GREAT BRITAIN: Talking Dog

One afternoon 50-year-old Alfred Brissenden, a night watchman, was taking a dish of tea with his wife in their cottage on Green Street, Royston, Hertfordshire. Beside them sat Ben, 6, their black-&-white, smooth-haired fox terrier. Just as Mrs. Brissenden passed Mr. Brissenden the biscuits, a voice said: “I want one.”

Said Alfred later: “There was a bit of silence. I looked at my wife and she looked very hard at me. ‘Did you speak?’ she asked me. ‘Take it easy, dear,’ I said, ‘but I think it was Ben. ‘ “

After that Ben talked a blue streak. His vocabulary was limited to just those three words: “I want one.” But he pronounced them for chocolate, beer, bones and other delicacies. People flocked to hear Ben utter the three words that are uppermost in the minds of food-rationed Britons: “I want one.” London newsmen “interviewed” Ben. Dog fanciers bid for him (top offer to date: £500). For one and for all, Ben said graciously: “I want one.”

Last week Ben visited Dr. W. R. Wooldridge, one of Britain’s topflight veterinarians. On Dr. Wooldridge’s Middlesex lawn, Ben got stage fright and suffered a fit of barking. Later he regained his composure, said slowly and distinctly: “I want one.”

Growled Dr. Wooldridge: “I have never known anything like it before.” Ben’s loquaciousness, he said, was a form of conditioned reflex. He also had a suggestion: teach Ben to say, “I want two.”