Our 4-legged stomach (also known as a Labrador) looooves butter. In fact, one evening it seems she found one those little butter cups from a fast food joint.
In the middle of the night I awaken to the the unmistakeable sound of dog horking. I haul myself out of bed only to find that I am too late and she has already re-eaten the results.
An hour later … Horking again. This time I get there in mid-re-eat and am able to retrieve the little plastic tub that used to hold butter. :eek:
There was one more another Horking session an hour or so later (that I actually got her outside for) and then her stomach seemed to settle down. (Just in time for me to get up, of course)
Until a day or so later … when lo and behold … there was the OTHER butter tub emerging from its long journey through the dog.
Sigh. This dog will eat anything. Except the cheap dog food (it upsets her stomach). Sigh.
I filled up a dog food bowl with Kibbles and Bits. My shepherd started chomping away. After a half an hour, he had eaten all the Bits leaving the Kibbles. That was a lot of work for a hungry dog.
Not my dog, but one I take care of on occasion… Whenever he’s thirsty he’ll always check the bathroom to see if he has access to the toilet water, because his fresh, clean water is just not good enough.
He’ll wolf down a large bowl of dog food, then immediately beg for scraps or try to eat the pig’s food, or he’ll canvass the bird cages to see if he can find any bird food scraps. He CAN NOT be that hungry.
He gets excited when the parrot imitates the microwave, believing that something good is coming. He’s also been known to take orders from the parrots (“Quiet Marty”, “Marty, get out”).
My cockatiel Sunny occasionally gets in an exploratory mood. He then gets into stuff he knows he’s not supposed to get into. He announces this LOUDLY, thereby ensuring he is rapidly found out in his misbehavior.
Cockatiel Sydney will watch me open the cage door, but persist in trying to squeeze through the bars of the cage to exit. All the other birds have figured out what doors are and how they operate (in some cases to the point we had to purchase more secure locks), why not him?
I’m sure the conure Griffin does stupid stuff, just can’t think of anything off hand. She’s pretty darn smart, as have been my three lovebirds and other conure. Cockatiels… not the geniuses of the parrot family…
On Friday, I heard a huge thud and went to investigate. I looked out the glass laundry door and the dopey blue persian was standing over a dead dove. I feed the birds so I was a bit annoyed he killed one. I chased him away and went to get the bird. It was strange- no marks on it, just bleeding from the beak. I gave the Blue Persian an arse kicking (metaphorically) and threw the bird away.
The Blue Persian- big dopey thing he is- comes leaping back with an action and an expression that says " I forgive you boss- whats going down?" Then the penny dropped- the bird had flown into the glass laundry door and broken its neck. They often fly into windows but not with such force. So poor Keyser (Blue Persian) was having a nap when the bird flew into the door and fell dead where he was. He wandered over to have a look and I saw him and kicked his behind.
Sadie does this too. Socks are treats for her. She follows along as I carry the laundry basket downstairs, and then she’ll sit by the machine while I’m loading and unloading, waiting for a sock to fall. She’s very quick.
Maybe I should start using socks for training instead of Milkbones.
Princess the timneh grey parrot is TINY, she can perch on your finger like a tubby tiel. Jeff bird is a congo Grey, and kind of freaky big, about 3 or 4 times her size. She keeps trying to get on his cage and kick his ass. Thankfully Jeff is unusually tolerant, but we bought a new cage with a trickier lock to keep her safe from her own spectacular stoopid.
That’s a great idea! Mojo would far prefer a sock to his Kong. (Until he manages to eat the sock. And then returns from his constitutional with threads hanging out of his butt. And then expects me to perform a sock-ectomy. Eeewww!)
Neighbor’s dog. A goldie named Biscuit. Very sweet. Dumb as a pile of leaves.
Biscuit’s barking and jumping at a copperhead.
Chase Biscuit away and destroy copperhead.
Days later find Biscuit with his head swelled up about 3 times its normal size. Call neighbors in a concerned panic. Neighbors come and haul Biscuit off to the vet.
“Looks even worse than last time,” says neighbors kid.
I mean how many times does a dog have to meet up with poisonous snakes in order to leave them the hell alone?
