<p>My dog just eyes the thing very suspicously and only barks at it if it goes near her. </p>
<p>School buses are what drive her nuts! I read once that Border Collies are always about protecting their herd (us…and the neighborhood kids) and always going through their mind is the phrase “It MIGHT be a bear!”. So perhaps the vacuum-attacks are to protect you from that bear. I think the school bus is a giant yellow bear that eats little children almost every morning and then spits them out again in the afternoon. She watches faithfully for it every day…</p>
<p>I never thought about that way, but it is true, the big noisy thing takes the kids and their gone.</p>
<p>We also call our Boxer, Houdini, she is the only dog I know that can get herself out of a dog crate. We gave up a long time ago on trying to crate her because of that. She is also a wonderful sister to he brother, because she can open doors and has been known to go into the pantry while we are gone and take out the treats. You can tell that she shares, because the remnants are found in 2 different places. Our favorite memory is when she was able to get the flank steak I had left out to thaw…we walked in to find 2 rooms with styrofoam and pllastic wrap…no steak though…yep they actually broke the styrofoam in 1/2 and the wrap was still a full sheet. Now I make sure anything defrosting is put in the fridge even if I am gone for 5 minutes.</p>
<p>Wow, what an interesting behavior. I have had dogs all my adult life, and know a bunch of others, and I have never seen that one. It’s so interesting that so many others have.</p>
<p>Yep, the vet even is aware of it, so they double check her kennel when we board her. My girlfriend didn’t believe me, until I crated her before we left and closed all of the doors. Came back home, she was at the door waiting for us and the treat container was on the floor with lid off. (It was a plastic sam’s size, like a cool whip container, so she had to use her teeth to pry it off). She just wasn’t smart enough to dump it over, so you can see she stopped eating as soon she couldn’t reach anymore</p>
<p>Funny stories ^^^! I’ve spent hours trying to figure out my female dog’s weird eating habits and can only conclude it’s pack behavior.</p>
<p>I have two dogs, a male and a female. Both are poodle mixes. Although the female is significantly smaller than the male, she’s definitely the alpha. Whenever she’s hungry, she picks up her food bowl and brings it to me. She puts the bowl in my lap if I’m sitting. I feed both dogs at the same time, but the female won’t touch her food until the male has finished. After he cleans his bowl (which is always), she licks his spotless bowl for at least several minutes before she moves to her food.</p>
<p>Once, when she was a puppy, I fed her in the kitchen and went to the family room to watch TV. A few minutes later I heard a crunching noise from the floor at my feet. When I looked down, I saw she’d brought her full food bowl into the family room – without spilling a drop – and was happily eating her dinner!</p>
<p>I also have a funny story about treats. My female dog loves ice cubes, so every now and then I’ll give her one or two. One day I gave her an ice cube and she ran out of the room with it. She immediately back in the kitchen, begging for another one. I gave it to her and she did the same thing. She came back for a third ice cube. Ditto. I wondered how she could be eating ice cubes that fast, so I followed her when she ran off with the fourth cube. Imagine my surprise when I found she’d been burying them in my new sofa! </p>
<p>Love all the dog stories. Keep 'em coming. They always make me smile!</p>
<p>My Chihuahua, Billy, does the same kind of thing. He takes his tiny kibbles one by one or two by two, out to an area rug in the living room for a picnic. He never stands at his bowl and eats. He will only eat on the rug. Strangely, he will only do his little tricks there, too. He does not seem to understand commands like ‘sit’ or ‘crawl’ on hard wood or tile. Only on some kind of fabric or carpeting. He is also kind of OCD. When he’s outside in the yard and I call him in, he must run to a hanging swing seat on the other side of the yard and touch it with his nose (requires jumping up). He does that even when he’s close to the door when I call him…he has to run all the way back, touch the swing with his nose, then all the way back to the door! He also ‘cribs’, or nibbles, at my clothing all the time. Almost like grooming me. He does it up and down my jeans.</p>
<p>They say pets mimic their owners, the more I read, the more I think, my dogs are doing that…</p>
<p>I hate vacuuming …maybe they feel my anger
My family only goes into the freezer for ice cream (excluding me …dinner prep)
Kids hate school buses and wait for them to come…not in a happy way, and get off the bus in a cheery mood. (dogs bark in the a.m. and wag their tail in the p.m.)
How many of us have hoarded are own special treats and eat them away from the kitchen.
Tell my kids or dogs bedtime, and they go to their appropriate areas.</p>
<p>Brush your teeth for kids = bath for dogs…both of them cringe</p>
<p>Finally, my kids don’t mind getting in the car but whine all the way untile we reach our destination :p</p>
<p>My mother’s dog buried every treat or toy we got for her. It was sort of sad. We would give her toys and treats for Christmas and she would immediately bury them. We always hoped she would go back and get them later, but we never witnessed it. I always wanted her to be able to enjoy one, but maybe that was her way of enjoying it.</p>
<p>Regarding the bringing morsels to the rug or living room, I do believe it may be instinctive wolf pack behaviour. Sharing with other wolves who are younger or weaker? Much the same as the instinctive “snow packing” behaviour…you know, where the dog takes forever to lie down…turning and pawing at his blanket/bed, sometimes making weird noises as my dog does.
