The "Well what next?" fox and The One Ring

[Galadriel55]

Originally Posted by Zigûr

To take this unnecessarily seriously, I'm afraid to say that had the poor fox seized upon the Ring while Frodo slept, almost certainly the Ringwraiths would have found it, taken the Ring and ridden back to Mordor with it. Simple.

Or maybe the opposite. Maybe if an animal was in possession of the Ring, it would have been almost as though it was again buried in the river sand, and it would have taken the Nazgul - or the hobbits - a longer time to find it again. Having less sentience - or free will, or independent thought, or ideals of right and wrong, or whatever else the specific difference might be - than the Children, the fox is not as susceptible to the Ring influence, and perhaps that also translates to the Ring being less "loud" about its present location. Each bearer can only get power from the Ring according to his stature, but the contrary is true too: the Ring only has abilities according to its bearer's stature. And that's aside from the fact that no one would expect a non-"human" bearer, since what man would just cast the Ring aside?

However, given that this fox can think in complete sentences, perhaps I am underestimating its power.