Things Your Pets Do

[Dom Heffner]

I have 4 cats, and they all do some sort of crazy nonsense on a daily basis that drives me crazy but is somehow cute.

Boss Kitty- His nickname is "Cereal Stalker" because if Boss knows you have Fruity Pebbles, he will stalk you until you give him some. He'll sit and watch you, and if you lift the bowl to your mouth to drink the last of the milk and cereal, he will take his paws and grab the bowl.

Kushu- She nurses on my neck. Just snuggles up, kneads my neck with her paws and starts suckling. It's creepy, but I can't bear to make her stop.
Tyson- Tyson's lives for one thing. Food. He can open up carry out containers, garbage bags, cabinets, and doors if it means a shot at some chicken or hamburger. It's awful. When he's hungry in the morning, he climbs up on my dresser, gets on his hind legs, and starts pounding the alarm keypad until I wake up and feed him.

Sharp as a tack, he is.

Bring 'em on folks.

[Ltlabner]

Our boy cat will get his head stuck in a cup/glass in an effort to lick chocolate milk residue. Seeing a kitty with a clear plastic cup stuck over it's head is odd but generally hillarous.

One of our girls is a total food stalker. She's learned how to use furniture as cover to get closer to your food before she pounces.

Our dog will aboultely tear all the covers, blankets and pillows off a bed in an effort to build a "nest". She just starts digging at the bed with her front paws until everything is out of her way. Then she plops down, grunts and then looks at us as if to say, "what....?!?!?"

[pedro]

I have two cats.

Pearl likes to play fetch with pipe cleaners. She can also jump about 4 feet in the air to snag them. She'd make quite a high jumper despite being all of 9 pounds wet.

Cleveland, OTOH, isn't in to pipe cleaners. His game is chasing plastic balls and carrying them around in his mouth.

[WMR]

I could write a book on our two corgis. :lol:

[MrCinatit]

I had a bunch of dogs when I was younger and with my parents - at one time, we had six. It actually was great.

Amber was a doberman/German shepherd mix. She was a beauty.
She was an indoor dog. She would crawl up into bed with me sometimes, and lay down beside me. Slowly but surely, her legs would stretch out more and more until she had the whole bed and I was on the floor.
She also had a lot of Snoopy in her. She carried her food bowl around in her mouth when she felt it was time to eat.

We had many basset hounds. One liked to eat or lick wallpaper. Another figured out how to get the lazy susan to spin and eat the packs of Jell-O stored inside. Another figured out how to climb a chair leading to a window to the kitchen - allowing him to walk the counter.
My dad kept a train set downstairs - he accused me a few times of trashing it, until I found another basset hound had climbed up it in the middle of the night, playing Dogzilla.

Sandy the cocker-spaniel hated chew toys, especially when they squeaked. But, if another dog was making a lot of noise with one, she would walk over, take it from the other dog, and sit on it.

[Dom Heffner]

Our dog will aboultely tear all the covers, blankets and pillows off a bed in an effort to build a "nest". She just starts digging at the bed with her front paws until everything is out of her way. Then she plops down, grunts and then looks at us as if to say, "what....?!?!?"


When I change the bedding, Boss will jump up on the new sheets and start digging with his front paws. Not sure where he thinks he's going, but he goes nuts when he does it.

[Ltlabner]

When I change the bedding, Boss will jump up on the new sheets and start digging with his front paws. Not sure where he thinks he's going, but he goes nuts when he does it.

Yea, our dog is very focused and intent on whatever it is she thinks she doing. I don't know what instinctual move that is, but it's darn cute.

[HumnHilghtFreel]

My dog is a leaper, for one thing. She clears the regular 5 foot chain link fences with ease(we got a privacy fence put up, but still have to be careful.) It's actually pretty damn impressive.

She also loves peeking out windows. All day. It's to the point where we have to keep the blinds pulled up slightly because she was knocking them down. And mind you she has to climb up on a bed or what have you to look out most of them. I've started calling her "the sniper" because of the way she puts her paws on the window sill and peeks out from under the blind.

