Scout’s a shepherd/lab mix. She’s 12 years old and has arthritis. Normally she’s an outside dog, but we’ve started bringing her inside during the cold weather, and also to keep her off the ice so she doesn’t slip and hurt herself. She has a nice egg-carton bed over in the corner of my office, and is usually content to snooze there while I work.
And she likes to lick her butthole to pass the time.
I can’t have music while I’m working (too hard to concentrate), so I have the hum of the computer fan for white noise. Unfortunately it’s not white enough to block out
We have to monitor her, um, functions because she occasionally has problems (and this is also why I can’t just put her elsewhere while she’s in the house – already lost a couple of carpets), so pretty sure she doesn’t have a medical problem. Just a gross hobby.
Don’t you love that pathetic guilty look when you yell at her to stop?
Head comes up – baleful eyes – head goes down in front where it belongs – and then slowly it turns… step by step… inch by inch… Slurp-slurp-slurp-slurp-slurp slap-slap-slap slurp-slurp-slurp.
Yeah, we used to have a dog who did the same thing. slurpslurpslurpslurpslurp… AIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!
Too bad anything you might apply to the area to discourage licking would probably encourage the dog to run around the house yelping and dragging her butt on the rug.
On the bright side, though, it’d get her out of your office for a while.
My dog drives me nuts with her scratching. (No, concerned Dopers, the vet says her skin is fine, and we use a hypo-allergenic shampoo for her. She just loves to scratch.)
She hops up in bed with me as soon as I get settled down for the night. She finds a comfy spot, and starts scratching. First one ear: I]thumpthumpthumpthumpthump.* The bed shakes in time. Then the other: thumpthumpthumpthumpthump. Then she turns and gnaws on her flanks, wiggling and straining to reach the spot. Then she rolls over to chew on the other flank. Then her paws.
No one can sleep until this ritual is complete. Then she lets out a contented siiiiiigh, rolls over on her back with her paws in the air, and falls asleep.
She has a nice egg-carton bed over in the corner of my office, and is usually content to snooze there while I work.