Do any of you ever have to walk to the front door, turn the light on, open the door, the whole time saying “THERE IS NOTHING THERE ROSIE!” Obviously none of you say that unless you have a dog named Rosie, so sit back down, pedants (I realize I just killed 45 potential comments, at least, you anal retentive jackasses). But insert your dog’s name, and do you have to do this? Then, when the door is wide open, I try to shame her- “SEE? NOTHING THERE. AGAIN. JUST LIKE AN HOUR AGO. AREN’T YOU EMBARRASSED AND ASHAMED?” And then she looks down and pretends to feel guilty for roughly 3-4 seconds before running back to the couch.
On the other hand, maybe she is just trying to get me to exercise? Sometimes I wonder if it would have been nicer if I found a Golden Retriever or some stupid happy dog by the side of the road, but then I realize no one else would have put up with Rosie’s bullshit for two years before her “better” side came out. Plus, I already have one really stupid and loving dog.
*** Update ***
Here’s another question. My dogs have zero sense of time when I go away. An hour, a day, three months- they react the same way every time I get home. So in that way, they have no sense of time. But I will be damned if I do not get a cold nose to the armpit at 7:20 – 7:30 every morning from Lily, and every night at 11pm, they start milling around me between 10:55 and 11:05 because they know it is time for the late night potty and bedtime treat.
So how can they have this rigid daily schedule they adhere to when they clearly have no sense of time whatsoever?
Mnemosyne
It’s not that nothing’s there. It’s that you can’t see what’s hiding out there, and she can. It’s probably a giant, flea-infested rat that’s trying to get into the house.
Good luck sleeping tonight.
Jane2
Dogs (and cats) hear things we can’t. And as we know, every single thing, including falling leaves, translates into DANGER DANGER HOME INVASION!!. So it’s our job to do what you’re doing. If Rosie could role her eyes at your kvetching, she would…she knows what danger lurks.
mai naem
It really is not nice to call your dog stupid no matter how stupid they are. My dogs bark every week when the garbage truck goes by. I don’t understand why they don’t figure out its just the damn garbage truck.
NotMax
In the Cole household, pets train human.
Ed Drone
… and what’s this “looking ashamed” BS? Neither of our two corgis ever look ashamed.
Ed
Anne Laurie
At our house we refer to the invisible inaudible entities as ‘Martians’. Godsdamn it, Sydney, shut up about the Martians already! We don’t care if they steal the garbage or leave mail in the box!
When we got our first puppy, crafty cat Asmo (think of an all-black Tunch) would stare intently at a random spot until the puppy went into a spasm of alarm-barking. Of course cats stare at ‘Martians’ all the time, but Asmo actually faked Martian-spotting just to set the dog off…
He also knocked chewable objects off high shelves, so the puppy would get yelled at for taking the bait. Goddess, I miss that cat…
muddy
I recently came to the realization that my younger dog Gracie is a terrier. She looks nothing like one, aside from the body being a little long for the height. She snuck in here under false pretenses. I would never have chosen a terrorist!
The sheriff woke me the other day to discuss her escapism. She’s 55# and has 4 prehensile dew claws, and can leap like a deer, straight up and over 5+ feet. Also very good digger of course. She is relentless in all things. Always very cheerful about it too. Crazy dog.
At least the 2 dogs are agreed that he is the main security dog, so if he won’t join in the barkathon then she won’t persist. There’s that at least.
Redshirt
Hey Cole,
A general “Fuck you” for your troll friend you for some reason protect on this once good blog.
To clarify, I’m not calling you a troll. I’m calling your artist buddy a troll. A fucking sick one. But I guess that’s what you want for this place
Fuck you.
? Martin
Yes, our Corgi does that all the time. Charles Manson could roam through the back yard and he’ll quietly stroll out there for a pet, but if anyone within 7 nautical miles passes the line of sight out the front door, even if the door is closed, unrelenting barking must ensue.
gbear
The event that I hate at my house is when a neighbors cat will come up on my front porch and get as close to the screen as he can while my cats are yowling on their cat perch on the verge of freaking out. The trick is to get in position with the spray bottle before the other cat realizes what you’re about to do. I’ve doused the neighbors cat a couple of times but not enough to keep him away. The window screen is getting kind of torn up and it’s only a matter of time before one cat pushes it out of it’s frame.