A hoot to watch…lie down already I think after 5 minutes of this!</p>
<p>We have hardwoods and my dog very resolutely will back up to just the edge of the carpet before we throw her toy. She gets very embarrased when she slides around on the hard wood, so she tries like crazy to stay on the carpet.</p>
<p>Also, the little dog who is OCD cracked me up!</p>
<p>When I was a kid, we had a miniature dachshund who ran free out in the unfenced backyard and woods in the back.
One day he came home with a roast in his mouth (nearly bigger than he was).
We were mystified as to where it came from.
Weeks later the neighbour related how weird it was that a fully prepared roast had disappeared into thin air off her kitchen table.
Since we all left our back doors open in those days, my mother was too embarrassed to solve the mystery and tell the truth.</p>
<p>(Same dog also on one occassion dragged in a 2 1/2 foot goanna from the woods…or the “bush” as we called it when we lived in Australia…we rescued it and got it back to it’s own less trauma inducing habitat)</p>
<p>We have three border collies and a white shephard–rescue dogs all- between 12 and 15 years old- the geriatic crowd</p>
<p>Dinner time is like something out of One Flew Over the Cookoos Nest</p>
<p>One will just stare at anothers backside–while that one is sleeping…we get lots of power plays- the Border Collie Eye as it were</p>
<p>One Loves helium balloons, another carries around shoes, the oldest guy makes his bed every night, yesterday I came home to a pile of recycling neatly shredded and piled up</p>
<p>One takes his chewy thing, baries them and recovers them later- well firmented</p>
<p>They take turns protecitng various parts of the house…and Car rides to the park are ever so calm (NOT)…motorcylces set one off, teen boys set the otherone off, they need to trade seats…</p>
<p>and as a couple have bad cataracts and getting ditzy with old age…</p>
<p>I have an avocado grove and dogs love avocados! My previous dog, a boxer, would hunt around for avocados that have fallen and let them sit on the ground for a few days until the avocado’s ready to eat (same as we people do). He’d then carry the avocado to a particular spot in the grove and somehow peel the skin off, eat the good part, and leave the pit so that all that was left was the skin and pit. My current dog, also a boxer, eats them also but he just eats the skin and isn’t as fussy about waiting for the avocado to be ripe although he carries them to the same spot to eat. At least neither dog picked the fruit off the tree. I actually have to go out every now and then, especially after a strong wind, and pick up downed avocados and either keep them if still hard or toss them in the neighbor’s yard (not really a yard but an area that doesn’t matter if some avocados are tossed there) if already soft to keep the dog from eating too many. The avocados are actually good for them (and people too) but too many can make them fat.</p>
<p>the oldest border collie likes to wash his face after eating and then rub it along the wall,t he sofa, the floor, the doggie beds, to dry it…he has taught the other dogs his hygiene…</p>
<p>and yes, they do smile, and my old BC could move her ears like a Muppet…the new old brown one we have looks exactly like foozie bear…</p>
<p>ad the “youngest” one- 12- acts like Barney Fyfe…you gotta see it to believe it</p>
<p>My shepherd-mix is a ‘found’ dog who’s been ours for 12 years. He has a few quirks – he hates to be in the yard, for instance. He’ll run out, lift a leg and run right back in. If the door is closed, he’ll bark until we let him in. I doubt he’s been out in the yard for a half-hour consecutively since we got him. He’ll go for walks for miles, but he doesn’t like to be outside even if there are dogs in neighboring yards…maybe that’s why? Either he’s a terrible snob or…as I believe…he was an outdoor dog before we found him running loose. (Nobody ever claimed him.) </p>
<p>If we give him a treat just before we leave the house…he won’t touch it 'til we come home. It just sits on the rug in the kitchen. When we come home, he’ll often be lying next to the cookie but he won’t eat it until he sees us walk in the door…even if we’ve been gone a long time. My mother, who has very well trained dogs, can’t leave a treat box or food anywhere where her rascals can get to them for get to them they will. My dog’s food and treats are on an open bookshelves no higher than his head. He’s never dragged anything off or torn anything open. He’s the politest dog in the world, though he will nudge me for his after dinner Greenie if he thinks I’ve forgotten. But politely.</p>
<p>My current boxer, who we acquired from a rescue place, likes both indoors and outdoors but when we first got him he wouldn’t walk in from the outside even though he wanted to. After convincing him it was okay he’d put his ears in the “I’m doing something naughty” position and squeak through the door. Once past the doorway he’d revert to everything being fine. He did this for some months but has now gotten to a more normal point. My guess is that a previous owner either kept him outside or punished him when he tried to come inside.</p>
<p>My father and the beagle got old together. Once when I visited, my father told me the dog was spooking him because she had been smiling at him all day. He told me it was really giving the creeps that the dog had been following him around for hours smiling at him.</p>
<p>I took a close look at discovered a chicken bone wedged in her mouth, sideways! Smiling, indeed.</p>
:D</p>