Edit: also now that I think of it. She treats a camera as if I were pointing a gun at her. She takes off running at the sight of any type of camera.

[cincinnati chili]

I'll see if I can get my wife to post some video of our dog. He's pretty sharp.

If we tie a string around a doorknob, he'll close doors on command.

If you shoot him with your finger (like a gun), he'll drop dead.

He's getting pretty close to being able to balance himself on top of a medicine ball. He's up to about 3 seconds.

He'll also leap over othe dogs on command. Some dogs don't like it when he does that. (I think they see it as a dominance thing).

[paintmered]

My parents have a female Yorkie who will be 10 years old this summer. I don't live with the dog anymore now that I've graduated from college, but I grew up with her through high school. Like most Yorkies, she's sharp as a tack, strong willed and enormously devoted to my family and me.

When my family doesn't want the dog to understand what we are saying, we have to spell. Backwards. We have to do this because she recognizes everything in normal conversation. And so "car" becomes "R-A-C". Also, she gets really upset when I start saying random letters that no sense because she can't understand what I'm saying.

She's also very aware of what's going on in the family. I don't know how she does it, but she knows when someone is about to leave the house because she gets upset. This is before anyone stands up and puts on their coat. The amazing this is, she's right. Every single time. Only after saying goodbye is anyone allowed to leave the house, especially the women in my family.

Every morning, she tongue bathes my dad's heels for at least 10 minutes. He's not allowed to leave the house until his heels have been thoroughly licked.

[blumj]

I used to have a cat that I swear would do things a certain way just to show off how smart she was, like opening doors by turning the doorknob and licking my eyelids to wake me up and licking the faucet for water instead of drinking out of her bowl.

[SunDeck]

My dog had some weird perceptual thing that prevented her from walking onto our checkered tile floor. When she went from the dining room to the kitchen she would turn around and back into the kitchen where the checker pattern was. Once she got in she was fine- she'd turn around and head on through.

My wife had a cat that would fetch bottle caps.

[camisadelgolf]

My dog pees when he gets excited. When I come home, he runs out and runs in circles until he's tired. Afterwards, there is always a perfect circle of urine, two feet in diameter.

[TeamCasey]

TB's elderly cat currently Hawwwwwharfs hairballs in my bed at 3:00 a.m. ;) I adore her. She used to pat my nose gently all night to get petted. Now she just pukes on me.

Love these stories. Have many with so many pets over the years.

My favorite amazing thing is when pets seem to know your mood. It always amazes me how comforting they can be when you're going through a sad time.

[TeamCasey]

I once had 2 pet rats named Charlotte and Frankieanne. They'd escape their cage, find their way to a bedroom and curl up to sleep on your neck.

My mother claimed to hate them but would buy fresh strawberries just for them. :)

I wore Mom down over the years with all the creatures I brought into our house.

[blumj]

Our boy cat will get his head stuck in a cup/glass in an effort to lick chocolate milk residue.
Not to be the pet police, and I'm certainly no expert, but you might want to ask a vet if that's safe. I'd always been told to keep chocolate away from the pets.

[edabbs44]

Not to be the pet police, and I'm certainly no expert, but you might want to ask a vet if that's safe. I'd always been told to keep chocolate away from the pets.

I think that might be a dog thing. Could be wrong, though.

[pedro]

My dog had some weird perceptual thing that prevented her from walking onto our checkered tile floor. When she went from the dining room to the kitchen she would turn around and back into the kitchen where the checker pattern was. Once she got in she was fine- she'd turn around and head on through.

My wife had a cat that would fetch bottle caps.


The tile thing is hysterical.

My cats like bottle caps and the rip seals on odwalla bottles too.

[cincinnati chili]

Not to be the pet police, and I'm certainly no expert, but you might want to ask a vet if that's safe. I'd always been told to keep chocolate away from the pets.

