Tornado is a superb San Francisco SPCA hearing dog and is the picture of professionalism when in public with her vest on, but she’s so smart and charming and adorable that she sometimes gets herself and her admirers into wee bits of trouble.

Soon after Claudine brought Tornado home, Tornado signaled to Claudine that there was someone at the front door. As Claudine opened the door, she realized exactly who—or more correctly, what—was there. Tornado whizzed passed Claudine to chase a squirrel that was in front of the house. After a brief discussion between Claudine and Tornado, Tornado has not done that again

One day shortly after Tornado came to live with the Fletchers, Claudine saw Paul give Tornado a treat. Claudine asked Paul what did Tornado do to deserve a treat. He said that he told her to sit and she did. Claudine said those are not the type of “tricks” for which Tornado was supposed to be rewarded. Paul then sheepishly admitted that he was looking for excuses to give Tornado treats. It was then that Claudine realized that she also had to train Paul.

Claudine attended a conference in Denver. With a full day of presentations and a big supper behind them, sleepy-eyed conference goers were then subjected to an after-dinner speaker who went on and on, when all of a sudden a dog in the audience growled quite loudly. Guess who? The whole audience burst into laughter, and the next morning many people told Claudine they wished Tornado had growled sooner! Fortunately, the speaker had a good sense of humor and did not take Tornado’s comment personally.

When Claudine makes a presentation, she asks someone in the audience to look after Tornado. At one lunchtime talk, she asked the woman who was the talk coordinator to sit with Tornado at her feet. She told the woman it would be no big deal and that Tornado would be no problem.

Part way through her talk, as Claudine was describing how wonderful Tornado is, she looked up and saw Tornado on the buffet table. To Claudine’s horror, Tornado was sauntering along, eating as she was going. Claudine rushed over to get her dog down and then asked the woman why she hadn’t stopped Tornado. The woman responded innocently, “Tornado wanted to go up on the table" Claudine’s reply was a sarcastic, “You are going to make a great mother:’