Accidental pet tricks

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Does your cat or dog (or lizard, etc) have some trick or behavior that you accidentally/unintentionally trained them to do? The best way I can explain this is to give an example.

We got a new adult cat a year or more ago. The first few days that he was getting adjusted we kept him in the bathroom. So when Prince Charming entered to use the throne, naturally, he would spend some time petting New Cat. The result of which is that New Cat thinks that the bathroom is the official cat petting zone. He’ll follow you in there and jump into your lap, unless the door is closed. He has surprised guests with this behavior as well.

Note, we pet the cat other places too; sofa, bed, cat tree, so he is not deprived. But he seems to specially associate the bathroom with being petted. And no, his food bowl is not in there, so that isn’t it.

2

Many years ago, we had a cat named Oreo that I accidentally trained to play fetch. I had just eaten a kit kat candy bar and rolled up the wrapper into a ball. What I tried to do was throw the rolled up wrapper into the trash from across the room, demonstrating my ace basketball skills. Instead I came up short and the wrapper hit the trash can and rolled across the floor. Oreo picked it up and brought it back, and dropped it on the floor right in front of me. So, I tried it again, and this time intentionally missed. Oreo picked up the wrapper again and brought it back. From that day on, Oreo played fetch.

Oreo loved to play fetch. We would play in the rec room in our basement. I would throw a rolled up piece of paper or candy bar wrapper across the room, and Oreo would take off at about 90 mph after it. He would then trot back, drop it onto the floor, and wait for me to throw it again. I would usually tire of the game long before he would.

3

I have accidentally trained my dog to do a couple of neat (or I think so anyway) tricks. He will sit and stay sitting if he hears the National Anthem (the US National Anthem ;)). He learned that when he was a pup. We lived on an Air Force base which played the Anthem every evening at flag-lowering time. While this is going on, all traffic stops, everyone stands at attention, hands on hearts, facing the flag etc. It seems that this coincided with our afternoon walk almost every day, so when it would play I would stop the dog, make him sit and stand attention. When it was over we would begin walking again. Now just hearing the opening strains will cause him to sit and stay sitting until it is over.

Similarly I taught him to stop and sit at intersections, look both ways and then cross the street. This was both by accident and on purpose. I always told him to “stop” and “sit” before crossing just to reinforce the commands when he was young. Eventually he began doing it on his own so I added the “look both ways” part. It works out nicely though because if he ever decided to run off (something he has never done) I know he would sit at the intersection before crossing the street and that he would look both ways (although I am sure he would carry on even if he saw a car coming- I don’t think he knows what he is looking for or anything) and maybe he would be a bit safer or at least give me time to catch up before he was hit by a car.

4

My better half managed to teach BomDawg (real name Loki, a miniature dachshund) to come when she starts counting. Really, it works better than just saying his name. If we’re cooking dinner or watching TV and we can’t hear him, we assume he might be getting into trouble. He still likes to pick the trashcan in the upstairs bathroom occasionally, and he is fully capable of other forms of mischief, so when she wants to know what he’s up to, she’ll say his name a few times. If she doesn’t get a reply, she’ll start counting: “ONE!!! TWO!!! TWO AND A HALF!!!” He almost always shows up before two-and-a-half, or we can at least hear the “tick-tick-tick” of his toenails on the stairs or the floorboards. She taught him this during one of my deployments, and I was happy to see that it worked for me when I got home.
So what happens when we get to three? We go looking for him, of course. One of two things usually has happened: either he got in some serious trouble and is hiding under the bed, or he got stuck behind a door that he can’t open. He’s a good sport about it, too; even if he’s just sleeping in his bed downstairs and we just didn’t see him (his bed is almost the same color as he is), he’ll get up and trot over to us when we start counting.

5

My puppy Zen will stretch out and put his front paws together and lick them any time you say “Show me your paws!” but only after he’d been doing that behaviour on his own for a while. We added the phrase to see if we could get him to do it on command and yes, he’ll now do that for show.

