Weird things dogs have done

I can relate to that.  My 10 year old dog is one of those.   She attracts people in need wherever we are.   Often I'm just a passive onlooker standing back while folks, especially those that have experienced a loss,   connect with her and have a moment.   I don't know how she knows, something about the wistful eye contact or soul connection.   I fade into the background while it happens.   Often they seek her out again before leaving with a statement like "I wanted to say goodbye to my friend..."   Brings tears to my eyes sometimes, it's very moving.   She's a German Shepherd.  I toyed with doing therapy work with her, but honestly I'm too lazy to keep up with the bathing, etc. requirements involved and while it's her thing, it's not really mine.   But she's a natural at that sort of work.  All my GSDs have had different talents, but none like her.

This has stopped being cute.   I cleaned up the yard…98%.  I looked out the kitchen window (not wearing glasses) and saw a gold shape that didnt belong there.  I went out to inspect it.  It was a Christmas Tree shaped swag made out of brass sleigh bells.   I would price it around $50.00.   I am waiting for an important phone call. After that I will try to hunt down the owner…before the owner hunts down the dog.

Either that or I will try to sell it as a hand crafted decoration on The Permies Market Place.   You know, this might have potential as a business model.

John F Dean wrote:....
Either that or I will try to sell it as a hand crafted decoration on The Permies Market Place.   You know, this might have potential as a business model.

Ha!..... Like Fagin and the Artful Dodger! :-)
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artful_Dodger

No neighbor had anything remotely like it. I stopped and spoke with my big farmer neighbor’s wife.   …got my eyes opened. First she thanked me for the work of our Border Collie who has the night shift.  They have many trail cameras, and they often show him driving coyotes away from their livestock.  

The bells she thought were from the cemetery. I did not find a match, but as I walked through it I was amazed at the $$$ spent decorating headstones for Christmas.   Many hundreds if not thousands of $ were invested on each of maybe a dozen graves.  Now, I am aware I live on the edge of a Gold Coast, but money invested amazed me.

My dog Dyson is a tell-tail-tit. I've mentioned how he can tell the time, well he also comes to tell us other things. Unfortunately I don't speak dog very well, so have to work out by elimination what is wrong.

"Mum....! Dinner time" - Easy, time check

"Mum ...! It's bed time and Della's in my bed!" - Easy, time check

"Mum...! Della's got something she shouldn't" - Not so easy - where's Della?

"Mum...! I want to go out" - Not so easy, try the door.

"Mum.....! Della's gone under the fence and into next door's field" - Not so easy - where's Della?

It was the last one today, resulting in a tour for me round the neighbours' fields and river bank looking for her, by the time I'd come back to the house, one of our neighbours had spotted her waiting by the gate to be let back in and had put her in the kitchen for us.

8:00PM on the dot, our Plott Hound Ruthie will jump up on our bed demanding that we all go to bed.

She will proceed to paw at the blankets we are using to be let underneath so she can curl up between the Wife and I. She MUST have body contact with both of us. If we don't let her in, she will do a little digging routine INSISTING on being let in. If we STILL don't let her in, she has perfected the art of laying on top of the blankets and STREACHING out to take up the majority of the queen. She must be a professional protester because she has perfected the 'dead weight' thing. I tried to move her once and decided that I'm too much of a sap to kick her off the bed.

So yes, my dog has a routine and it must be followed!

Our dogs both flip out at precisely 10pm. It is BEDTIME!! But, that is really just the beginning of our bedtime routine. Charlie goes to her crate, for a late supper, Bailey gets treats & snuggle time with mom&dad. When Bailey decides she's done with that, she hops off the bed, goes to the bedroom door and waits for John to take her back to the living room, where she gets her late supper. In the meantime, I'm letting Charlie out of the crate for her training session/playtime (she knows a good handful of tricks). Then, they take turns going outside, then John locks the gate to keep Bailey in the living room, and Charlie goes through much the same routine as Timothy's dog, lol - particularly the 'must be touching both' & the digging, which earns her a scolding, "Charlie - NO DIGGIES!!" Sometimes on, sometimes under the covers...

