Cool things your pets have done

[THespos]

I had a Golden Retriever/Labrador mix named “Tadross” for a number of years. She was named after Michael Tadross (movie producer - “Die Hard,” “Coming to America,” “School Ties,” etc.), who gave him to our family.

Tadross was a quick learner. My dad used to hate dogs barking all the time, so she learned to avoid barking. When she needed to alert the family that someone was on the property, she would place her butt next to the liquor cabinet and bang her tail against it repeatedly. The banging of the cabinet meant someone was coming to the door or that someone was trespassing in the yard.

Tadross also learned very quickly with regard to what rooms of the house she was welcome in. While inside, she kept herself confined to the kitchen and a small hallway that leads to our downstairs bathroom. When called into a room in which she wasn’t allowed, she would wait at the edge of the room until we called her a second time, making sure that we “really meant it” that she would be temporarily allowed in the living room, upstairs bedrooms, etc. Once she left the forbidden room, she would still avoid going into those rooms without permission. Pretty advanced concept for a dog, no?

My favorite Tadross trick, though, was “go poop in the neighbor’s yard.” We’d give her a command and she would run to the back edge of our property, take a few steps on to the neighbor’s property, and do her thing. Simply wonderful. (Unless you’re my neighbor)

[Winnie]

Many, many animals in my family. All of them with bizarre personalities.

My mother’s pet parakeet, Petey, picked up swear words more quickly than other words and mixed them up with the rest of his vocabulary. “Dirty Shit Bird” was one of his favorite expressions, and loudly squawked that into the priest’s ear when he came to the family’s house for dinner one night.

Our mixed-terrier, Chorizo, didn’t always like us. He was a loving, sweet, funny dog but occasionally just didn’t want you around. He’d perch on top of the couch and leer at you if the TV was on loud or we were making a lot of noise. When he was ready to go to bed, that meant that YOU had to go to bed, too. He’d sit up on his haunches in the middle of the living room and whine until someone went to the bedroom. You didn’t have to go to sleep – if you just sat in the bedroom, watched TV and went about your business he was fine. He never barked at people when they came into the house, he’d bark at when they went to leave. He also had a very odd habit of burying toys or bones under blankets, chairs, and clothing before he played with them. One Christmas we noticed baby Jesus was missing from the manger. Many weeks went by and he never reappeared. After the holidays when we were putting all the decorations away we found baby Jesus buried under the Christmas tree skirt.

My current dog, Pia, an English Bulldog, is a lesson in laughter curing all. During NFL games, Mr. Winnie has her trained to grab a toy and run into the basement when he says, “Let’s go watch football!” No other sports work… “let’s go watch baseball” or “let’s go watch wrestling” just leave her with a quizzical look on her face. She also snores like a buzz saw, drools like a faucet, pops her head up over the bedroom window the second my car turns the corner on our street, happily burps in your face if you bend down to kiss or hug her. She is also incredibly perceptive and is an amazing comfort if I’m sick or sad, and knows when to back off if I’m pissed or take advantage of my mood if I’m feeling happy and energetic.

[RaCha_ar]

God, this thread has me snorting in laughter (snorting 'cause I’m at work and have to laugh quietly). My parents have lots of pet stories. My father will always hate cats because my mom’s cat Milkshake would pee in dad’s beanbag chair – Dad insists it was just to spite him. Most of dad’s animal stories aren’t really cool things pets have done, so I’ll save them for elsewhere, but mom’s got some good ones. She had a rat as a child named – creatively – Ricky the Rat, who was absolute best friends with one of the household cats. Mom says they’d curl up to sleep together and everything; there’s even photographic proof. I think this is one of the sweetest things I’ve ever heard.

Then there was Sundance, the goofily stupid Golden Retriever. When Sundance was a pup she learned to scratch her back by walking beneath a coffee table and using the bottom to rub her back against. For some reason, though, Sundance didn’t seem to grasp the concept of her own growth, or the fact that the coffee table seemed to be getting smaller and smaller so she had to stoop lower and lower to get under it. Mom swears that more than once, Sundance finished scratching her back and walked off with the coffee table balanced precariously on her back. :eek: She knew something was wrong, but could never quite figure out what. My opinion is that this would be awfully useful for serving hors d’ouevres at cocktail parties. Sundance died about a year after I was born, so I’ve always been sorry not to have met this sweet dog.

Our current dog is a ten-year-old miniature Schnauzer who is an absolute riot. Two of her tricks come to mind. One dates wayyyy back to when The Bodyguard was a big movie and “I Will Always Love You” was the song on everyone’s radio. My mother, notorious for her absolutely awful voice, was crooning along with Whitney Houston one day while housecleaning. Upon hitting the high note at the end (well, not QUITE hitting it, but certainly trying), she discovered that the dog looked rather agitated. Next thing she knew, Stormy burst into howling – something she had NEVER done previously – and didn’t let up until the song was over. For a while it took one of us howling along with her and the song to get her to repeat the trick, but now she recognises the song and starts howling the moment Whitney starts singing.