Then the asshole comes back when the windows are closed and sprays the storm window to mark my porch as his territory. I’d really like that cat and my shoe to make contact sometime, resulting in a nice arcing path to the front sidewalk.
? Martin
@Ed Drone: It’s good to be the queen’s dog. Shame is something one does not need to be bothered by.
Redshirt
Oh wait, never mind. You don’t actually read your own blog, so how would you know? My bad. Sorry.
CaseyL
They see, hear, and (dogs, especially) smell things we can’t.
You have no idea how many zombies, ghoulies, and other spectral threats Rosie has kept out of the house merely by running to the door and staring them down…
… or, y’know, how many really cool things – dead critters, abandoned food, other dogs – entice her with their scent. She runs to the door so she can get her paws on those wonderful things, only to find they’re not actually there. But hope springs eternal in the canine breast, and so you will spring eternal from your recliner to open the door for her.
madmommy
My derpy hound-of-indeterminate-origin barks at phantoms all the time, which then gets the more sedate and mature lab on a barking jag. He also howls at sirens and my son’s saxophone practice. The sirens and sax do not bother the lab in the slightest.
Anne Laurie
@mai naem:
What gets to me, every time, is the way our idiot dogs yap savagely at the pizza / sub / indian / chinese delivery guys. THEY”RE BRINGING TRIBUTE YOU MORONS! STOP TRYING TO SCARE THEM OFF!
In my brain I know the dog-logic is “we have to help the Alpha Bitch threaten that dude into giving up his kill, so’s we’ll be entitled to the pizza bones later” but it still irks me…
? Martin
@gbear:
Replace the water with tabasco.
Jane2
@Anne Laurie: It must be a black cat thing! My Trixie could freak out the other pets in a New York minute…and did.
gbear
@Ed Drone: @? Martin:
Corgi question: I’d love to have a Corgi but I live alone and I work all day. There are two cats in the house but one of them wouldn’t play if her life depended on it. I’m going to be retiring in a couple years. Would a Corgi be a good dog for a retiree who hasn’t had a dog in 50 years? Can they travel well? Do they need a highly structured owner (which I am not)?
Jane2
@Redshirt: ? Yeah, he does.
gbear
@? Martin: I’ve heard dish soap works well too if you can get it in their face. I may just sprinkle some hot pepper powder on the porch at the hot spots so he gets it on his paws.
Dead Ernest
@Anne Laurie:
‘Asmo?’ Really Anne Laurie, you named the cat ‘Asmo?’
What you are experiencing is revenge.
Gin & Tonic
It’s a dog, Cole. It can’t be “embarrassed.” They don’t experience human emotions.
Gin & Tonic
@Redshirt: Tell him he doesn’t know what lox is, and you bet he’ll read it.
dance around in your bones
Dogs hear a lot better than we do, so if there is a bug or a raccoon or a skunk (gawd forbid) outside they will react to it. And our Goldie freaks out every time the trash guys come or the gardeners, no matter how regular their schedule is. We came home today to find the Goldie dancing around in the driveway (no matter how many times I tell the gardener guys that it is VERY important to make sure the side gate is closed securely when they leave – both in English and Spanish) – they seem to be rather lackadaisical about the shutting of the gate.
We have been told by a neighbor that us yelling at the dog to shut up is almost as annoying as him barking, so I have perfected a technique where I whisper his name and snap my fingers in an authoritative manner. He comes in pronto,
Anybody else watching the George Thorogood and the Destroyers with Buddy Guy Live from Red Rocks? (It;s on AXSTV) Pretty good, plus I can pretend not to hear the damn dog barking until someone else brings him in.
newdealfarmgrrrlll
We had JRTs when I was a wee farmgrrrlll, dad always said they were better than rat poison for keeping rodents under control. They ere farm dogs, but not live-outside dogs. So we learned to be extremely wary of the nighttime “nothing there you idiot dogs” barking, as they would usually come back inside reeking of eau de skunk.
muddy
Rosie displays shame because you request that she do so, it’s not actual shame, that’s why it doesn’t last long. She thinks she’s doing her job, and indeed she is quite successful at it. She always gets you to get up and look.
It’s like the way they bark at the mail carrier, he always says why don’t they get used to me? I said every day they bark, every day you rush right off. They are winning, why would they stop?
But anyway, let me go on lecturing you about dog behavior when I can’t keep my dog in the yard after 6 months of trying.
ETA: at least there should have been a pic of Rosie! c’mon…
muddy
@? Martin: They’re kind of bitey aren’t they? I mean the Queen’s ones.