6

TLDR version: I accidentally trained a ferret to hold his urine.

A couple years ago or so, we had a ferret with adrenal disease. An adrenal gland grows and produces a whole lot more hormones than usual, which leads to all sorts of problems. One solution (which pretty much takes care of the disease) is to remove the affected adrenal gland and let the remaining one take over. The other is monthly shots of Lupron, which counteract this, but will only extend the ferret’s life and not solve the problem. I opted for surgery.

Well, I got a call from the OR at the vet’s office, with her telling me that the affected adrenal was actually the one that was right on the vena cava, the largest blood vessel in the ferret’s body. They don’t like removing that one because it’s really easy to nick the vena cava, and from there the ferret will probably rapidly bleed out and die. I said sew him up, we’ll deal with the monthly shots. My husband and I went to the vet’s office to pick him up for recovery at home, and the vet and a tech brought him into the room. The ferret struggled towards my husband and would have leapt into his arms (abdominal incision and all) if he could have, and then crawled up onto my husband’s shoulders, hid behind his neck/back, and looked out practically accusingly at everyone else in the room. Everyone kind of chuckled at this, as our ferret knew exactly who was responsible for what had been done to him. Besides everyone else being female, all of us were involved in his medical care - I’m the one that always brings him to the vet, on my day off when my husband is at work.

I was kind of shocked. I worried that our ferret was starting to associate me with medicine and pain and strange-smelling vet office and other awful things. :frowning: And worse yet, I had to inflict another indignity on him. Twice a day, after the catheter was removed, I had to place my fingers on either side of his abdomen and gently squeeze down on his bladder. His prostate was swollen to the point that he couldn’t pee, from the hormones pumped out by the adrenal gland, and it’d take a few days for the Lupron to kick in enough after catheter removal.

I thought ‘oh great, more painful annoying junk I have to do to him.’ So I started distracting him during the process by spreading some sweet-tasting vitamin/nutritional paste, designed for ferrets, on a little plate, and would let him lick that good stuff up while I squeezed his belly. It worked, too - he seemed to barely care about what was being done to him.

After a week of checking him twice a day and finding a full bladder, I called the vet. Shouldn’t he be going on his own by then? She thought so, and I mentioned the treat. She laughed and said she guessed he was holding out to get the treat, since I normally didn’t give him that, and suggested I try to wait him out on a day that I’d be home all day. If he made the pre-treatment “ouch!” sounds while trying to urinate or otherwise strained, he was still having trouble. (She assured me that a ferret’s bladder can get to the size of a tangerine without problems. :eek: ) So that Saturday, I waited him out. A few hours after the usual potty+treat time, I walked past his cage and heard what sounded like a muffled, forceful stream of fluid. He was squatting in the litter box, and I swear he looked annoyed, but it sounded like the plumbing was running just fine.

7

Not a trick, but KC hears herself called Fuzzybutt so often she responds to that at least as well as her real name.

8

I’ve told this story before, but it’s such a great story, and you asked, so I’m a-gonna tell it again. :slight_smile:

The late great springer spaniel Miss Emily Kimberly was on medication that made her process water quickly; she drank a lot and peed a lot. So we had to keep her water dish filled and take her outside frequently. But sometimes she’d drink up her water faster than we could check it, so she started drinking out of the toilet. We’d hear the seat go FLIP, know that Miss Emily was drinking toilet water, and go fill her dish.

This pattern did not escape Miss Emily’s notice.

After a while we’d hear the FLIP and find her not drinking out of the toilet, but peeking out the bathroom door, waiting . . . for someone to come and fill her water dish. She never drank out of the toilet again . . . just used the signal to call us.

I guess you could say she trained us. :slight_smile:

9

My Siamese cat talks/vocalizes quite a bit, as most Siamese do. One day she was burbling while I was petting her, and one of her vocalizations sounded like “Mama”. I praised and petted her and told her to say it again. She loves getting attention, and so she tried everything she could…and came out with “Mama” again. More praise and pettings followed. Now she’ll say it on purpose, and usually on command, too.

