required rotating the engine with the starter. When I turned the key and cranked the engine to test for spark Bonnie stuck her head out of the van window and started barking furiously. Her barking seemed much louder than usual due to the beautiful calm and peaceful day. The noise of the cranking engine had got her all excited. The four blokes sitting on the jetty brightened up and asked me what was my dog going so crazy about. Well I carefully replaced the distributor cap on the engine, collected my tools and climbed out of the boat and walked past the four blokes still sitting on the jetty back to my van. I turned and called to the four fisherman, "The dog is actually telepathic you know and you blokes are very lucky because when my dog barks like that and gets all excited it means that your engine is about to go ! " Well unconvinced the four fisherman remained seated on the jetty. I placed my tools in the back of my van and called out to them. "Go on, try it out, it will go now, the dog was barking". One of the blokes slowly dragged himself up and climbed into the boat, he turned the key and Vrroooom, away went the engine. The other three leapt up and cheered and they all were elated after having spent all morning trying to start the engine. They came across and patted Bonnie and asked where I had got such a fantastic dog. They just could not believe how Bonnie knew that the engine would go like that. As I drove off I laughed to myself as they were all firmly convinced that I had this special unique telepathic dog, she certainly was unique alright and of course special, but telepathic ? not really.