Today, I heard an advertisement on the radio that talked about how important it is for parents to take advantage of "learning moments" with their children.

I’ve also heard these called "teachable moments," but it doesn’t matter what you call them, the key is to recognize them when they happen, and take advantage of a child’s natural curiosity in a way that will not only teach the child something, but the parent, as well.

Being the father of three, I know that these moments happen very frequently, but I am not always able to take the time to follow through with the learning process when these moments happen.

Fortunately, my daughter is now reaching the age where she can actually help me follow through on these opportunities for learning.

My daughter and I were at Bluebonnet Days Saturday, and she was so well-behaved that I thought a special reward was in order.

Molly picked out a small toy puppy dog – a Dalmatian.

It was love at first sight.

The dog walks, barks, sits up and begs, and the only thing you have to feed it is batteries.

I’m left wondering why we didn’t start out with this kind of pet instead of our real live, somewhat higher maintenance dogs, but that’s a subject for another column.

Driving home, we talked about Dalmatians, and Molly asked me why Dalmatians are pets kept in fire stations and often are mascots for the local fire departments.

"I don’t know," I told her. "That’s a good question. Remind me when we get home and we’ll look it up on the Internet."

As it turns out, by the time we got home, I had completely forgotten about looking it up – but she had not!

"Dad, let’s find out why Dalmatians are firedogs," she said.

Sure enough, in a few minutes we had the answer to our question.

It seems that Dalmatians naturally get along very well with horses.

In the old days of horse-drawn fire trucks, Dalmatians would lead the way to fires, protecting the horses from dogs or other animals.

On scene, while the firefighters were busy, the Dalmatian would stay by the truck to protect the horses and also protect the equipment from thieves.

Hmm.

Go figure.

We both learned something from this "moment" and I’ll be watching close for the next one.

I’m sure I won’t be waiting long.