So I was making dinner this evening and put some chicken in a skillet to cook, then stepped into another room for a minute. I hadn't been gone very long (honest!) when Duchess starting barking her loudest bark ever and staring at me intently with that "read my mind, you daft woman!" look on her face. I mean, it was very loud barking. You know how a fire alarm is so loud your ears ring? Yeah, like that. I even thought to myself, wow, you're as loud as my fire alarm! How do you do that when you're such a small dog?

Sadly, I wasn't doing a great job of reading her mind, but I could tell she wanted me to do _something_ and it was _urgent_. So I thought to myself, "well, before I do anything I need to go check on what I've got going on the stove. then I can figure out what's got you so upset."

But as I moved into the kitchen she stopped barking. She was still staring at me and looking alarmed, but I guess I was moving in the right direction.

It wasn't until I was standing almost right at the stove that I smelled the smoke. Now I'm sure you're all thinking "wow! Duchess just saved the house from burning down!" and let me assure you - the house was in no danger of burning down. Dinner wasn't even in danger of burning down. Something had just splashed on the burner and it was smoking a little bit. And the chicken was starting smell good.

Duchess watched the whole operation very carefully as I stirred the sizzling chicken and turned on the fan to disperse the smell of smoke. She relaxed visibly as things went back to normal, but continues to follow me closely around the house this evening instead of lounging by the fire.

So on the one hand - I'm glad I know now that Duchess recognizes that smoke is a bad thing, and I'm glad she could smell it so much sooner than I could (and felt the need to alert me to it). She also alerted me to it long before the smoke alarms even thought about going off. So that's great. And I'm also hoping I'll know what that bark means the next time I hear it.

But I have this sneaking suspicion that the alarm on her face wasn't so much because she knew _something_ was burning - but that THE CHICKEN was BURNING!!!!111 This dog adores chicken. Far more than she loves me. I'm just a conduit to very occasional treats of chicken.

So I'm not going to throw out my smoke alarms and trust the dog to warn me if the house is on fire. I mean, this is a fancy condo, but it's definitely not made of chicken.