Anne Laurie
@Dead Ernest: When we met, he was a tiny cross-eyed shelter kitten with bat ears and a swollen belly and a totally inadequate coating of chocolate-brown duckling fuzz on his pink little body! (Plus an outsized Siamese voice, which he used every second he wasn’t sleeping or eating.) “Asmodeus” was the only appropriate name…
(Besides, this was almost forty years ago, and far away in every sense.)
? Martin
@gbear: Yeah, I think so. They’re pretty smart and easy to train. They’re SUPER food-motivated, so you can get them to do anything for treats.
One challenge with corgis is that they’re heavy with short legs, so they cannot jump. The upside is that getting on the sofa/bed can be nigh impossible. The downside is that getting in the car can be night impossible, so you’d need to be able to lift the dog at times.
We’ve got a cardigan, which tend to be larger than the pembrokes. He weighs probably 60 pounds but he’s quite large even for a cardigan. Aside from the legs, he’s actually about the size of my old black lab. He’s far from a small dog. The pems tend to be 25-30 pounds, so they’re much easier to manage, and they tend to be a bit more agile than mine is – mine is all spine. We’ve trained ours to not jump on furniture or go up the stairs, so the upstairs is a dog-free zone, but he owns the first floor and back yard.
They do travel well. But I’d recommend a pem for that, simply because the cardigans are larger.
But they’re really nice dogs. Not hyper or yippe. Usually have a large dog personality in a smaller dog frame. Don’t need a lot of structure. They’ll very clearly remind you when it’s time to eat. Ours is trained that he gets fed after breakfast and after dinner, once the humans clear the table. You can’t really leave food for them like you can with smaller dogs though – they’ll eat everything. One of the biggest problems with corgis is that many owners assume that they’ll self-manage their weight and stop eating when they’re full. They don’t get full. They’ll just go out and shit and come back in and keep eating. Mine at a 5lb bag of flour once. So, that’s your main job – portion control.
He doesn’t chase cats or other animals, but he really wants to herd them – and small kids. That’s cute, but they do need to be trained out of it a bit. Kids don’t usually like being herded.
? Martin
@muddy: Mine isn’t, and there are several others in the neighborhood, and theirs aren’t either.
Anne Laurie
@muddy:
Corgis were developed as cattle-herding dogs. No lie: the short legs are because when they nip, as herding dogs will, the cow kicks back and (usually) misses their little bullet head. I’m met many corgis, generations removed from their agricultural roots, who (willfully) nip and then automatically lean away from the kick they instinctively expect!
Stella B.
Dogs hear way better than rock and roll loving ex-tankers. Somewhere in the distance another dog is barking at nothing and Rosie is merely singing back up. Try training her to bark on command. It’s easy to do and sometimes it helps reduce the spontaneous behavior.
muddy
@? Martin: I’m not at all surprised to find that the royal ones would be the bitey ones. Think of the egos involved.
Felonius Monk
Jeebus Crustus, Cole! With all the shit that is going on in the world, the best you can come up with is that Rosie barks at an imaginary bogey-man. I’m sure Steve put her up to it and he is sitting there laughing his ass off — look what I can make my human do.
Nate Dawg
I have to do it all the time.
I have a dog named Rosie.
A fat blue merle sheltand sheepdog who thinks there is food delivery way more often than there is.
NotMax
Listings from The Intelligence of Dogs.
jl
Rosie can sense evil spirits and demons; Cole cannot.
When Rosie acts ashamed for roughly 3-4 seconds, she is patronizing Cole.
Cole should thank Rosie for scaring away the evil spirits, but he insults her in front of the whole country. But it’s OK because Rosie doesn’t care.
Next question?
Bill E Pilgrim
This is like a pet owner version of Andy Rooney.
Punchy
This is insipid blather the partake in which I will not. Also, therefore my dog tries to eat flies.
Face
But does Snowden or Greenwald have a dog, and if so, does it pee on libtards?
Odie Hugh Manatee
“So how can they have this rigid daily schedule they adhere to when they clearly have no sense of time whatsoever?”
They have their own version of the Rhythm Method. :)
Mnemosyne
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Keaton can tell time, to the minute. But he is smarter than the average cat, and probably the average dog, too.
The only thing that screws him up is when we change the clocks back or forward for Daylight Saving Time, but that usually screws me up for a few weeks, too.