Today I found my dog eating an apple in the front yard, like the most natural thing ever.
We do not have an apple tree. I do not have this kind of apple in my house. I have no idea where he got it from. I'm pretty sure he didn't get out and knock over some kid for their lunchbox (he wouldn't be able to get back in over the 2m fence). I let him eat it all, figure if he could teleport snacks in I should cultivate this sort of skill.

When I was a kid we had two chihuahua.  One day we found them trying to eat a potato!

It seems like I remember that they just tasted the potato, instead of eating it.

Here is one of the most unexpected couldn't have imagined, dog moments I have ever seen - between Junior the Frenchie and Luca the miniature labradoodle. Both are dogs I worked with daily - dog walker and boarder.

I had five dogs at my home that morning, all regulars.

I sat each in a corner, just pointed and they go and sit and look at me. I then walked in a circle and gave each one a very special chew treat. They were all enjoying the treat. ... until ...

Luca who is the smartest little trickster looks around. Directly across from her is Junior who is lovely but not so bright.

Luca stashes her chew toy behind a chair and casually crosses the room and sits in front of Junior. Junior looks at her and moves sideways a bit, turning his back. Luca makes a little yip yip tiny whine. Junior turned a bit more but is annoyed and looks out of the corner of his eye at her.

Luca barks loudly. Junior with treat in mouth turns and looks at her with all the fury a Frenchie can have. Looks her in the eyes.  Luca barks again. (Now you need to know that Luca had had fancy expensive training and knew all sorts of tricks ...)

Luca gives another whine and bark and then stands on her hind legs, spins around. Whines. Sits. Lays down. Stands up and runs left then right in circles. In between each trick she looks Junior in the eye.

Junior is frozen his treat still in his jaws.

Luca sits. Whines again. Then she lays down and rolls over a few times left then right then stands up again.

Junior's eyes basically glazed over. He dropped the treat. Luca grabbed and dashed back to her part of the room. Poor Junior had that 1000 mile stare, like unconscious. He wakes up makes that snorting sound and looks around and sniffs around. Where did his treat go?  Of course I gave the poor guy a new treat.

Meanwhile Luca had 2 treats. I am still laughing over a decade later.

Both my dogs like Brassica. I feed them the cleaner offcuts when I'm trimming vegetables for dinner. Now Della has learnt she can pick he own kale - the sea cabbage is coming into flower just now and she has been helping herself to the one on the drive bank.
I wonder if this is going to be a good thing?

Brassica are good for dogs, for the same reason they're good for us. I can't say that it will be good for your garden or your nose, though, lol.

Some nearly 30 years ago, in the UK, we rescued a full pedigree border collie.  She had been owned by a breeder that had her locked up all her life in a tiny shed, let her have puppies much too young and taken them away from her much too soon.  And repeat.  She was just a money making machine.

She was very big and extremely strong for a female.  But by the time we rescued her, she had no dog "social skills".  Knowing only the confine of a tiny shed, she did her business wherever she was, she did not know how to play, jump, run with abandon.  She was terrified all the time and if you called her, she'd crawl to your feet and pee herself.  Cut a long story short, it took us 2 years of love and patience to turn her into a wonderful dog.

Fast forward 3 years.  Anna, starts to disappear for a few hours every day and returns covered in mud.  Never saw her leave, she was quite sneaky about that.  Then one night my daughter tells me: Mum, there is something funny going on in the dogs kennels, maybe you should go and have a look.  The kennels was actually a well insulated garden shed, with a deep straw bed and a couple of dog flaps, adjacent to the back of the house.  By the time we went around, the 3 other dogs were outside the kennels looking a bit odd.  As we entered the shed, Anna was in the far corner, all curled up and looking a bit sheepish.  We then realised she was not alone.  To our greatest surprise, we discovered that she had a baby badger with her and was trying to nurse him!  I guess that is where she was going when she was disappearing and returning covered in mud, she dug up that baby and brought it home.

