Weird things dogs have done

More of a weird dog owner than weird dog.  Here's my "welcome" mat:

My rescue, Loy, is trying to get me in trouble.

I always have a clean full dish of water inside available to her 24/7, but she prefers to drink out of the chicken waterer when we are outside with the pastured chickens. I'm sure my neighbors think she is goofy.

Dachshund drinking from poultry waterer

I have a new rescue, a four year old mini-dachshund, who is just a love. (See the previous post I made on this thread for a photo).

We are having a bit of issues getting into a potty time routine. We have learned some of the passive signs she gives to indicate when she needs to go and that is going all well and good. The only remaining issue is the morning time. The first thing I need to do when I get up is to get this dog outside to do her business. If I do anything else besides take her out, she is happy to go on the living room rug.

I thought I had this figured out guys! This morning I took her out and wouldn't you know, she does EVERYTHING she needs to do. I thought I was in the clear. I brought her and her sister inside and started my morning pre-work routine. It wasn't even ten minutes later I go into the living room and she has decided to leave a second offering that I needed to clean up.

She is lucky she is cute, I swear she is training me instead of the other way around.

My suggestion? Attach her to you. Just hook her leash to your beltloop, and watch your step, to keep from tripping over her. Shouldn't take more than a few days, and she'll get the idea. What this accomplishes is to get the two of you in tune with one another, and keeps her from sneaking off to 'go', unobserved. It also helps you learn to read her cues, more quickly.

We've had a family of hedgehogs around this summer....It turns out that our mastiff, Della,  can carry a full grown hedgehog in her mouth, prickles and all! I have to wear gloves to pick them up.
Della then procedes to 'bury' them. Luckily her idea of burying is pretty shallow, so the hedgehogs unroll themselves and disappear once the dog is away. I'm not sure how to break her of this habit as I'm not always around to rescue the critters. Luckily she hasn't worked out how to get into a hedgehog ball yet and doesn't seem to hurt them.

OK, my reply is extremely late in coming, but I will give you two stories about my lab-mix Gracie.  For being a black lab, Gracie is a very fast runner, at least in her prime years.  And being a lab, she may bark and growl, but she has no ill intent-she only wants to play, especially if another animal is running—almost always away.

First story—Gracie somehow chased down a squirrel and grabbed it up in her mouth.  She probably shook it violently, which to her is a form of play when she gets a toy.  Having scooped up the squirrel, she immediately ran back to me to show off her new “friend.”  Honestly, she fully intended to bring the squirrel back to chase and play with it around me.

But of course, that violent shake killed the squirrel which hung lifeless in her mouth.  She dropped it down, expecting it to run around so they could play.  But of course it was dead and just lay there.  When it dawned on her that she killed her new friend, she did the most baffling and amazing thing I have ever seen a dog do: she went over to a section of decorative rock (2 inch diameter—not conducive to digging) and dug a hole with great effort, picked up the squirrel and dropped it in.  And to the amazement of my wife and I she then proceeded to bury the squirrel.  And after the squirrel was buried and the surface of the rock looked completely undisturbed, she plopped down on the ground facing the little squirrel grave and moped for the next hour, not moving an inch, her eyes low, the saddest I have ever seen.  Honest to God, I think she gave her squirrel friend a funeral!  My wife and I were both wide-eyed and stupefied followed by bemused laughter as we shook our heads.

To this day, somewhere in our decorative rock is a little squirrel grave.  The rock has never been disturbed since the funeral.  Gracie’s friend rests peacefully under her determined presence!

To this day I still can’t quite fully comprehend the event.  It was so human-like that it was mesmerizing.  I’ve never seen anything quite like it, but that is the character of Gracie—all full of love and devotion.


Eric