Dead Ernest
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Odie Hugh Manatee
@? Martin:
Replace the spray bottle with a Super Soaker. Filled with Tabasco, of course! I got rid of some flying rats (pigeons) with one (filled with a very weak vinegar/water mix). It took a few shots to convince them but they quickly got the idea.
Wayners T
They may not have a sense of time, but their bladders do
Dead Ernest
@Dead Ernest:
Can’t edit.
What was meant to appear re Andy Rooney / pets comment;
‘Apprciative Smile’
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Mnemosyne:
Stewie and Sammy (two of our cats) know that breakfast is at 6am and dinner time is at 6 pm (soft food meals, dry food for snacking the rest of the time). If I am running late they will hover silently around me trying to make me feel guilty for neglecting them once again. Our third cat (Bobbi) has digestive issues and eats whenever she notifies me she is hungry.
A day cycle is still a day to an animal and if they have a daily routine they like then they are content to keep it going.
Jane2
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Phil and Izzy get their dinner at 5:30ish. However, if I’m home, Phil starts with the stink eye about 2, trying to convince me it’s really 5:30. If I give in, 5:30 rolls around and they both act like they haven’t seen wet food for 24 hours.
Cats aren’t stupid.
Dead Ernest
@Anne Laurie:
Alrighty. You compelled me to go learn this (Wikipedia):
” Asmodeus is the demon of lust and is therefore responsible for twisting people’s sexual desires.”
So, how things been around your place?
And still ‘Asmo?’
Why not ‘Modeus’ if you’ve got to truncate (trunCat?)? Gotta be better than ‘As, time for dinner. Here As,’
Next Door: “there she goes again. Anne Laurie can’t find her As”
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Jane2:
Sammy used to try the stink eye followed with a fake-pathetic maow but quickly learned that it got him nothing so he eventually gave it up.
Stewie never meows at me, even when his dinner is being served up. The only time I can coax a meow out of him is right before I give him his soft food. He spends all day around me so he must figure we know what the other is already up to so there’s no need to talk about it.
He won’t shut up around the wife and kids though. Cute little shit he is. :)
Anne Laurie
@NotMax: Yeeeeah, except — even more than for human IQs, as Coren sorta-kinda admits, he’s talking more about what breeders call “willingness” or responsivity, not actually “intelligence”. Basenjis, for instance — next to last on Coren’s list — are smarter than your average dog (frequently too smart for their own good) but they don’t care what people want the way Goldens or GSDs or Shelties do.
Most people don’t really want a smart dog, they want a cooperative dog. What that means varies from household to household. We’re basically couch potatoes, so when I got my first dog for obedience competition, I chose a Papillon — reasonably “smart” dogs who are responsive enough to enjoy working, but not so task-oriented that they’re miserable without a tight schedule, and small enough to share an apartment with our cat.
That first Papillon, Galley the Irreplaceable, was a “pet quality” dog of impeccable breeding, more than smart enough and incredibly responsive. Our next dog — from the same breeder — was a retired conformation (beauty) dog, and so dumb she could not walk and chew biscuit at the same time. Our third, Candy’s great-niece, was too smart for her own godsdamned good and totally incapable at AKC obedience, because she wanted to sass off every other dog rather than paying attention to me (or even the Spousal Unit, who she adored). By that time, breed rescue groups had discovered the internet, so the four Papillons who’ve come to live with us since were Flash, who died tragically young of an unsuspeced genetic disorder; Zevon (smart enough, but he’s an incorrigible runaway who’ll never be safe off-leash); Sydney, a puppy-mill three-time-loser who’s quite smart & quite responsive & unfortunately neurotically fearful about everything; and Gloria. Who came to us by accident, and is way too smart & too energetic for this household — she’s almost certainly part Border Collie. But she had (has) serious resource-guarding Issues, and by the time we figured out why the original rescue group wanted to euthanize rather than re-homing we were kinda stuck with each other, because it’s not easy to find an active competition-oriented trainer who doesn’t have kids, cats or smaller dogs who wants a five-year-old beginner dog. I spent many years feeling superior to people who didn’t know better than to acquire a dog who was “too much” for them to handle, and Gloria is kharmic revenge. And a non-stop reminder that SMART, in and of itself, is not the best metric for picking a companion dog!
Ash Can
@Dead Ernest: And I’m Dead Laughing from this comment!
Dead Ernest
@Ash Can:
Happy to have entertained you.