10

If you put your hand 6-8 inches or so above my cat Chango’s head, and say “trick”, he will rise up on his hind legs and touch your hand with the top of his head. He would sometimes do this on his own–I started saying “trick”, and now he does it on command. I had a Siamese years ago who fetched on his own without any training at all.

11

I had a male cat who would fetch, too (his thing was metal jewellery - he was so cute dragging his favourite chain around). Neither of my female cats will have anything to do with that game.

My cat has trained us that all she has to do is wave her paw vaguely at the coffee table door and we’ll open it for her so she can go have a gander inside. She has also trained my husband’s cat to stretch out her arms while lying on a human so it looks like she’s hugging us. That’s pretty damned cute.

I think the only trick I accidentally trained both cats to do was come when called - it doesn’t matter which one, I’ll get both when I call one, because there might be tuna involved.

12

I was setting up a step ladder that had been unused for awhile. After I got it where I wanted it I noticed a spider inside one of the rungs, so I just blew it out, it made a slight whistling sound. One of my Jacks came over and blew into a lower rung making the same sound. After a minute or two I had 3 dogs huffing into the ladder whistling.
I ran to get the video camera and my wife came out and saw them doing it.
As I turned on the camera they all just sat and looked at me. I finally gave up and went inside wth the camera and clearly heard whistling coming from outside. So I tried to capture it again with no success.

So I accidently taught my dogs to sit.

13

My cat Oliver got in a habit of pooping on the floor outside the box when he was sick and just decided that was a darn pleasant place to poop so he continued even after getting a clean bill of health. To combat this behavior we started keeping an eye on him and when he would go to the bathroom in the litter box we would praise him and give him a cat treat. After about a week of this he started jumping in the box and jumping right back out again and standing at your feet with a look like, “Yay for me, now make with the treats!”

14

When we call one cat, we usually get all three, again, because there might be tuna involved. In fact, if I use a can opener (and I don’t even have an electric one, it’s manual so it makes very little noise) I will have all three cats underfoot, demanding their fair share of tuna juice. Even if I’m not opening a can of tuna.

http://www.twolumps.net/d/20040322.html

15

Butch loves the bathroom as well. I tolerate it, and leave the door ajar, but my wife closes it, and he scratches and scratches at it. He always comes in after me, takes a few head scratches, and jumps into the tub, waiting for me to turn on the faucet at a trickle. No, he doesn’t drink. He watches it until the water gathers and touches his feet, then jumps out. That’s it.

Cats is crazy.

Joe

16

I used to snap my fingers at Abby to get her to come to me. If I stopped petting her she would stand on her hind legs and rub her cheek on my hand. One day I snapped my fingers above her head to see what she’d do and she jumped up on two legs and spun around. This was so freaking adorable I kept doing it and she kept spinning.

I still do it every once in a while, but I’d like to try to get a video of it.

17

Our cat had detachable claws. She could only do it once per claw though. The secret of the trick was the cat was falling apart from old age.

18

My cat loves textures. The more textured, the better. We use jute bags to carry our shopping home from the supermarket and one of her favourite treats is to be allowed to roll around in the emptied bags before we get around to putting them back in the car boot.

This love also extends to the bathroom. I tend to start the bath running, then lay a towel down on the floor and sit on it whilst reading a book, waiting for the bath to fill. She started coming in and smooching around on the towel, so knowing her love of textures, I found the oldest scratchiest towel in the back of the cupboard and laid it out for her.

Now when i run a bath, if I haven’t got the scratchy towel down for her majesty by the time she comes running in, she immediately goes to the cupboard and stretches her front legs up against the door and meows for it. Once it’s down, she does lots of bunny flops and generally squirms around it like a happy squirmy thing.

19

I guess my turtles get really hungry, and now associate me with food, such that any time I get too close to the tank they both dive into the water and start frantically swimming into the tank wall nearest to where I am. If I go near the corner, one of the turtles will actually start trying to climb out of the tank to get to the food in my hand.