<p>My brother’s dear dog used to wrinkle up her brow and frown at me when I wouldn’t go in her direction.</p>
<p>Once when my boys were little, I was picking up loose Legos from the floor and tossing them into a bucket: “Plink, plink, plink.” Suddenly I heard an odd echo of the sound. The cat, who had been watching me, had started carefully pushing small objects off of a shelf, one at a time, and knocking them onto the floor with her paw: “Plink, plink, plink.”</p>
<p>Our cat uses the toilet. His litter is in the closet of a basement bathroom that no one in the house uses. About a year ago, I noticed that someone was using it but not flushing, but no one admitted to it. Very puzzling. A few months later, my H happened to be in the basement when he heard someone urinating…he walked in on the cat astride the toilet! </p>
<p>He does like to push the door open when people are in the bathroom - he obviously took more notice of what we do than I realized. He stares right at me with a blank expression which is a little unnerving because he’s very good at figuring things out and he understands more than he lets on.</p>
<p>My dad’s cat can open doors in the house. He has the lever-style doorknobs, and the cat stretches up, pulls down on the lever with one paw while leaning on the door with the other paw. This only works when the door pushes in, of course. He can’t pull a door outward.</p>
<p>Our cat also knows what time we normally wake up, and comes in shortly before the alarm goes off. Or on the weekends, shortly before the alarm does NOT go off - but she still thinks we should get up, and she lets us know it.</p>
<p>When caught in verboten behavior, our pup will run up to us and bow. She will actually
Drop her head and shoulders and whimper until we go sweet on her. I wish I could say she learned this from my husband, but no such luck.</p>
<p>According to a paper published this month in Nature, dogs were domesticated from wolves by eating carbs (i.e. eating food garbage from humans)
[Dogs</a> evolved into domesticated animals by learning to eat starches](<a href=“http://now.msn.com/dogs-evolved-into-domesticated-animals-by-learning-to-eat-starches]Dogs”>http://now.msn.com/dogs-evolved-into-domesticated-animals-by-learning-to-eat-starches)</p>
<p>Thousands of years later, I eat potato chips w my dog while we sit on the couch together and watch TV</p>
<p>My father recently adopted a 6 yr old mix, chihuahua/min-pin/jackrussel. Interesting quirk, at night he doesn’t like sleeping on the floor, or the dog bed or even on the bed…he sleeps on the bed - under the covers, burrowed deep down by the foot of the bed. Nearly gave my father a heart attack, but I think we understand why the single guy with a girlfriend gave him up for adoption after 6 yrs.</p>
<p>Our little field spaniel is aptly named as he loves to play field hockey. He grabs a long toy and bats a ball all over our house. He plays this game by himself almost every evening. Other than that, he flips his water dish over and over until someone fills it.</p>
<p>We use to have a flat-coated retriever that would make a sound that sounded like good morning and he would only make the sound in the morning. Miss that dog.</p>
<p>When my husband gets in the shower each morning, the dog curls up right next to hubby’s pillow. Alpha dog.</p>
<p>These are all great stories. Fun thread.</p>