We have some vets and/or vet techs on this board, so I'd be curious about this too. But I've heard that the chocolate thing is overblown. Certainly, if your dog ate a whole bar of dark chocolate you should be worried. Licking chocolate milk residue, I would guess, would probably not be that big a deal.

But like I said, I'd appreciate a non-hearsay opinion from a pro.

[cincinnati chili]

My dog pees when he gets excited. When I come home, he runs out and runs in circles until he's tired. Afterwards, there is always a perfect circle of urine, two feet in diameter.

This pretty much describes my ritual when my wife gets home from work.

[GAC]

My dog pees when he gets excited. When I come home, he runs out and runs in circles until he's tired. Afterwards, there is always a perfect circle of urine, two feet in diameter.

One of the main reasons why my wife has never allowed us to have pets in the 26 years we've been married. That and the hair shedding. When we were first married and rented an apartment, the prior people had a long haired Cocker Spaniel. We had a carpet cleaning company come in and clean the carpets before we moved in. I still have the images of seeing that water with all the dog hair after they were done. YUCK!

My brother and sister have pets (both dogs and cats). And every time we walk into their houses YOU SMELL THEM. My brother had to rip up their carpets in the living room about a year ago because the dog, whenever it got excited, pee'd all over the place. And it's really irritating, according to my brother, when he gets up in the wee hours of the morning, and half asleep, walks into the kitchen to make coffee, and steps in a puddle of dog urine on the kitchen floor. When we had our house fire we stayed with them a few days until we got things settled. I had the same thing happen to me. Needless to say, I was pee'd off. :lol:

Last year my brother and I were sitting in his living room watching a Bengals' game and the dog, almost nonchalantly, walked up to their big screen TV, raised the leg, and pee'd down the front of it. And of course being a Brown's fan I just couldn't let that situation go by without a smart aleck remark. :lol:

I love dogs. Not a cat fan at all. We had dogs growing up, but they were always outside dogs. I'd love to have a Black Lab. Great dogs. But again - the wife would never allow it in the house, and I'd really feel guilty in the dead of a freezing winter looking out my kitchen window and seeing the dog outside.

[RFS62]

I would have to say the minimum, and I mean MINIMUM requirement for a pet in our house is that they have to be trainable to NEVER, EVER use the bathroom in the house. EVER.

If said critter can't understand that, he will lose his scholarship. Our Corgi would explode before she would go in the house.

And it's not the animals fault if the owner doesn't make the effort to teach them. And pick up after them when you walk them too, you hippies!!!!

That is all.

Oh yeah. Our dog will chase a laser light endlessly. She loves "chasing the bug".

[camisadelgolf]

My dog accidentally peed in the house a couple times, and I really gave him some guilt, but in the end, I felt I really bad for him since it was out of his control. Now, he knows to run outside immediately when I come home.

[sonny]

My wife's cat will bite my face to wake me up. Stupid cat.

[cincinnati chili]

Our Corgi would explode before she would go in the house.


Pembroke or Cardigan? Great dogs.

While it's not any less unpleasant IMO, I think camisadelgolf is describing submissive peeing, rather than your typical peeing-cuz-I-gotta-go peeing. It's my understanding that this is a lot more difficult, though not impossible, to cure. Submissive dogs do it in the wild as a show of respect to the alpha dogs. My inlaws' dog was the runt of the litter, and did this for a while when people came home after a long absence. What the inlaws started doing was opening the front door when they got home, letting the dog out immediately, so it could do its "greeting" in the front yard. Eventually this dog (and this dog ain't too bright) got the message and stopped doing it in the house.

'Lest this be a lesson to those of you who actually seek out the runt of the litter, in hope that the dog won't have a bad attitude or be agressive. I'll take my bossy little guy any day over my inlaws' runt, who clearly needed/needs a dog shrink.


And pick up after them when you walk them too, you hippies!!!!

