My mom’s dog’s favorite game is to shred an old milk jug by playing tug-of-war with a person. And every time, as soon as he gets a big enough hole torn in it, he sticks his snout inside and eviscerates it. It never seems to bother him that old milk jugs don’t actually have any viscera to e. He just keeps doing it anyway.
Of course, this is the same dog who, when presented with habanero peppers during an attempt at aversion training, tried to get the peppers to play with him. I guess he figured that anything that bites back when bitten is a valid playmate (he unfortunately likes to play rough).
Dachshunds are famously dull-witted, or so, at any rate, they appear. It’s difficult to distinguish between a stupid dog and a dog that is simply stubborn or bullheaded, because the quickest way to assess a dog’s “intelligence” is by how easily trained it is.
Dogs certainly have highly variable personalities. A dog that appears to be dumb might just be resistant to being told what to do, or may mistrust the person giving it commands, or may simply be ill-trained.
Sometimes dogs aren’t as smart as they think they are. DesertRoomie once stepped back onto a front paw. There was (of course) a loud screech and resentful looks as a lot of apologizing and attention happened but even so he favored one paw for more than a day afterward. Thing was, he kept switching which paw to favor.
Then of course there’s the meme of hearing a noise in the kitchen and watching The Dog trot by, with his head turned so we can’t see what’s in his mouth.
He’s licking a human plate which was full of food he didn’t have to hunt in a home where he won’t go cold and doesn’t have to worry about his safety all for the small price of looking cute. He doesn’t seem that dumb to me. He seems incredibly cunning in fact.
By the way I remember taking my dog for a walk. He insisted that we stop… as he vomited up a whole potato.
No idea where he got it or how he fit it in there… or got it back out. But he did. It was the most amazing indication of dumb doggery I’ve ever seen.
Another thing that my other dog did. I went out for a while and when I came back he’d done a poop. He was a puppy at the time so it was expected. The difference was that this poop was ON THE WALL. It was like he’d pooed, covered it in glue, and stuck it to the wall.
I was absolutely puzzled until later that evening I took him out for a walk, he stopped… for yet another poo… and I don’t know why he did this, but he put BOTH of his back legs in the air while his front legs stayed on the ground, did a sort of hand stand as he pushed it out. It was like he was straining so hard that his back legs came off the floor. That explained how his poop ended up higher than his own butt earlier that day.
I still don’t know why he did it. A friend of mine said his dog did it once too. Dumb dog stories are the best.
