Tales of a Very Bad Dog Owner

[robinmckinley]

 
I probably shouldn’t even be telling this one, but it’s so striking, to me at least,* about . . . well, dogs, and human frailty.  Also that Chaos is nuts, even as sighthounds go.

I have not been keeping you up to date about the hellhounds’ latest cycle of digestive mayhem.  I think I told you about taking them to the (standard) vet a

Comments

[robinmckinley]

*nod* Animals are smart, though! Sometimes they do know better than we do.

*********** Yes. I get seriously bent over these idiot scientific ponderings and hair splittings about whether or not animals really 'think' and 'feel'. YES. Next question. Good grief.

(Today I read about a girl's deafy

************** ?

ferret climbing up her bed at 5am because he *knew* she was having diabetes problems. She didn't realize she'd taken the wrong medicine before bed, and if he hadn't been washing her face to wake her, she probably would have slipped into a coma.)

************* I've never heard about it in a ferret but there are a lot of anecdotal stories like that about dogs, and probably cats too. That they know something's wrong because they can pick up a sense of it some way we don't have (better sense of smell for example).

How can a ferret misbehave? It's not like you've trained them to sit-stay and they run off!

Hee. Three letters. P-o-o. Right next to the litter box. A billion times. The worst part is they watch me while they do it. I think they laugh at me when I run over and try to move them before they really assume the position.

********* Ah. Yes. Hmmm. Well, I don't know any ferret psychology so I'll pass on giving advice! :)

[robinmckinley]

No kidding. Do the people running these tests have pets? That's what I want to know! (Rather, maybe, pets they pay attention to. :S)

************* Yes. This is one of the tangential things that crept into DRAGONHAVEN. (This is not a test question!!!!!) But people who want to believe that animals are some whole other *order* of life make me NUTS. It's the same planet! Assume we're more similar than we are different! (. . . the argument against racism/culturism in humans too, it occurs to me . . . )

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Deaf ferret. Sorry. :) (One of mine -- Diego -- is deaf. He's...sweeter might not be the best word, but he's definitely different than the others, and it's not just his lack of hearing. Maybe more careful and thoughtful is it. The poo problem? Diego never gives me trouble. :)

********** I realise this is a little out there, but it makes me wonder if they aren't sort of unconsciously aware that they'd've never made it as a wild animal and are determined to overachieve on the gratitude front.

I've never heard about it in a ferret but there are a lot of anecdotal stories like that about dogs, and probably cats too.

*nod* Most people probably don't let their ferrets roam free at night. Mine stay in their room when I'm in here (which is a lot of the time now), and sleep in the cages when I'm not here. They'd never be able to rescue me if I had a problem in my sleep. But if there was a fire or something, I'd be able to rescue them. :)

************* Ha. Same here about hellhounds. They're actually dead clean as far as that goes (and a good thing too, given their . . . predelictions) but they DO STILL CHEW THINGS and I still don't dare leave them loose. That and I'm not sure I'd sleep very well festooned with hellhounds and I doubt they WOULDNT take about one uncrated night to discover where *I* am.

Well, I don't know any ferret psychology so I'll pass on giving advice!

Sometimes I think they do it just because it's funny to see the monkey jumping around. I do all the things you're supposed to do (clean so the smell goes away, move them where they're *supposed* to be...), so all I can come up with is that my cleaning amuses them. ;)

********** Actually that's kind of what I was thinking! But it seemed rude to say so. It seems to me there are two obvious possibilities: that they're objecting to the cleanliness of their box, and given that awful CLEAN SHINY FLOOR that's always in your videos I doubt their box is a problem (not to mention that this might be . . . tricky to bring up :)). The other obvious possibility is that they're having you on. Animal humour is often related to bodily functions, I have noticed, possibly because of the lack of animal stand up comedy . . . :)

[robinmckinley]

I'm not sure if it's related to the syndrome (I'd have to look up the name to remember how to spell it, but it's got to do with the way they're bred and affects their coloring as well as their hearing), but Diego is also...more delicate than the others? You wouldn't think so when he's playing rough with them. It's not even the same kind of delicateness that the girls have. But even when Diego's nice and chubby for winter, I can still feel his ribs, and his hair feels thinner. (It's also the silkiest of everyone's, but still maybe unrelated. He's the only deaf ferret I've met.)

************ It's funny about silkiness. OUr three unrelated whippets were very variously silky. My hellhounds even though they're litter brothers, I could tell in the dark which one I was petting.

they DO STILL CHEW THINGS and I still don't dare leave them loose.

Heh, yeah. I can't say I blame you! I like my stuff unchewed, too.

*********** They have this terrible habit of stealing the socks I'm about to put on to take them for their walk. I put socks down to do something else, and then they're gone. They don't have time to destroy them but I get them back and they're ALL WET.

The ferrets aren't bad about stuff like that (though they do like to rearrange things if they can manage, and nothing is safe from the claws), so I had to be careful about the stuff I decided to keep in the ferret room full time. But that's only one room. You have a whole house. It wouldn't be fair if you had to keep only unchewable things. (Is anything unchewable to a hellhound? :D)

************ Actually they're *not* bad. It's just it only takes chewing through an electric flex ONCE. This thought pretty much keeps me awake nights. And only ONE dead shoe, if it was one of the this-season-only All Star specials, would be a CATASTROPHE. :)

Animal humour is often related to bodily functions, I have noticed, possibly because of the lack of animal stand up comedy . . . :)

LOL!!!

Do you have animal bodily function humor examples? Aside from the ferrets (and the cat objecting to a certain brand of litter by going right outside her litter box until we changed to something more suitable -- but that wasn't about funny so much as her dignity), I don't think I've ever noticed this. It doesn't surprise me though! Potty jokes are universal. *giggle*

************** Yes! I'll have to think about this however. The answer is probably not any that someone determined to be a killjoy couldn't insist was something else.