That is all.


No shizzle. This is one of the many things I prefer about leaving the 5 mile radius of downtown Boston. It was really disgusting, between the dogcrap left on the ground and the garbage thrown on the ground.

There are people who don't pick up out here, but it's much much rarer.

[BoydsOfSummer]

TB's elderly cat currently Hawwwwwharfs hairballs in my bed at 3:00 a.m. ;) I adore her. She used to pat my nose gently all night to get petted. Now she just pukes on me.

Love these stories. Have many with so many pets over the years.

My favorite amazing thing is when pets seem to know your mood. It always amazes me how comforting they can be when you're going through a sad time.

Sounds like the relationship has gone stale a little. Maybe a romantic getaway, just the two of you? :p:

[pahster]

My cat Toast likes to try to sniff anything I'm holding. Most stuff, even food, she just sniffs and then walks away. Bananas apparently have some sort of special property, as she will sniff them and then immediately recoil in disgust.

And then she'll do it again the next day.

[SunDeck]

No shizzle. This is one of the many things I prefer about leaving the 5 mile radius of downtown Boston. It was really disgusting, between the dogcrap left on the ground and the garbage thrown on the ground.

There are people who don't pick up out here, but it's much much rarer.

I was walking my dog along Harrison ave. in Westwood one night and a guy yelled at me to pick up after him BEFORE the dog was even done going. So, I flipped him off and he does a wicked UTurn in the intersection of Montana and Harrison and comes barreling back to me. Meanwhile, I'm picking up dog poop and when I noticed him I stood up and said, "You really want to get in a fight with a guy carrying a bag of dog sh**?"

He yelled something obscene and drove off.

[Dom Heffner]

And it's not the animals fault if the owner doesn't make the effort to teach them. And pick up after them when you walk them too, you hippies!!!!


It's good for the lawn. You should have to pay for the extra fertilizer. :)

[RFS62]

Pembroke or Cardigan? Great dogs.



Pembroke. Very cool dogs.




It's good for the lawn. You should have to pay for the extra fertilizer. :)


Oh Dom, spreader of fertilizer. At least you're consistent.

:evil:

[WMR]

How's your Pem doing, RFS?

We have two Pems as well. Teddy and one of his pups: Obie. Awesome, awesome, awesome dogs. So smart and eager to please.

Obie's favorite game is getting Teddy to chase him around the house. For Obie it is great fun but for Teddy it is serious business. :lol:

[Ltlabner]

Not to be the pet police, and I'm certainly no expert, but you might want to ask a vet if that's safe. I'd always been told to keep chocolate away from the pets.

The one time he actually got the cup stuck on his head, he was still unable to actually reach the milk residue. And the cup was stuck for about 20 seconds. Just long enough for us to stop laughing and release him before he sufficated.

Since that time, however, we're sure to not leave the glasses out, or to place a coaster over them until we pick them up and take them to the dishwasher.

[vaticanplum]

We have some vets and/or vet techs on this board, so I'd be curious about this too. But I've heard that the chocolate thing is overblown. Certainly, if your dog ate a whole bar of dark chocolate you should be worried. Licking chocolate milk residue, I would guess, would probably not be that big a deal.

But like I said, I'd appreciate a non-hearsay opinion from a pro.

I am not a pro but I was a professional dogwalker, and I was taught that chocolate is indeed very bad for pets, both dogs and cats. It's the theobromide (sp?) in it that is the problem. The darker the chocolate, the more theobromide and the worse for your pet. A couple of drops of chocolate milk or even a couple of milk chocolate Hershey's kisses are probably not going to affect a pet but even a single square of really dark chocolate can shut down an animal's entire system. The smaller the pet, the more he's affected, obviously. One thing that's so dangerous about it is that there's really nothing a vet can do to get it out of the system.

Another thing that's very dangerous for dogs (not sure about cats) and not as well known is grapes and raisins. There's something in them that shuts down the kidneys.