That baby might have been small but oh, boy, was he strong and feisty!  We eventually managed to grab him and put him in a cardboard box.  As it happened, we knew where the badger sett was and we decided to return baby to his mum.  We left him at one of the entrances of the sett and quickly departed, feeling actually quite nervous and looking over our shoulders to make sure that mama badger wasn't in pursuit - they can be quite dangerous when provoked.

Anyway, in true British fashion, we sat down afterwards to a nice cup of tea to recover from all this excitement.

My first dog, Snook, was fond of eating asparagus, but they had to be cooked: he never bothered the patch. I would hold the asparagus by the tougher end and Snook would mouth the whole thing and gently close his mouth several times and pulling to extract all the good stuff, like he had seen me do, and left me with the tough end in my hand..
You would think that an animal with no lips would have trouble with that maneuver, but he was a pro at it and never slobbered any on the floor. It all went in.
He knew when we had asparagus and he knew to approach me so as to not attract the attention of my folks who wanted me to "eat my vegetable!"
Now, I can't get enough of my asparagus!

When I was doing a lot of traveling for my job, I made a point f returning home with a couple of junk hamburgers.  My Border Collie would take his down with one swallow.   My Australian Shepherd would very gently remove the lettuce without disturbing the bun and then down it.

When I was young and foolish and somehow thought that buying an old dilapidated school house to fix up was a good idea because it was cheap, I met Sassy, a rust-colored, wavy-coated Chesapeake Bay Retriever.  She was owned by the neighbors of the old school, but always came over to see me when I showed up to do some work on the place.  

One nice sunny day I had a small-footprint scaffold set up to work on the second floor metal window frames (glass was already out) when she came over.  The scaffold had been salvaged and reworked with an old restroom partition bolted to the top of the safety railing as a work platform to give me the necessary height to reach those high window frames from the ground.  I was on the scaffold and she could see me.  She ran into the door that I'd left open, ran up to the second floor, and greeted me enthusiastically.  But that was not enough.  Within a few minutes, she came flying out of one of the empty window frames (4' off the floor) and landed solidly on the scaffold, sliding a bit and nearly knocking me off!  She leaned against me, not in the least afraid, but excited, looking all around, whacking me with her really heavy tail, and just all around preening at her achievement.  

It was not as easy to get her to come back into the building, but I managed it.  

John F Dean wrote:My Australian Shepherd would very gently remove the lettuce without disturbing the bun and then down it.

LOL, reminded me of Petey Pup, a young Norweigan Elkhound we adopted when his retired owners decided to hit the road in their RV with their tiny dog only.  When I would make "broccoli cheese spuds", steamed broccoli florets over boiled and smashed potatoes, smothered in homemade cheddar sauce, Pete always wanted to lick the plates.  One time my man left a little broccoli floret on his plate amidst the sauce he left on purpose for Pete.  Pete scarfed everything down off the plate, worked his mouth for awhile, then spit out a perfectly clean broccoli floret onto the floor!  

My Stepdad's Beagle has 2 things that I think qualify for this thread. The big gate that opens and closes for the driveway, she thinks if it is closed, she can't leave the yard. Meanwhile, there is a tiny gate that opens to the front pasture she can go through and explore 🤦‍♀️. It was wide open. She knows it's ok to go in. 🤷‍♀️. 2nd she will always "attempt" to "bury" any means of food handed to her on her flat bed. No blanket, nothing to actually "bury" it in. She will still try. .. 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

Tereza Okava wrote:Today I found my dog eating an apple in the front yard, like the most natural thing ever.
We do not have an apple tree. I do not have this kind of apple in my house. I have no idea where he got it from. I'm pretty sure he didn't get out and knock over some kid for their lunchbox (he wouldn't be able to get back in over the 2m fence). I let him eat it all, figure if he could teleport snacks in I should cultivate this sort of skill.

