I’m inspired by my own thread (sorry) in GQ about watching TV. I dunno. I think animal quirks are interesting. (It’s not limited to dogs! Feel free to share kitty’s quirks!)
Additional things my dog does (or does not do) that seems odd:
She can’t swim. Really. I used to think all dogs can swim but she’s proven me wrong. She sinks. (She’s not overweight, she just does not have that instinct to paddle her back paws or something).
She doesn’t enjoy sticking her nose out the window in the car. Again, I thought all dogs loved a good car ride with their snout taking in the fine air, but no.
She sleeps like a person in bed – all stretched out, head on pillow; sometimes she does the whole “in a ball” thing 90 percent of the time it’s stretched out snoring and aware of where her pillow is (she has her own).
My older dog will not fetch. She’ll play with a ball (tossing about about and trying to catch it), but if I throw it or roll it (even a short way) she’ll just look at me like “why did you throw the toy away?”
I think she understands the concept of fetch. If another dog is playing, she’ll follow the ball with her eyes then gleefully chase after the other dog while doing everything in her power to keep that other dog from getting the ball. So I think she only plays defense.
Neither of my dogs put their heads out the window either. They’re basically just miserable in the car. Car rides are torture for them.
The younger dog won’t bark when he needs to go out or wants dinner. Instead, he’ll spin in circles in front of the door or his food dish. I have no idea where that came from. Sometimes, if he just wants attention, he’ll spin right in front of me. Spinning means he wants something. It’s not a problem except when he manages to get stuck behind a door he can’t open. Rather than barking to be let out, he just spins in endless circles (always counter clockwise). He’ll spin like crazy till I find him and let him out.
When I go to bed or take a nap, Bailey has a ritual - go to the head of the bed, and either rest her head on the pillow I’m using, or in the crook of my neck. Often, but not always, a couple of minutes later, she movs down the bed a bit to settle down, letting out a hugh sigh
Guinness gets his jollies by licking Bailey’s ears clean. She’ll lie down – usually on her back, even though she’s the alpha – and Guinness will lap away at Bailey’s ears until … well, until Bailey gets up.
My dogs laugh. Really. When they’re playing, or when I’m talking to them in a silly voice, they’ll respond with an irregular panting sound that resembles a a breathed “ha haha ha ha.” They don’t make this sound when they’re done playing; it’s just regular panting or silence.
Porties have an incredible range of voices. On top of laughing, Guinness gobbles. He’ll shake his head back and forth to make a noise that can best be described as a breathy “shubshubshubshubshub”
She loves baths. We found this out as the week we got her (alreasy an adult 9 year old dog), my wife was running herslef a buble bath. my wife leaves to get a book… returns to find the pooch standing happily in the tup sniffing at the buubbles. Never hard to get her in the tub either… just turn on the water and in she goes.
She hates toys of any type. Son’t play with anything at all.
She likes to bury her dog treats for an undisclosed amount of time and then one day descides they’re “ripe” and eats them… only burying them involves pushing them into a random part of the floor with her nose and then ignoring them. Half the time they aren’t hidden under anything just sitting in the middle of the carpet. And believe you me she gets pissed if you move them.
She makes cartoony sounds when shaking her head… but that’s all the extra skin.
She hates every other dog on the planet. no matter where we are or what we are doing she is not friendly to any dog. She’s not aggressive in any other way… hell some days she hardly moves. But get a dog near her and he’s all energy and jumping.
I forgot to mention one of the weirdest things… she will not eat off of her dish… any food you give her must be pushed from the dish onto the floor before she’ll eat it.
My dog, Houdini, loves to jump into the bathtub whenever I’m in the bathroom. Sometimes to lick any water that’s there, and sometimes just to try to dig himself a little hole (in the porcelain… heh) and curl up. He also frequently comes in from a walk and heads for the bathtub hoping to lick water drops (or residual flavor?) from the faucet, rather than heading first for his water dish!
Well, my cat, Hobbes, plays fetch. Yep, that’s right, running back and forth, just like a dog. He doesn’t jump up and down though to get you to throw the toy.
He also likes to sleep on his back completely spread eagled. I mean paws akimbo, tail flat out, snoring away. If he still had balls, he’d be totally exposed. :o
He puts his paws under the mat his food dishes are on, and then tries to pounce on the mat because it’s moving. Only, his paws are still under the mat, so all he really does is manage to make a huge mess with his food and water. He then eats the soggy food. (eeeewww)
My parents insist he’s punishment for all the wierd things I did to them when I was a kid . . .
