Speed? Check. Instincts? Check. Smarts? Nope.

My dog Lindsay is built for speed. Her veterinarian opines that she's half lab and half greyhound.

Anybody who has met Lindsay will describe her as painfully shy, sweet, and, well, the perfect companion. She loves kids, other dogs and even cats. The only time she ever displays instinctual "hunter" behavior is when she spies a squirrel, turkey, deer, or raccoon in our back yard.

Sometimes while I'm tapping away at my computer she will abruptly stand up and cock her head to one side. We both know what this means. She's heard something outside. She then silently creeps to the always-open back door, looks out over her domain, and watches intently. Waiting for what she thinks is the perfect moment, she eventually charges like a bullet toward her quarry.

Unfortunately for Lindsay, she's not the most adept in altering her tactics mid-hunt. She'll often "tree" a squirrel in the glorified bush at the center of the back yard. Instead of paying attention to where her target has fled, she just barrels forward on an imaginary train track she has built in her mind at the point in time when she first spotted her prey.

Forgive the poor quality of the cell-phone video example below this post. You cannot see the squirrel at the base of the aforementioned glorified bush, nor that it immediately scrambled into safety of the branches instead of risking a sprint across open ground in an attempt to reach the higher canopy of the forest at the edge of the yard.

However, you can clearly see Lindsay's unbelievable acceleration and apparent lack of strategy. To her credit, at least she sort of veers to port once she realizes the squirrel is no longer where she thought it would be. Hey ... she gave herself a 50/50 chance guessing a lateral direction to charge, right?