Just 1 problem, apple seeds are poisonous if consumed. By man and beast.

Another one in the eating department....

My mother used to like to make peanut butter cookies and would add a few roasted Virginia peanuts to the batter before baking.  We had a beagle that would take one of these cookies and methodically chew while the peanuts dropped from her mouth one by one.  Nope,.....cookie was a plus, but no way was she eating those peanuts!

In the 'Weird things owners have done..." (to their dogs), my dad used to laugh over tossing a few marshmallows to the dog that he would catch in mid-air before they went down the hatch.  Then dad would throw him a cotton ball!  The cotton would stick on the end of his tongue and go in and out of his mouth like a yo-yo.  Kept dad entertained for hours!....

Valkyrie is a Caucasian Shepherd. It’s a good thing that she is a sweetheart because at 140 pounds she could head off anywhere she wanted to go, without me. I discovered her wolf and bear killing fangs one day when she snarled at my son’s dog, an older unneutered male who was extremely fear aggressive towards her. Although we tried religiously to keep them apart one day I mistakenly opened a door only to discover him on the other side! He charged, she backed away slightly, and then pinned him against a table until my son could retrieve him. No teeth marks, no blood. Good girl.

This is Valkyrie.

I'm doubled over laughing...I'll never bitch about my mutt eating the occasional cat turd...NO puppy kisses!

RobertaM.    Valkyrie looks like a close relative of our Sarplaninac dog, Tomas.....

Many years ago we had an albino boxer. Apparently they are usually killed at birth but somehow we ended up with him. We named him Tanker because he was all muscle. (and slobbery lips) He was a very friendly dog that liked huge rawhide bones. He would spend a week or two slobbering up & untying the ends then he would eat the entire thing. One day we put him in the back yard for a short time while we went shopping or ran some errands. When we returned we saw that he had eaten an entire 4 or 5 foot tall cactus. The kind with big spikes. It didn't end well for Tanker. It was a very sad day for all of us.

John W. What a beautiful dog. He looks bigger than Val. I met a woman at Zumba (Val often comes along as we dance at the riverside) who has a larger male from the same breeder, black and brown. He must also look very much like your boy. Note: I adopted Val when her people lost their properly. No problems with car travel, strangers, deer, cats… except for elevators. She hates elevators. She spent three hours interacting with people at my son’s favorite bar. So she must have been well socialized by the breeder.

Our Mountain Feist-Heeler mix is such a sweet, loving, cuddly boy….that is until he becomes a hunter! He waits patiently then stalks. But he does a very weird thing…when he gets a squirrel he becomes very possessive. If we come close he’ll pick it up & carry it further away then lay down next to it, nudge it or lick it. But mostly he’ll just lie next to it….for LONG periods of time. Weird!  

Gaurī Rasp wrote:…when he gets a squirrel he becomes very possessive. If we come close he’ll pick it up & carry it further away then lay down next to it, nudge it or lick it. But mostly he’ll just lie next to it….for LONG periods of time. Weird!  

My boy Bear does the same thing with his catches.  He caught a tiny baby bunny about the size of a man's fist the other day, and messed around with it for so long that it managed to get away, LOL!  Most have not been so lucky.  I think I'm glad he does that though, as one time he caught one of my almost grown hens and brought her into the house through their dog flap.  He was playing keep away with his brother, and with me once I saw what he had, and thankfully I managed to get the poor girl away from him undamaged (physically that is...)   The hen had managed to not only fly over her own fence, but also over the dogs' 6' high fence (I have a climber) to land in their section of the yard.  I had to literally pry Bear's lips away to get him to release her, then as she scrambled behind a chair against the wall, I was able to order both dogs outside and lock their flap.  The hen waited patiently (or cowered in terror, I may never know which...) for me to pick her up, gently check her over, then reunite her with her flockmates.  

