<p>I have a border collie/aussie mix (female) who is by far the most intelligent and fun dog I have ever known. She is incredibly trainable and, though quite energetic, has become a delightful member of our “empty nest” household.</p>
<p>She has one habbit, though, that I just cannot understand:</p>
<p>When she is hungry, she brings me her food dish and sort of tosses it loudly at my feet. That part I get (and rather enjoy, actually). The part I don’t get, though, is that she will almost always, before eating her food, take two or three morsels (it’s dry food) and carry them into the living area and just leave them. </p>
<p>Now her food dish is not kept in the living area where we spend most of our time (it is, in fact, very near my computer desk). Is she just trying to be social and join us near where we eat and hang out? Anyone else experience anything like this with their pets? Any doggie psychologists out there? Ceasar, where are you when I need you??</p>
<p>I have two aussies and they are also the most intelligent dogs I’ve ever known. Actually, they are smarter than a lot of people I work with. But I digress . . . </p>
<p>I have no idea what your dog is trying to do. It seems harmless enough. Does she eat the morsels later? Or does she just leave them there forever? If the former, Awwwwww, how cute. If the latter, watch out for the mice.</p>
<p>One of my Brittany Spaniels throws her bowl around to let me know it is time to feed her, then she, too, takes some of the dry morsels and moves them over to a rug. She used to leave them there for a while, but now that she has a ‘brother’ adopted from the pound, she makes sure they are not left unattended for more than a moment or two, lest he eat them.</p>
<p>My dog always takes one or two pieces of food out of the bowl, carries them over to the carpeted room next to his food and play “attacks” them. After a minute or so of growling and pouncing on them, he eats them and then the rest of his food out of his bowl. Perhaps this is a “hunting” ritual ? I actually find it kind of cute to watch LOL</p>
<p>Well, sometimes, if we are sitting down to eat, she will bring them over and eat them. It’s like she wants to join us. In fact, we joke about her bringing out “snacks”!</p>
<p>Other times, she leaves them and I end up getting them with the vacuum.</p>
<p>She has the most expressive face: when we are eating, or when I am cooking, she will watch VERY intently just in case she has “cleaning” to do (if I drop a tasty morsel). We have NEVER fed her people food or encouraged her to “beg”, but she still watches intently. Her facial expression seems to indicate she still hopes we might relent and, when it becomes obvious that we will not, she just goes over and gets her own snacks from her dish so she can join us in dining.</p>
<p>I have no clue. Our first Newfie was adept at hiding thyroid pills. He’d lick the peanut butter or soft cheese from the pill, then stash the pill under the food dish area throw rug. </p>
<p>Our first two Newfies hoarded their bisquits. Most dogs will gobble the treat upon receipt, yet these two would parade around the house, then deposit the bisquit in various locations. Once a week, they would collect the stash, and proceed to gobble them all as a mini-meal. Our current Newf #3, had a similar habit, but would eat the stash sooner. These dogs were sequential, not concurrent, so it was not a learned behavior.</p>
<p>D brought a rescue greyhound home from school, so now we have him along with the newf. The greyhound will drop select pieces of kibble around his bowl, and throughout the kitchen. Sometimes he’ll eat them, sometimes not. If not, the Newf will scorf the remains.</p>
<p>The addition of the greyhound has now lessened but not curtailed the Newf’s attempt at bisquit hoarding. Newf leaves it, greyhound eats it. </p>
<p>There’s a “new way to feed dogs” on the market. It sounds like they are catering to the dog’s primal instincts. It’s essentially a synthetic bone sort of thing that claims to be a complete meal. The dog gets to take his ‘bone’ and go have a picnic somewhere, rather than eat out of a bowl. And supposedly it’s a complete diet.</p>
<p>But – I checked out the nutrition and ingredient panel – and I am not impressed!</p>
<p>We had a border collie…he was amazing, of course it took 3 yrs of training to get him that way(busy with babies also).</p>
<p>Our border did almost the exact same thing, he lifted both food and water. He would take a few morsels and ate under the table, we were told it was 1 of 2 things:
Our lovely children always would hand whatever food they didn’t want to him under the table…so he viewed this as where he could eat
It is a part of their make-up from “pack dogs”, dogs will always have that inherent behavior.</p>
<p>Our cocker spaniel never did this until our border collie died…now he takes a few and goes under the table to eat it, but only when our new dog (a boxer) is around. The comical thing is the bowl is too large for him to lift, so the boxer does it for him. She even walks a way afterwards to let the cocker get 1st dibs (alpha dog ritual)</p>
<p>The funniest thing is if the kids ask them if they want ice cream, both run to the freezer and sit there until we get their ice cream out…yes, we have special ice cream for the dogs. Or when my husband puts on his running clothes, the boxer runs to where the leash is, and one time even managed to grab it with her mouth. The cocker also knows how to shut off the alarm clock with his paw :D</p>
<p>Our dog does the same thing. Sometimes he’ll carry little nuggets to the living room where we are, neatly finish them, then go back to the kitchen for more. Some humans would say we shouldn’t allow it, but I think it’s his endearing way of being part of the pack. We adopted him six years ago in Feb., and we like to think he was so happy that he’d found us! Your dog’s dish-tossing is pretty funny. Ours drags his dish out into the room with his foot, as if maybe we aren’t noticing it’s empty.</p>
<p>Our Chow/Shepherd/Mutt mix likes to “bury” the occasional treat. When she cannot get outside, she resorts to stashing them in strange places like the middle of a pile of clothing in a laundry basket, in between the cushions of the couch, or under rugs. I was looking for a book the other day and on one of the shelves, squeezed in between an atlas and a dictionary, I found a partially eaten Milk Bone of undetermined age.</p>
<p>Yeah, as one of well-known traits of Border Collies is the need to give them tasks, I have trained mine to play “hide and seek”. We get either a treat or a toy, have her “stay” in one room, hide the object in the other, and then she is released to go find it. She loves this game, particularly the opportunity to show off for guests.</p>
<p>Sometimes when I give her a milk bone, she will carry it around the house for a while, and I finally decided that she was sort of trying to find a place to “hide” it herself! So now when I give her a treat, I hide it first so she can find it. She likes it better that way!</p>
<p>I do enjoy her antics! I also love hearing about the funny things other people’s doggie-companions are doing…keep the stories comming!</p>
<p>When our border was younger, he would herd the kids in the backyard as they were playing. We never had to get a fence until we got the cocker. We just walked our border around the yard a couple of times and he knew where his boundaries were and never went past them. I would take him out on the front yard without a leash and wait for the kids to come home, as soon as he saw them he ran to the edge of the yard and sat there. He never would pass the curb unless we were by his side no matter how much the kids called him.</p>
<p>That was true if the ball was overthrown and went it to the street…we always had to retrieve it for him</p>
<p>Our wonderful lab-mix whom we just put down right before Christmas (sniff…sniff…), did the exact same thing–a couple morsels carried to the living room where we were, dropped, eaten, then he’d go back to the kitchen and finish the rest. I always thought it was an acknowledgement thing–appreciating the good stuff we brought back from the hunt.</p>
<p>He also had what I thought of as “doggie grammar”. He’d bang on his bowl, and when we came into to the kitchen, he’d shift to the back door to be let out. It was like a subject/verb (banging on the bowl = “I want”) and an object (shifting to the door = “to go out”).</p>
<p>We had a wonderful Heinz-57 doggie who was the most caring, compassionate, loving dog we ever had the privilege of living with us (and we’ve shared our home with 6 dogs over the past few years). When Lady was 12 years old, our younger child gave her a big rawhide bone as a birthday gift. Unfortunately, by this time she wasn’t able to chew it. So she resorted to carrying it around and stashing it near her wherever she went throughout the house. When guests would come to the house, Lady’s ritual was to greet our company and then go get her “birthday present” (as we all called it) and show it off. She would stand there woofing and dancing until the guests made a big deal about her beautiful bone. Then she would happily trot off down the hall and take it with her.</p>
<p>We have so many funny doggie stories (and fantastic ones) but her birthday present was one of the cutest unusual behaviors!</p>
<p>My condolences. When we put our border down he was 15, and it was so disheartening I couldn’t take him, my dh (bullet) did. 2 yrs. later we have a picture frame with his collar on it. We also got him cremated, b/c we are military and I refused to leave him behind, we will bury his ashes at our final home. Fortunately we knew he was going (went downhill over New Years weekend) and we prepared the kids, we even went out and made a cement block and put his paw prints in it. We know for a fact that he sent us our boxer (we rescued her as a 7 week old pup), because the only puppy left from the litter was her and she has the exact same markings (1 dark ear, 1 white and 1 dark patch around her eye just like him). We never saw her before picking her up and when we did, we all looked at her and said she looks just like mcquire did as a puppy. I brought her home and my husband teared up the minute he saw her and said quire sent her to us</p>
<p>Our border collie used to play with her food until we fostered a hurricane Katrina mutt(who ended becoming part of the family) - the Katrina girl eats like she knows there may never be food again, scarfing her food down in a few seconds while the border can take a fifteen minutes to eat the same amount of food. Any food left on the floor is vacuumed up by the Katrina girl. </p>
<p>My border collie’s favorite task is to remove the tops from plastic bottles. Of course, we only hand her the bottles empty after we’ve screwed the tops back on. One day DS sat with a pile of empty water bottles and handed them to her one by one, she worked on them until she’d removed the tops from over 20 water bottles. It seems to make her quite happy to have a job to do even if it only takes her a few seconds. Of course, it does make for a messy house as there are constantly water bottles and lids on the floor (DS was never trained property to pick up after the dog and tends to leave them scattered all over the floor of his room - thank goodness DS is at school most of the year.) </p>
<p>The only negative about my dear border collie is she will NOT allow our Katrina girl to play a game of fetch. The border collie’s idea of fetch is get the toy and hide it. Our Katrina girl will fetch for hours if the border collie is not around but I throw a toy once for her and the border collie gives her “the look” and Katrina girl drops the toy and won’t touch it again.</p>
<p>Our border also loved it if you would aim the water hose at his mouth…we could never wash the car around him because he would attack the hose.</p>
<p>Does anyones dogs attack the vacuum? It drives me insane, because they get right up on and bite it as I am vacuuming. Now explain that to me? Why do they do it, all 3 of our dogs have done this, but I wonder if it is b/c our 1st did it and so the 2nd did it and now our 3rd does it?</p>
<p>Our beagle/border mix also takes a few pieces of food and drops them on her “The Dog, Day 751” doormat in the kitchen. (It’s the doormat where the dog complains about being forced to suffer through eating dry cereal while we all dine on fine stuff…like ground beef.) Then she stands on the mat to eat them. I always wonder: Can she read? Is she trying to make a point about dry kibble? :)</p>
<p>In the evenings, once she’s finished with this ritual, she’ll eat out of her bowl once we sit down for dinner.</p>
<p>She always takes her treats and then runs off to another room to eat them. From everyone else’s experiences here, this must be some instinctive behavior. I can say it’s not alpha behavior – my dog is a Beta, all the way.</p>