A childhood belief about cats and dogs

I used to believe that, while we were potty-training our dog, he was able to read the newspaper we always put him on to train to pee on that and not the house, since he always used to look down, and, sometimes I even asked him what the news was. Let's just say he looked at me, and then at the floor, and I took it to mean that the news that day wasn't very good. I was only 7.