Wow, I thought only my sister’s dog did this. He’s a Lhasapoo, with a face like Yoda and a personality like Napoleon. He will not eat food from a dish. He once went three days without food before my sister gave up. He now has a plastic placemat on the floor he fondly believes is linoleum.
My pup is eccentric but mostly dog-like. She hates water, though, which is really weird since she’s half Lab. It’s not just the tub; she hates the sprinkler, rain, etc. She doesn’t like riding in the car either. The motion bothers her. She very rarely barks.* If she wants me to wake up, she’ll just sit a few feet away from the bed and stare at me in silence. And it works, which is even weirder. No matter how groggy I am I wake up, with this furry, expectant face politely beaming at me.
She can bark, but does it so rarely it’s scary when she does. It means something in our world is really wrong.
We had a Doberman that purred, AHunter3. Used to scare hell out of people.
Now we have an American Mastiff (pretty much the same thing as an English Mastiff minus the drool.) You know how normal dogs turn in circles before they lie down? Not Gracie. She stretches her front paws out in front of her until her chest is on the floor, then WHUMP lets her bottom half fall. And I’ve seen her fall asleep midway through this procedure. The other day she was rasslin’ with the WryGuy, he stopped to catch his breath, she ran toward him, ducked her head, and did a perfect forward roll somersault.
Weird. Mine spins clockwise. He also walks around on his hind legs a lot. He’s a min-pin, so he doesn’t see much above human-knee level… He walks around the house for minutes at a time on his hind legs trying to get a look at the junk that’s piled up on the ironing board or whatever. I can’t stop laughing whenever I see him do it. That combined with his wrinkly neck leads me to call him the “little old man”
Also when he does his bidniss in the yard… he rarely hikes his leg. He stretches out a lot like a girl dog and sometimes pisses all over himself. Then after he’s done leaving a puppy-pile in the grass, he’ll turn around (with his hind legs NOWHERE NEAR the pile) and kick a couple rooster-tails of grass 20 feet behind him.
My dog Dirt uses tools (when she developes opposable thumbs, I, like the preacher in Blazing Saddles, am leaving.) She likes to lie with something between her back legs, and she will go and get her pillow, or a shoe, or anything moveable, and place it as a prop between her legs.
She also savours any food I give her, unlike the other 3 dogs, who will inhale anything they consider edible – she likes to drink out of a mug, and she will daintily and slowly drink her milk, obviously enjoying it. She also nibbles slowly and carefully on dog biskies.
The Boods, who is a cat, also fetches – exclusively ruffled pasta. And she will bug me to play with her – when she wants to play, she’ll bring noodles to me, drop them next, and sigh forcefully. If I’m within reach, she reaches out a paw and taps or tugs at me.
And two sheep who sit/sat up and beg(ged) for treats – the one, Jamie, I taught accidently, as I like to hand feed them, and he knew I had a handful of treats one day, but I was distracted, speaking to someone across the garden, and he was jumping up to ‘beg’ like a dog for the treats before I realised it. The other sheep, Jack, learnt to do this solely by watching Jamie. Both Jamie and Jack will/would wag their tags when they’re patted or spoken to.
My dogs trained themselves to go to the bathroom in the bathroom. I don’t know why they decided that they should emulate us in this way, but if they can’t get outside to crap they’ll go in front of the toilet. As the room is tiled it makes for very easy cleaning so everyone’s happy!
Elmwood your dogs are just gorgeous. I want to give them hugs.
My cat, Charlie, is fascinated with sprinkling water. He will watch anyone on the loo and when you get up and flush he runs over, lifts up his front paws and peers into the loo. He whines if you close the bathroom door with him outside.
Also, he loves watching people shower (from his spot on the scales) and then licking up water droplets from the floor at the end.
You’re sure one of them wasn’t really named Harold?
I’ve got a cat who loves to play in water so much it’s hard to keep a dish full around here. She hasn’t realized that if she splashes all the water out there’s none left to drink.
The four-legged queen of my household gets first dibs on our futon. She lies there, head on a pillow, all stretched out, unless someone makes her move.
She pounces. As in, crouches down like a cat, and pounces. Caught a spider yesterday, my little furball did.
She occasionally purrs, which is creepy. She’s a mutt, and I’m pretty sure somewhere in there is some cat. :dubious:
