My dog just came back from her vacation with grandma and grandpa. And she came in, happy as can be, and reeking of skunk. They’ve bathed her three times and it’s much better but it’s still there.
I love my dog but she can be very dumb sometimes. She wants to play with the skunks so she gets sprayed at least twice every summer. She eats bees and they sting her lips. She rolls around in duck and goose poop and then knows that it’s bath time (which she despises) and yet… she does it.
So tell me your stories. What are some things that your pets do that make you just shake your head? I just need to know it’s not my dog that does dumb things
Well this is perhaps my dogs owner being dumb more than the dog. I had cut up a rotisserie chicken and put it in the fridge. Ran to answer the phone and when I got back he had pulled the cutting board and carcass down on the floor and was eagerly licking up the juices. (I thought I had pushed it far enough back).
The carcass was intact but I only saw one wing and I distinctly remembered pulling off two wings. Called the vet who gave us some advice.
We had to cancel an overnight trip we had planned so we could overfeed the dog and then exercise him so we could then evaluate his, uh, output. Nothing like walking the dog and having the neighbors see you examining the poop as you pick it up.
Luckily he never had a problem. Either he chomped the wing into small enough pieces and it got digested enough or maybe it flew under the fridge and is rotting as I type.
Our dog who is about as far from a wolf as you can imagine, loved to roll in poop, and gets really mad when her dog bed get washed when we can’t stand the smell anymore:).
But my biggest love my pet but has to be the bird (yellow naped amazon, also known as the grumpiest of the parrots). One moment he is sitting on your hand, singing his heart out after a good meal, the next minute he is chuckling with delight and saying “good boy” after taking a nip at you. Then, when you want to go to bed at night, he is busily eating seeds and (we think deliberately) doing it all so slowly. I can’t scratch his head, and my wife only can when he decides it is right, otherwise, you get bit for violating protocol. It is amazing how this beautiful bird, all 1.5 pounds of him, can dominate our lives. We have figured out that Parrots were what happened to the dinosaurs, given the way he behaves, makes sense:)
Our Westie goes down into gopher tortoises’ burrows/holes chasing turtles around our place if we don’t watch him carefully. We had to use a shovel and pull him out by his tail once.
Surfcity, I am literally laughing out loud at your story. I had to read it out loud to Mr. Romani and now he doesn’t feel as bad about our dog. I’m glad pup is OK though
My childhood dog was over 100 lb (rottie/GSD mix) and she was the biggest baby in the world. Afraid of everything. So when it would storm or anything, she’d try to hide wherever she could- often under our beds. But since she was so big, should couldn’t actually fit and just her head would go under… and then she couldn’t figure out how to get out (apparently backing up was not an option in her head) and she was too big for us to just pull her out. Sigh. Then towards the end of her life, she liked the bathtub because it was cool and thus felt good on her joints. Of course, she wouldn’t get out of there either. Normally, turning on the water would work but then really towards the end even that didn’t get her to move. (She was the best dog aside from that.)
We also had a dog very, very early on (my mom’s dog before she married my dad… she lived until I was about 4) who jumped straight through not one but two glass windows.
@romanigypsyeyes - No funny pet stories but if the dog keeps stinking, you can buy a special shampoo for skunk sprays from your vet that works well. We know from experience. Tried the tomato juice trick - dog kept licking herself as we bathed her - and it helped a little but not completely. The smell came back especially when wet. The stuff from the vet worked much better. We also had to throw away the dog’s collar as we couldn’t get the stink out.
I did have a dog who liked to dig big muddy holes and could jump an 8 foot fence. That dog was a challenging one to keep corralled.
Ha thanks @doschicos We do have some shampoo that normally works pretty well (after about the 2nd time we figured we should invest) but it’s difficult to bathe her at my parents’ place. She’ll get a bath tonight in our bigger bathtub. She knows it’s coming. She’s not thrilled.
One time our Westie coughed up a big wad of something on our kitchen floor and it looked like a chicken wing but we couldn’t figure where he got it because we hadn’t had chicken wings lately. Looking closer…it was a giant frog he’d swallowed and it kinda hopped back out of our dog.
My dog loves to rip a roll of toilet paper off of the holder, run into the yard, and tear it to pieces. He’s 13, and he will still do this if I forget to put the TP on the sink after use, or if I leave it down on the holder for guests, and then forget to move it up.
He also will rip books off of shelves if he can reach them and chew on the corners (only when we’re not home.) I had to move the cookbooks from the kitchen shelf where they looked so nice, and I have to keep Dd’s room door closed or he will go in and steal a book. Magazines left on the coffee table while we go to dinner…chewed and left in a heap on the floor when we return.
He’s really not destructive to anything else but paper. And only when he’s home alone. Except the TP. He’ll take that right out from under my nose and run with it.
I am glad my dog gave you a chuckle @romanigypsyeyes. We do love him which makes all the hijinks tolerable.
When he was about 2 or 3, he had very itchy ears and paws. We followed our vet’s advice and had him seen by a canine dermatologist (I never knew there was such a thing). Who advised us to do scratch allergy tests, just like you do for humans. He came back with a square shaved patch on his side and lots of dots and lines, looked like a bar code tattooed there.
Turns out he was allergic to most things that grow outdoors including GRASS. How can a dog be allergic to grass??
The canine derm tried to get us to do allergy shots. Just like with humans, he would give us syringes and vials of serum. We were to give him a shot and then watch him for a half hour in case of a reaction (not sure what I would do if he did react though!)
When we raised the issue that he would never stand still for the shots as he didn’t even let us brush him or clean his ears without three of us holding his 30 pound body down, the vet insisted that all we needed to do was smear peanut butter on the floor and while he was licking it we could easily give him the needle, la-di-da.
Ummm . . .No. Just . . .No. I am not smearing peanut butter on my floor, I am not loading up syringes daily, I am not watching my dog have an allergic reaction.
Now we just give him benadryl on the worst days and wash him more often - problem solved!
Our sweet Lab went to the vet for something - I don’t remember what. When she was done I took her to the car before I paid, as she doesn’t much like other dogs, especially at close quarters. I finished up and returned to the car - where I discovered she had found a pack of sugar-free gum and consumed some of it. Xylitol! Back in to the vet. Calls to the poison control center and queries as to how many sticks of gum had been consumed ensued. She wound up spending the night at the emergency clinic for observation. An expensive lesson!
When our dogs would stay with someone when I was kid we didn’t say vacation, we said ‘dogcation’…still use term dogcation today for our dogs’ vacations.
We’ve had some crazy dogs over the years and it’s a wonder we still put up with them sometimes. Once we had a beagle who was a handful. One Christmas my family was about to eat dinner but we first all went outside to get some group photos, my mom got us together right in front of our dining room window outside. All of a sudden my mom let out a scream while we were all smiling with our backs to house and my mom taking our photo she had seen our beagle over our shoulders through window our beagle up on our dining room table gnawing on our Christmas ham. We all ran inside chasing dog, my mom cleaned ham up, and that is the day I was instructed by my mom that dogs have cleaner mouths than humans.
This same beagle, one day my dad was driving home from work and a few blocks from home he saw beagle running around loose. Dad stopped his car and chased beagle through a bunch of yards, finally caught dog, and put him in his car and brought him home. When Dad walked in front door furious carrying pooch, our beagle was already sitting inside with his tail wagging…my dad had grabbed somebody else’s beagle by mistake.
We had another mutt who was half Yorkie and half Poodle. One day my mom phoned me crying hysterically, telling me to come home right away because Bear was dead. I started driving back home with my mind racing and thinking stuff like where I could bury dog in backyard easiest without hitting a lot of tree roots with a shovel. I got home and Mom said Bear was dead under her bed. I sucked it up and bent over and started pulling Bear out by his rear leg…he was laying on his back. I pulled him out from under bed and all of a sudden he rolled over, stood up, stretched and yawned and walked away. Miracle!
Despite my best efforts and a daily walk, my lab pulls on the leash EVERY DAY. Just enough to be annoying. (I know, I know, get a gentle leader,yada yada…)
Sometimes I get tired of giving her reminders, and just drop her leash in frustration - at which point she looks back at me, slows down, and walks RIGHT BY MY SIDE. Until I pick up the leash again.
Yeah, our Westie pulls too sometimes walking him. I’ve tried different things to get him to stop doing it because it sure seems like it hurts his neck straining like he does but he just does it sometimes because he is head strong doing it. The problem for me though is when I walk him and he does it, I am often also walking our Chihuahua too and too often when the bigger dog is yanking on leash in one direction, the Chihuahua sits down and doesn’t want to move and I end up in middle getting my arms stretched apart in two different directions .
Our dog was very headstrong & while harness takes the pain off the neck, we used Don Sullivan’s perfect dog collar to train our pup not to pull. It is a plastic pinch collar & it worked quite well and seemed human, just enough of a pinch to be noticed without being harsh.
Had some friends over to grill. Adults were eating inside, but the teenage boys were busy with xbox and took a while to come down. Boys stroll outside to get their burgers only to find the dog (Australian shepherd/border collie) had climbed up and enjoyed all SIX patties! Luckily we had extras.
I won’t say that the dog smells exactly “good” after that – but it’s pretty effective. I used to have a dog that didn’t get the whole skunk thing-- where we live, skunks are a winter problem – and I always kept a skunk “kit” handy.
(If you want the dog to smell a little nicer, then follow up the de-skunk regimen with a doggy shampoo with a scent you like).
