His mathematical skills don't quite extend to dogarithms - but this teacher's pet is certainly best in his class, writes GILL SMITH. Ashley the lurcher likes nothing better than a good pedigree sum. And he always ends up getting top barks.

While other parents often struggle to persuade their children to do their maths homework, Ashley's owner, Sue Lane, has no problem persuading her protg to keep boning up on his skills.

He just laps up his arithmetic.

The eight-year-old family pet does not even need to paws for thought before barking out the correct answers to addition, subtraction and even division sums.

The talented pooch can also tell you how many legs he has and how many tails he has. Ashley does not need any mega-bites to calculate the answers - he simply barks up to the correct number.

His canine counting has become such an attraction at the Jennings Farm Shop, The Boundary, Garsington, which is owned by his owners Sue and David Lane, that customers have been keen to check out whether it is all just a shaggy dog story. But his mathematical genius is all bone-Fido, according to Sue and husband David, who run the farm shop.

Surprisingly, when Sue first acquired Ashley as a pup, he refused to make any noise at all. But Sue was determined to teach him to become more scary for security reasons.

She trained him to bark on command - tempting him with a reward of biscuits - and the games just became more elaborate.

Sue, who has two children Jack, three, and Louise, four, said: "He just seems to pick up on things and it became his trick. People come into the farm shop just to see him.

"Ashley is pretty consistent but we can only work in whole numbers.

"Decimal points and fractions are a bit out of his league."

The doggy boffin's skills have left the family's other dog Gillie, who is ten months old, feeling a bit of a dunce.

Sue said: "Compared to Ashley, he's a bit of a delinquent.

"He's the other extreme. Ashley would be the swot and Gillie would be the truant." FIVE DOGS YOU CAN COUNT ON

1. Lassie, the first canine film star

2. Rin Tin Tin, the 50s TV star

3. Beethoven, the lovable St Bernard

4. K9, Dr Who's mechanical pet

5. Eddie, Martin's dog in Frasier

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