[Red in Chicago]

Another thing that's very dangerous for dogs (not sure about cats) and not as well known is grapes and raisins. There's something in them that shuts down the kidneys.

I've also heard that onions can do the same thing, so no onion rings for fido

[Ravenlord]

oh, let's see...

Circe-Will always go to bed with the dominant personality in the apartment. If you're talking on the phone she will yowl loudly and try to claw you if you walk past.

Penelope-she can be asleep in an entirely different room, but if I start putting on my boots, she's there with 10 seconds to play with the laces.

Lottie-Not only will she beg for food, she will leap to steal it out of your hand. As far as I can tell, Popeye's spicy chicken is her favorite food. she also enjoys trying to get attention, but staying about an inch of your reach unless you're willing to move.

Misfit (my poor departed kitten)-she had an extreme understanding of language. If we were talking about chicken for our dinner plans, I swear her ears would perk and she made yowls that sound awfully like "yes." she also liked eating green peppers wich i think is very, very weird.

[Ravenlord]

Gravey (pronounced Gravy) was the greatest cat ever. He would do the Lottie thing of making you come to him, but he was also a hunting cat. For the first 15 years of his life when we lived in a house, Gravey would bring us headless squirells and rabbits. if it was a bird, forget, he would just straight out eat it.

the one and only time we ever took Gravey to my grandmother's hosue in Illinois, nearly 400 miles away from home, he adapted to the farm after 3 or 4 days. i remember going rabbit hunting with a .22 rifle, and he followed me out, and acted like my grandfather's hunting dogs. he flushed two rabbits, but didn't follow them, and i took one down, and about two hours later, he came walkiing up to me in my treestand with a headless rabbit in his mouth. even four years later, I very much miss my cat...

[SunDeck]

I am not a pro but I was a professional dogwalker,

I have always wanted to ask, but it's so hard to get close to a dogwalker. You know, they always seem pretty busy with their work and all.
Do you get paid by the dog or by the mile?

[vaticanplum]

I have always wanted to ask, but it's so hard to get close to a dogwalker. You know, they always seem pretty busy with their work and all.
Do you get paid by the dog or by the mile?

:laugh:

I'm not sure if you're serious or not, but...by the time. Walks are typically a half-hour or an hour and are charged as such (it's a slightly better deal for an hour walk, for example, though obviously a higher cost total than a half-hour walk).

In my case, you did get a deal if you agreed to have your dog walked with another -- because, of course, you're kind of killing two birds with one stone, so to speak, as far as the dogwalker is concerned. I only had two families that did that though. A Yorkie and a Boston terrier. They never did grow to like each other too much, but they tolerated each other.

I worked for a service, so my boss took a cut of everything I made. But she also made all the appointments and got the clients, handled the insurance, everything. All I did was go to the apartments and walk the dogs. She often handed me petsitting as well, which was obscenely good money to hang out with some awesome dog at some awesome apartment, eat takeout and watch the YES network. I absolutely loved dogwalking, one of the best jobs I've ever had.

if you ever see anybody walking a looooot of dogs, in big cities anyway, that's not a dog-walking service. That's a daily excursion of a doggie daycare where the dogs stay all day. I just picked them up from their houses. Except for that one case, or for families that had more than one dog, I was only ever walking one at a time and probably could have been mistaken for just a regular dog owner.

That is probably more information than you wanted.

[RichRed]

My old cat, Ziggy (may he RIP), liked hanging out with the family on the beach. And if a dog went by, Ziggy would "protect" us by chasing the dog. And not in a playful way, like he was going to do some real damage. You've never seen these big dogs so terrified.

[Redsfaithful]

My dog had some weird perceptual thing that prevented her from walking onto our checkered tile floor. When she went from the dining room to the kitchen she would turn around and back into the kitchen where the checker pattern was. Once she got in she was fine- she'd turn around and head on through.

