My dog is smarter than most

Out in my back yard it was pitch dark... no moon... so I had turned on both outdoor lights before coming out to lock up the chicken coops.
The one light covered the area around the door, the other light covered the area around the chicken coops. This left an area in between which was in total darkness.
I was walking fast, as usual, when suddenly my foot hit something in my path and down I went. Somehow a piece of wood had ended up across the path and I couldn't see it because that was the part of the path which the lights didn't cover.
I got up... no injuries... thank God for my strong bones.

My two dogs and I have a nightly routine.
The coops are in a part of the yard which is closed off to my dogs during the day by a wire fence. When the chickens are in for the night, I open up this part of the yard for the dogs.
Noah, the 16 year old shepherd-collie-chow, likes to go to the far side of the yard and sniff and pee all over, marking his territory.
Chipper, the 6 year old black lab-rottweiler prefers to run in and out of the coops, one after the other, before I can close the doors.
First he goes into the smaller one where the Rhode Island Reds and the 2 ducks sleep, and when I reach it, he runs out and goes to the other coop which is occupied by the White Leghorns and Black Ausralorpes. It's the same every night, unless something is amiss.
When Chipper came out of the first coop, he didn't head over to the second. Instead he went back out the gate to the dark part of the yard. I decided to go see what had his attention and walked in that direction.
But he promptly came back to me and stood in front of me. Then he dropped something on the ground. It was shiny. It was not the toy he had had in his mouth moments before. He just stood there looking at me, wagging his tail.
I bent down and picked up the shiny thing only to discover that it was my cell phone!
It must have fallen out of my pocket when I tripped in the dark.
After I picked up my phone, Chipper returned to the dark part of the path, retrieved his toy, and ran into the second coop, business as usual.
I locked the coop and proceeded to praise Chippy for giving me the phone. This seemed to make him very happy.

I can tell you that there is no way I would have seen that phone out there and I probably would not even have noticed it was missing until it was time for bed because that is when I put it on the charger. And even then, I wonder if I would have thought about the possibility that it could have come out of my pocket during my fall. Probably not. I probably would have been tearing the house apart looking for it.

Chippy the wonder dog picked it up and brought it right to me and I am truly amazed, even though I already knew that he is smarter than most dogs.