My dog has strange quirks, which I can only construe are her opinions on what is “polite.” She’s never been trained to do these things-- never encouraged or discouraged from doing them. Unless I’m giving her sub-concious cues of some sort, she’s come up with these behaviors on her own.
If I am filling up her food or water bowl she looks away. She won’t look at it, or approach it until I have stepped back. She’ll even abandon a bowl she’s using if I add more food or water. I have to wait until she’s finished, or she’ll leave.
She waits until my husband opens the dresser drawers before she jumps up on the bed with me in the mornings. If he gets up, goes to the bathroom and comes back to bed, she’s never claimed a spot. She waits until the dresser drawer is pulled open: her cue that my husband is getting dressed, and thus won’t be returning to the bed.
She brings us socks when she thinks we’re upset. She goes to the laundry basket, pulls out a sock, and then brings it to us, tail wagging. Her motto: Say It With Socks, I suppose.
She won’t push open a door that is only slightly ajar. If it has room for her head and shoulders to fit through, she’ll push it the rest of the way open, or if I call to her and say it’s allright, she’ll push her way in, but otherwise will sit outide, giving a periodic whine as if to alert us to her predicament.
I’m sure every pet owner has something like this. What sort of quirks does your pet have that seem to be some sort of doggy/kitty “etiquette”?
Sounds like you’ve got a very sensitive and “tuned in” dog. You are very lucky.
Basically, dogs are creatures of habit–our habits. For example, my dogs know I’m NOT getting up until they hear my hand grabbing my glasses. They come and head butt us when we are arguing (although I’d prefer a sock instead of getting winded). They know they get the last cracker, so they wait patiently and don’t beg…although my friend feeds them while she eats, so they beg like mad with here.
When my husband returns from brushing his teeth, one dog jumps off the bed immediately - only to sneak back up in the middle of the night.
Also, they mess with each other. When my bigger, um, less intelligent pup gets hoisted on the bed, the other dog freaks and goes on the floor and starts playing…knowing the big, dumb one will say, “Hey, the dog that hates me and eats all the food wants to make friends!!. Hurray!” And then once the big dumb one hits the floor, the other, smarter one jumps on the bed with a glint of satisfaction in her eye.
My dog Kate wouldn’t jump on the bed or get down again until I told her it was okay. She’d stand beside the bed and wait for the invitation, and after she’d settled in she would’ve climb over me (she slept by the wall) until I gave her the okay. I had to sort of read her mind, but it worked well for us.
My cat Papi won’t complain because she’s out of food. She just gets very affectionate, as though to say “See what a good kitty I am? Don’t I deserve food, too?”
My dogs Ruffian and Maggie won’t scratch at the dogs to let me know they want out, as Simon and Mike do. They just wait until I go near the door and come over and stand there.
If I am the first (or only, if other people are out of town) person up in the morning, the dogs have learned that I go across the upstairs hall to the bathroom first, and there is no stopping me. So they just lie there until either I emerge, or one of the parental units emerges from their room. At that point, they jump to their feet and get excited for breakfast.
My dog does this same thing. If it’s open enough for her to walk through (she’s a lab), she’ll walk on in, but if she has to “nose” it open, she won’t. She’ll sit outside the door and whine until whoever’s in the room says “Come on in!” and then she’ll open it and come in.
Yesterday, I found out she can tell time. I take her with me in the car to pick up my daughter from school. We leave the house at about 2:10 every day. Yesterday, they closed school two hours early because of the heat.* (Tangent: They never did this when I was a kid. We suffered in the heat. Kids today are wimps.) *
Anyway, my daughter called and asked if she could go to a friend’s house for a while and I said okay, and that I’d pick her up at 4:00. This was at 11:00. At 2:15, the dog got very agitated and kept walking to the side kitchen door. I thought she had to go out, and tried to put her out in the yard (we put her “out” for peeing through the back door). She wouldn’t have any of that and wanted to go out the side door, where the driveway is. She’d look up at the coatrack where her leash is, and prance around and whine at me. I suddenly realized she knew what time it was and wanted to go pick up her “sister”! Smart doggy!
As soon as we pull the sheets down on our bed at night, Tino leaves the room and goes to his bed in the living room, where he sleeps till about 4 am. At 4 am, he comes into our room to jump on the bed and snuggle. His sister Willow, on the other hand, spends the night on the floor of our room but then leaves at about 4 am to go into the living room. The dogs get along really well so we don’t think it is a ‘can’t be in the same room’ thing; we think that they are on ‘security shifts,’ so that one can sleep (the bedroom dog) while the other is on guard against intruders.