I have a golden retriever that has a hard time with steps that have spaces between them, and I think it's the same thing, some sort of perception issue.

Probably the oddest obsession my dog has is with tissue and toilet paper. And napkins. Any kind of paper product really, she'll very happily eat it if you're not watching her.

Also two liter bottles, she'll squeeze those in her mouth for hours.

[Spitball]

I would have to say the minimum, and I mean MINIMUM requirement for a pet in our house is that they have to be trainable to NEVER, EVER use the bathroom in the house. EVER.

If said critter can't understand that, he will lose his scholarship. Our Corgi would explode before she would go in the house.

And it's not the animals fault if the owner doesn't make the effort to teach them. And pick up after them when you walk them too, you hippies!!!!

That is all.

Oh yeah. Our dog will chase a laser light endlessly. She loves "chasing the bug".

We have a Pembroke Welsh Corgi, as well as a collie/cocker mix and two cats. The Corgi is nearly two years old and has an amazing vocabulary of understood words. She hates my daughter's blow dryer and merely mentioning the word "blow dryer" will trigger a vocal explosion of barking. The same with saying "vacuum." She also seems to know, "eat," "ride in the car," "go outside," "go for a walk," and will locate family members if the name is mentioned with, "Where is _?" At our local park, we ask, "Want to go down the slide?" and she runs up the steps and slides down.

She seems to receive reinforcement from genuine laughter. She would run and do a 360 degree roll over onto her back and then back onto her feet. We would laugh. Then, when the trick became a bit old, our laughter was not as genuine, and she stopped doing the self taught trick.

One of her funnier quirks is her intolerance of what my kids call the "gay cow." If someone simply says, "moo," Honey barely notices, but if you say, "moo" like the gay cow, she jumps up and grabs your shirt tail and pulls. She has ripped holes in practically all my son's t-shirts. My daughter is convinced Honey is a homophobe.

I credit much of Honey's intelligence to her strong bond with my daughter who takes her everywhere she goes when she isn't working or attending her college classes. My daughter talks to her constantly.

Oh, and she was "potty" trained very quickly and never has accidents in the house.

[vaticanplum]

Those are smart animals, but the fact that they are well-housebroken is a testament only to those who trained them. Every dog is capable of being fully housebroken, but it takes unwavering and consistent training right at the beginning. Usually a dog that is "hard to housebreak" is a dog whose owners didn't realize how much work it is to train a dog. And it's not even that MUCH work, it's just very concentrated into a small period of time. It means getting up a few times a night, making sure someone can continue during the work day, the works.

[cincinnati chili]

One of her funnier quirks is her intolerance of what my kids call the "gay cow." If someone simply says, "moo," Honey barely notices, but if you say, "moo" like the gay cow, she jumps up and grabs your shirt tail and pulls. She has ripped holes in practically all my son's t-shirts. My daughter is convinced Honey is a homophobe.



Now THAT is funny. Do they have canine hate crime legislation in Arkansas?

[Spitball]

Now THAT is funny. Do they have canine hate crime legislation in Arkansas?

:laugh: I might need to look into that before the coalition of gay cows gets our dog into big trouble.

[OldRightHander]

I had two cats before I got married. One of them would lick the bridge of my nose to wake me up in the morning. The other one liked brussels sprouts.

[Spitball]

<<<<Thanks to my son, our dogs are now my avatar. I tried several times yesterday to edit my avatar so I could use this picture but couldn't get it to work.

[BoydsOfSummer]

My girl cat licks the rim of my beer bottle. She won't drink beer just licks the rim for a taste. And only Sammy Adams, she's a bit of a beer snob.

[SunDeck]

She won't drink beer just licks the rim for a taste.

Are you sure? Without opposable thumbs I can't see how she can pick up the bottle and take a swig.

Anyway, be careful. One day the cat's licking the top of the bottle, but the next week she falls completely off the wagon.


http://www.hizone.info/data/2003/07/09/images/cat_in_a_bottle.jpg