I think this playing behavior is something domesticated dogs (those who are fed by humans) do because while they may have a strong prey drive depending on their breed, they don't need to eat their catches to survive.  I can't recall ever seeing adult canines in the wild playing with their food before eating it.  Same with cats.  Ferals usually catch and consume their prey quickly while pet cats who are fed tend to play much more.  I had to actually train my cat (RIP Nandi ❤) to eat his kills so as not to waste the lives he occasionally took.  

About a year ago we added a German Shepherd/BorderCollie mix to our family.  She has grown to be an excellent pig herder.  We had some baby pigs about a month ago or so. Anyway, one was wandering too far away. The dog, got in the pigs face and barked.   The pig ignored her.  So, she nipped the pig on the butt. The pig ran, but not in the right direction. So, she picked the baby pig up by its head and carried it back to where it needed to be.  Yes, the pig screamed all the way home.

FIRST DOGGO STORY:  We lived on a small farm out in the toolies, when I, my sister and brother were kids. Both our parents worked, so they had my mom's foster sister, Raynola, live with us and watch us.  

When we were evil, Raynola would try to spank us back to the straight and narrow. She couldn't though, because of our Collie, Tippy.  If my mom's sister tried to lay a hand on any of us, Tippy would nip her.

To avoid getting nipped, Raynola would put Tippy outside. However, there were  three of us, meaning someone was always available to let Tippy back in, while the one of us was being beaten into submission.

Raynola tried to explain the problem to our parents. Even going so far as to feign spanking one of us, but, as long as the alpha parents were there, Tippy would not interfere with the process, so Raynola was unable to offer up the desired proof.

SECOND DOGGO STORY:  My then wife had BRIGHT red, curly hair. One day she came out of the house immediately following a shower and drying her hair. Her head was HUGE, and it bothered our farm dog, a great old Shepard named Abby, no small amount. He would not come to her, or quit barking at her.

SIDE NOTE: Our daughter was about 5, so we'd been married for a while, but I never knew her hair did that. Apparently, she would comb it down before presenting herself to the world.

The ex said, "[i]t kind of hurt my feelings." I wasn't much support. I was too busy laughing. Maybe that's why we aren't married anymore.

I have been following this for some time waiting for a reason to add to the story.


Yesterday I had to come home from school early.  It was a half-day and I stayed for student attendance, but pain from my recent surgery was so bad that I had to come home—standing was downright painful and even sitting in the wrong position was very uncomfortable.  Nonetheless, I got a text from my neighbor letting me know/reminding me that it was garbage day.  I had forgotten to take out the garbage that morning.  I got up, went out to the garage, quickly loaded garbage cans into the loader of the tractor plus a couple of garbage bags (I think they only had styrofoam from some recent deliveries) that didn’t fit into the cans but I jammed into the bucket.  I zoomed out the garage door, down my driveway (500’) and turned down the road and caught up with the garbage truck.  I then headed back.

Later that night, we let our dog go outside on her line.  It is pretty long so she has a good run.  But last night she barked and barked and growled and sounded downright aggressive which is completely atypical for her (she is a black lab).  I got sick of her barking so I went out to bring her inside.  Usually if she is barking, she goes out the front door to the right and barks over a small valley.  But last night she was straight out from the house at the extreme end of her line.  She continued to bark and growl.  Her body was splayed out, low to the ground like she was about to attack.  I pointed the flashlight just ahead of her and I saw what she was barking at—one of the garbage bags of styrofoam had fallen out of the loader bucket in my hurry to take the garbage out!  My dog could just make out a vague, shadowy outline of something that wasn’t normally there, so obviously it was an intruder!  She initially barked a warning, but of course the bag didn’t respond so she barked louder—to no response.  Eventually she got quite defensive when the bag wouldn’t move!  I came back in and told my wife and we just laughed together!

Eric

I'm choked up.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2263390/Loyal-dog-attends-mass-day-church-owners-funeral-held.html