By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Toby the Puppy is the first pooch to join our family in … ever! We had a couple of dogs but they didn’t stay long enough to become assimilated into our household.

My wife and I, therefore, became pretty fluent in kitty speak over many decades of welcoming cats into our home. It has taken a bit of time to learn puppy speak, but Toby the Puppy makes it a bit easier.

Lately, he has adopted a new way of communicating whether he is ready to embark somewhere with his parents, my wife and me.

What does he do? Well, we will say, “Do you want to go for a walk, Puppy?” If he does, then he runs for any one of about six or seven toys scattered around the house. He grabs the toy and shakes it violently. That means, in puppy speak, that “yes, I want to go for a walk.”

He will do the same thing if he is ready to go for a ride in the truck. Or if he is ready to see our granddaughter Emma when she comes over for some play time.

We already are aware of how he recognizes certain words, such as treat, or walk, or Emma. We don’t say those words until we are prepared for his enthusiastic response. Plus, we don’t want to let him down if we let those words slip out at the wrong time.

However, our puppy has become very adept at letting us know when we say the right word at the right time.

You know by now that we consider Toby the Puppy to be just about perfect and I am going to provide you with a brief explanation of why we believe it.

We like taking Toby on walks through our neighborhood. It’s often a twice-daily ritual. When we do, we are greeted almost always by barking dogs locked up in homes along the way. We walk by the front yard, the dogs start barking.

If they are small pooches, the barks are more yippy and yappy. You know what I mean.

Toby the Puppy’s reaction to that commotion? He doesn’t even flinch. He keeps on walking. He doesn’t respond to the barks, the yips and yaps directed — I am quite certain — squarely at him.

You also know that Toby the Puppy is not a big dog. He is a Chihuahua mix, a mutt who tips the beam at roughly 13 pounds. He’s more or less a lap dog.

He also has a bark that sounds as if it comes from a much larger pooch. I mean it. Toby’s bark is not a yip. He barks loudly … on the infrequent occasions he chooses to bark. That is not often at all.

He doesn’t bark at other dogs walking in front of our house. He barely pays them any attention at all. He barks when people come to the front door. He’ll issue a warning bark to the visitor and then, when we instruct him, he quiets down.

We have had friends with smallish dogs. One in particular had a pooch that would start barking incessantly whenever we crossed our legs while sitting in our friend’s living room. Fortunately, we do not have that issue with our precious puppy.

He makes us proud … and we certainly tell him so.

Toby the Puppy tips the beam at around 12, maybe 13 pounds.

He thinks, though, that he is much larger. Much meaner. Much tougher than he is. So, when he encounters another pooch of more impressive proportions, Toby might be inclined to ruff and woof his way toward them.

That is, unless he and the other pooch somehow communicate with each other that says “Hey, it’s all good. Let’s be friends.”

He did so today. Toby’s mother and I took him for his morning stroll through the neighborhood. We encountered a friend of ours who was walking his, um, great Dane. Duke is the Dane’s name. He is nine months of age. He weighs in at around 100 pounds. Our friend says he’s still growing, likely to around 150 pounds.

Toby and Duke hit it off right away. They sniffed each other’s … you know. There was no huffing and puffing. No growling. No snapping. Just good old-fashioned canine fellowship.

Which leads me to believe that dogs must be far more intuitive than we give them credit for being. Toby and Duke both knew the other one is friendly. They surely must have communicated that mutual knowledge to each other.

To be sure, our Toby has other large puppy friends. Our grandpuppy, Madden — aka Mad Dog — and Toby and great pals. They carry on whenever they see each other. We venture to our son and daughter-in-law’s home in Allen and the first order of business is to turn the pooches loose in the back yard where they spend a good bit of time running full tilt around the yard.

We have a niece and nephew who live in Austin. Their puppy, Lucy, also gets along well with Toby the Puppy.

Today, Toby the Puppy expanded his roster of friends by one. It just amazes me to the max how our little guy — who tends to think of himself as a big guy — knows when to display his good manners.