Whenever I get sick, I usually sleep on the couch during the day. When I lay down, both of my cats will come up, one at a time, gently bump my forehead with their noses as if to say, “You, ok? Oh, you’re not feeling well, are you.” They only do it one time, completely noiselessly, then they’ll curl up on my feet like they’re trying to keep them warm.
Also, we usually eat at the coffee table in the living room, and sit on the couch or on the floor around it since our dining room table is really unstable. My husband doesn’t like the cats on the couch during mealtimes because their hair tends to float around when they move and end up in the food. So as soon as I come out and get my husband to grab dinner, or if he’s cooking, we’ll walk out with our food, the cats hop off the couch and sit down on the floor at my feet until we’re done and put the dishes away.
Our pup, Samantha, is very meticulous. When I am getting breakfast she plays quietly by herself. I just noticed that she does the same thing every morning. Sam gathers all her toys around her and then goes about “arranging” them. She’ll pick up the piggy and move it 2 inches to the right. Then look at it for a moment and move it back. Then she’ll pick up another toy and another and do the same thing until everything is “perfect”. Once the toys are arranged she scatters them around the floor again.
She’s only 3 months old so I’m sure I’ll notice some more things as she gets older.
My dogs sleep on the bed, under the covers if it’s cold, but on top most of the time. When I get up, the rescue jumps off the bed and proceeds to scratch his ass on the side rail of the bed for a while, then he’ll jump back up and settle down precisely on the spot I was last sleeping in. I think he likes to be in the spot with the strongest smell of me lingering. The other dog will crawl under the covers while I’m in the shower and will not move until I throw the covers back and say, “Tip! You going to work today?” At which point she will spring up out of bed and run downstairs and wait by the door for me to let them out. If I get up at a different time than normal, she’ll roll over for a belly rub because she knows we aren’t going to work!
Rescue dog will wait for older dog to go outside before he goes. He also stands back and waits for the older dog to finish eating before he’ll take one bite. Even if I hand feed him, he sneaks these guilty looks at the other dog as if he’s making a huge social faux pas by eating at the same time as the alpha female.
I had a cat once who tagged along on all the dog walks. She loved the walks as much as the dog did. So one time the dog was in the kennel and the cat stood screaming by the door at the appointed dog-walk time. I let her out and she stood outside on the porch screaming, until I came out. I walked a little way down the street, and she happily followed. I had to take the entire dog-walk route until the cat was satisfied she’d had her walk too.
Also, my cats have an organized cat litter system. When I scoop, I notice there’s only pee in one box and only poop in the other box. I wonder what happens when/if one of the cats accidentally pees or poops in the wrong box?
Now as polite as the dogs and cats seem to be to each other, pet one and see what happens. The others will body slam the one being petted so as to get their own scritching quota filled. Which is why I only have two dogs… I only have two arms and cannot pet any more at the same time!
One of my cats has learned that I won’t feed him until it’s time no matter how much he yowls-I just ignore that. Feeding time is just after I get out of bed and go to the bathroom. I tend to click on the tv before I get up so once the cat hears the tv he knows I’m awake and he starts to meow to be fed. But until the tv goes on he stays quiet, even on days when I sleep a little late.
Another cat I used to have like to sit on my lap but he’d always sit next to me and wait to be invited. Patting my hand on my leg was the signal to come aboard.
Our Ivan-dog likes to sleep at the foot of the bed. So does Bouncer. Sometimes Ivan will start out the night sleeping on the couch, and when he does, Bouncer sleeps in Ivan’s normal spot on the bed.
But without fail, sometime during the night, Ivan will come in and want to get on the bed. He’ll stand by the bed and “Woof!” at Bouncer (waking us too, incidentally) until Bouncer jumps off. After Ivan gets settled, Bouncer will come up on the bed and lie down between me and Dear Robert.
Mine can too, just not quite so precicely. Around five, she goes downstairs to the livingroom to wait for my husband to get home. If he’s not there by about 5:30, she starts getting antsy. If he’s even later still, she’ll start searching the house for him as if he may have sneaked past her.
One of the odd things about her is that she seems to think the front door and the back represent two entirely different universe portals. If my husband goes out the front door and returns by the same, it is a cause for joyous celebration when he enters: much jumping and barking and other signs of canine rejoicing are done, even if he was only gone for ten minutes. However, if he goes out the back door, there’s no greeting ritual, even if he’s been gone for hours.
I imagine she must just think he’s been in the yard all the time. The front door leads to the world: the vet’s office, the kennel, the park, grandma’s house-- and that place from whence Alpha Dog gets the food. (“Kills” wrapped in plastic.) The back door leads to the yard where she pees and digs holes. Nothing interesting out there.
