Training someone how to use a tool to look up information is empowering. Making them use that tool to prove they know what you trained them is common sense. Making it about dogs is an attempt (clumsy in my mind) to make the process less painful and more enjoyable.

Learning your new hire refuses to read documentation and instead asks for the answer from someone else is valuable. Remember, that 10 second ask later can break a developer out of flow and impose a huge cost on them.

If the author wanted to avoid the work, they could have:

- written Fido and trust that the answer was never checked

- assumed it was checked client side and found the array of acceptable names

Those would be ways to move around the problem. Interrupting your coworkers for something you're supposed to do on your own isn't.