I am a fan of yours/ your comments Ash, just haven’t taken the occasion to say so before now.
And may I add, you have a sublime sense of humor.
bcinaz
Hey Cole, what does a sense of time have to do with the number dogs, cats, and humans in the pack? Rosie and Lily act the same way when you come back to the pack because you were missing. Bed time and morning are pretty well established and occur every day without fail.
way2blue
Not just dogs… When I was in high school, I had a job ‘exercising’ horses after school. And when daylight savings time hit — they knew I was taking them out late — at their mealtime. I remember turning Hellion (yes, that was his name) back toward home, and having him take off in a dead run down the middle of the road. Thankfully, I had a saddle on him (he was named Hellion for a reason), but he used a hackamore — no bit. The only way I could slow him down was to wrench his head around… Good times.
Yatsuno
@Anne Laurie:
Sooo…no border collies then? :P
Anne Laurie
@Yatsuno: You want an apartment-sized ‘border collie’? I’ll ship you Gloria — she’s eight now, and mostly rehabilitated…
Montarvillois
I haven’t lived with a dog for a long time but as for cats some have an uncanny sense of time when it comes to household routine.
brantl
They know time of day very well, they don’t give a shit about elapsed time, however.
brantl
@Redshirt: Hey, redshirt, go blow yourself. Never mind, you already are, from your posts.
boctaoe
I’m glad you don’t have kids because we would be treated to the quotidian aggravations of child rearing. However since I don’t own pets it’s good to be reminded why I don’t.
J R in WV
We adopted a young (9 mos) lab mix from the shelter recently, into a house with 2 cats and an older lab mix, who missed haveing doggy buddies to wrestle and run with. Alice, the white newbie learned about grass, butterflies, bushes, etc in no time. She runs with Happy, the older lab, and even makes up to the cats.
Just this morning Alice went to the back door and whimpered for it to be opened, but not for herself to go out, for the kitty sitting outside mewing to get in. After M opened the door and Spike came in, Alice and spike nuzzled wach other. Awwww, so cute!
We love our fuzzy babies! Even the foster dogs from the neighbors’ farm, who come down as soon as the nieghbors leave for work. It may break our bank keeping the extra 3 dogs in cookies and chews. But that’s OK. We love the fuxxy guys…
snivicus
I had a thought about your second question.
I think the critters have a perfectly good sense of time. They’re just (as) glad to see you no matter how long you’ve been gone. Humans seem to want to prorate stuff. ‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder.’ and all that…
patty \
nope. i have a lab who doesn’t give a crap if anyone is at the door and a border collie who is smart enough to know no one is at the door. ;)
patty \
@way2blue: duh! thats the only way to get control of a runaway horse, hackamore or bit.
Jodi
I have a dog named Rosie, and because of thunderstorms at night have spent several nights this past week doing exactly this. I need a snickers.
CDW
I had a dog who attacked moving shadows, my shadow specifically when we were out walking. It made walking very difficult when it was sunny, but since we lived in a condo, I had no choice but to take him out at least 4X/day. I never could understand why he continued the attacks after he had pounced a million times and found nothing there. He attacked blowing leaves, too, which made our walks in the autumn even more unpleasant.
Anita Paul
My dog Sandy exactly. We have a bay window in the living room. This is what she does all day all the time. Me and boyfriend always get up and look 2. LOL
Moe Gamble
We taught our German Shepherd pack to sing at UPS guys and invisible invaders instead of bark. Everybody likes to be sung at, but if you’re a burglar it will still give you pause.
And if they do it in the middle of the night it’s sort of nice, like camping near wolves.
billB
You have taken your critter out of the natural world, that they evolved in for tens of thousands of year, and force them to live in boxes [your home] with limited FRESH air and few activities [hunting] and you expect them to be ‘normal’ FAIL=HUMAN.
Grover Gardner
Sometimes, on cool nights, I like to sleep out on the patio. Our big shaggy black Lab mix, Ruby, usually sleeps with me and I sensed she was kind of lonesome all alone in the bedroom, so one time I invited her out to the patio fouton bed with me.
What a miserable night. I kept waking up to find her tense and alert, growling in the back of her throat, glaring into the depths of the backyard. I don’t know what was out there (raccoons? rats? cats? burglars? serial killers?) but neither of us got a wink of sleep.
I imagined her thinking, “Dude, are you nuts? We should be in our cave! It’s dangerous out here!”