The longer I hang around my people the more I am convinced that the human race has just barely evolved from the apes. They really aren’t too smart, you know. I have to tell them when it is time to go out and I have just now got the female trained to pick up the excreta so that the other humans in our neighborhood won’t step in it and track it back into their habitats. The male, well he is hopeless. He is overweight and has had one heart attack but I just can’t seem to get him to exercise. I get the female out on a half hour walk twice a day, but the male, well he is good for 10 minutes, tops. I am doing my best.

But it is not the difficulty I have had training my people that has me discouraged with humans’ intelligence. After all they are just two individuals, not a big enough sample on which to base a conclusion. It’s what I see on the Television News that provides the basis for my conclusion that they aren’t really bright – or even civilized. All the humans seem to want to talk about is killing other humans. We Shih Tzu haven’t killed, even for food, since we taught humans how to open cans. Killing just isn’t civilized.

All I see is humans talking about killing each other. They call it war. They set bombs in cafes or on busses. They shoot at each other from hiding. Best that I can tell they aren’t even fighting over something important – like food. The humans in this country want to have a monopoly on what they call weapons of mass destruction. They have spent millions of their dollars to develop these things to kill lots of other humans at one time. And now they are threatening to kill anybody else who has one of those things, or as best as I can understand them, anyone who is just thinking about getting one.

I told you that they weren’t too bright. But I guess there is hope. Given enough time, 25 million years or so, they may continue to evolve and catch up to the Shih Tzu. Meanwhile, we can continue to try to train our people. If we can teach them basic civility, then maybe we can help evolution along.