Stormy is at her best with a game I invented that we call the “cellar door game.” I have no idea how to describe this without a visual aid, but I’ll do my best. The front door of my parents’ house opens into a little foyer, with a doorway to the living room immediately to the left. Straight ahead is a hallway leading to another hallway, off of which is the kitchen to the right and doors to the bathroom and cellar opposite each other to the left. The living room also has an opening to the hallway out of the kitchen. The result is a circular route that can be run from the foyer down hall #1, taking a left to a short route down hall #2, running through the living room to emerge back into the foyer, or vice-versa.

             bath
             __
living room |hallway     kitchen
     ^       __      ___
     |       cellar   h
     |                a
     |                l
     |                l
living room |   foyer

God that’s an awful diagram, but I tried. Anyway, the cellar door opens in such a way that it blocks the entrance to the living room from the kitchen. If I get the dog on one side of the door and yourself on the other, she gets very frustrated with not being able to run through the door to get to me and will bolt around the route mentioned above to catch me on the other side of the door. While she’s running, I quickly dodge around to the side of the door that she started on, so that when she gets around to where I was before, I’m suddenly not there anymore. She’ll then run back around the other way, during which I’ll dodge back around the door and hide from her again. Rinse and repeat. When I finally allow the dog to catch me, it’s a matter of no small triumph for her and she will perch atop my lap like the queen of the mountain, panting and barking her awesomeness for all to admire.

After the first few repetitions of this game, Stormy figured out that by stopping in the foyer and not running all the way through the living room she could catch me in the act of dodging from one side of the door to the other, and could double back and catch me. Smart dog thing #1, but easily avoided since the jangling of her collar stops when she tries this trick. I outsmart her outsmarting of me.

When I went home in October, though, the dog outdid me. There is an L-shaped couch in the living room that runs along the wall between the two doorways, then extends into the room right where the door from the kitchen is, essentially forming a three-foot-high wall that divides the room in two. This has in the past served as an effective barrier during the cellar door game, as the dog was not allowed on the couch and has to run around the couch to get to the door. Since she can’t take a straight circuit through the room, this used to buy me more time to get to the other side of the door. However, since my brother and I are both out of the house my parents have become much more lax in enforcing the rules to their remaining “child,” and the dog is now allowed on the couch. I did not know this. This was my downfall.

A few rounds into the game, I’m on the living room side of the door, waiting to see the grey blur of my dog rocketing around the corner before I dodge back around the door at the last possible second just to taunt her. I see and hear her come through the doorway from the foyer and prepare to duck around the door as soon as she rounds the couch.

The dog, it seems, has gotten more intelligent while I’ve been away at school, too. Imagine my shock when instead of going around the couch, the dog bounds onto the seat cushions, leaps onto the back of the couch, and launches herself from that point right at my chest, barking hysterically the whole way. Thank god she only weighs about ten pounds or we both would’ve gone flying backwards. As it was it took all of my presence of mind to just grab onto her so she wouldn’t fall and hurt her poor frail self. I stood there in shock for a good minute or so while my dog barked her triumph and my parents went breathless with laughter. The cellar door game will never be the same again.

[Lionors]

Hobbes. Long-haired red and black miniature dachshund. Beautiful little dog – everyone always thought he was a girl. He earned his name the second day he was with me, when, tiny puppy that he was, he somehow managed to pull himself up half a flight of stairs…and used the height to launch himself at me when I came in the door.

I got him right before I graduated from college. About a year later, I had to leave my job and move back home (800 miles away) to help my dad take care of my mother, who was terminally ill. (Long story, but no nurses would come out to where they lived and I’m an only child.) Hobbes, of course, came with me.

The absolute best thing I remember about him was that he always knew when Mom was in a lot of pain, no matter how stiff-upper-lipped she was. If she didn’t hurt too much to hold him, he’d seek her out and absolutely insist that she play with him or at least pet him. It never failed to help improve her spirits. If she was in really bad shape, he would actually put on what had to be his equivalent of a show for her. He’d get some of his favorite toys out of their basket and set them on the floor where she could see him, then he’d do different things with each toy. Some he’d wrestle, some he’d toss up in the air and try to catch, and of course, there was the ‘dead dog’ and ‘sitting up gopher’ routine. Eventually, he would make us laugh and somehow, that never failed to help. Once he’d gotten his laugh and applause (he had to have both, thank you), he’d stop the performance and grin, but until then, it was high gear.

One of his favorite pastimes had to go down as his single best trick, though. When Mom was able, she liked to go to the store and so on with me, and she’d always insist on getting a toy for Hobbes. (I kid you not, the dog must’ve had sixty different toys of one sort or the other.) Most times, we’d get these at the grocery store, and they’d be sacked in with the other stuff, including meat, dog treats and dog food…things that would be much more tempting to a dog, one would think, than a toy.

Not for Hobbes. The minute we’d put the bags down, he’d trot from one to the other, standing up on his back legs just long enough so he could peer over the side of the bag (the store there always used paper) and see if the toy was inside. Once he spotted the toy, he’d finesse it out of the bag, leaving everything else. (I even had the bag deliberately packed with meat and dog treats a few times, just to see if he’d go for those too. No dice; he just wanted the toy.) Once he retrieved it, he’d run off and puzzle out how to open up the package to get his toy out (not an easy task with just paws and teeth, but he always managed.) Then he’d take it off and dump it in his basket and proceed to ignore it until he decided to do a show or we took one out to play with him.

He’s been gone ten years now, and even though I adore the pets I have now, I still miss the little furball. <sigh>