Griffin the conure is normally a very smart bird, but last night the grapefruit defeated her. She just couldn’t get through the rind on her own, and the hairless ape (me) wasn’t peeling fast enough. So she poofed her head feathers up (that means she’s angry) then charged the grapefruit making angry noises. When that didn’t work she charged one of the peels. Very angry frustrated little bird. It’s the angry that makes her stupid.
She also charged the hot pizza right out of the microwave. Of course, it was too hot, so she yelped, poofed up, and charged it - and bit it. Again. It was still too hot. So, in a fit of frustrated rage she bit it a third time…
The hairless ape (the spouse this time) broke a bit off the crust, blew on it to cool it, then gave it to her. The little conure then savaged the pizza crumb for some minutes before settling in to eat.
My Shar-pei Yoda (RIP, he passed in Jan of this year at 13.5 years old) was the love of my life but dumb as a bag of hammers. He never did learn his own name, he wasn’t at all food or affection or ANYTHING motivated so there was literally no training him, and he just kind of acted like a cat- aloof, doing his own thing, and doing whatever pleased Yoda.
We had a huge garden style window at our house in NY that was maybe 2’ off the floor with a large area where you could put plants or whatever. Yoda used that as a perch and would sit there all day watching whatever was happening outside. Nose an inch from the glass, fascinated for hours at a time.
One day I looked over and he was at it as usual; nose an inch away from the glass and staring intently…at the closed blinds. sigh I went over and pulled them up and the look of shock on his face was priceless. WOW, how did you get all that STUFF to appear???
My mothers Persian cat has this habit when startled to bolt away from any perceived immediate danger which usually ends up with her slamming head first into objects. Railings, doors, furniture etc …
Heh. My kitty (normally fairly intelligent) will look almost anywhere for water besides his dish, which is cleaned and freshened daily! If you leave a partial cup of water out, he’ll stuff his big ol’ head down in the cup and drink the water. If I put out a fresh vase of flowers and there’s enough space between the flowers and the edge of the vase, he’ll be drinking water out of the flower vase. In the mornings, after I’ve washed my face and brushed my teeth, or anytime during the day I use the bathroom (thereby washing my hands), he will lurk around the sink, hop up on the vanity and lick the freakin’ water droplets out of the sink!
All this in spite of having a perfectly nice bowl of clean, fresh water on the floor. Stoopid cat.
Oh, and he has a “gravity feeder”, which means I pour basically a 3lb bag of dry food into a plastic “jar”, attach a square food dish to the bottom, turn it upside down, and as Ponch eats his kibble (he doesn’t care much for wet food), more automatically fills the dish. But if the very front of the dish is not completely filled with food, he will meow at me piteously until I “shake” the food down so it fills the dish. Plus, as much as he likes ‘hoomin’ food, I have to give it to him in a separate dish. If it’s in his kitty food, not only won’t he eat the people food, but he won’t eat the cat food the people food is touching. Not sure if this makes him stupid, though; maybe it just means he has me exceptionally well-trained.
My cats both do this as well–we call it the “Law of Found Water” and have theorized that the cats are preserving their known-good pristine water source for emergencies and drinking whatever they can find as their day-to-day thing, the little crazy survivalists.
Bernie was that way. At first I thought it was a fresh water thing, so we bought a fountain type bowl, but she ignored it (and Cleo was afraid of it). I ended up putting a coffee cup on the floor in the bathroom that they would drink from.
Lucy likes hopping in the tub after we shower and drinks the water from under the bathmat.
New “Oh, Lucy, you’re so pretty” action: She really likes toy mice, like these. Bought a pack of about a month ago. They started disappearing, to the point where she was down to one a few days ago. I looked in the usual spots - under furniture, in the closets, in shoes. Nothing. Grabbed a yardstick, swept under the stove, found 9 of them.
So we went from 12 to 1 to 10.
I gave her one, put the rest on the kitchen table.
Yesterday she hopped on the table, delicately picked up a mouse, hopped down, and batted it under the stove. Looked at the stove quizically. Hopped back up on the table, picked up another mouse, hopped down, and batted that one under the stove. And again. And again. Until all found mice were back under the stove, including the two already on the floor.
12 to 1 to 10 to none.
Bad me - I just sat and watched her go through all of the mice, laughing.
