An alternate title for this post could be: Random Dog Observations in Need of Some Consideration — the time for consideration is in short supply around here lately.
- He’s a hoarder! Give him a bone or other bone-shaped-vaguely-food-like object (or even a length of rawhide) and he scampers around looking for a place to hide it. He digs very well, and buries it. Seems to have no further interest after that, however. I guess we won’t be buying any more bones for him.
- Other than for hiding bones, he doesn’t seem to dig for fun. (He could become a good gardener’s dog.)
- Where is the line between aggression and playful interest in cats? We have two otherwise mellow kitties who are not pleased to be sharing the house with a dog. Rory seems split between chasing them – for what purpose we have yet to discover – and wanting to play with them. He gets low, scampers side to side, and barks when he sees them. His tail going a hundred miles an hour, but then he begins to growl and gets into the pounce position. We’ve tried to provoke a few close encounters in the hope of discovering whether this is aggression or just puppy playfulness, but so far the cats have been elusive and Rory’s reaction seems to sometimes be playful, sometimes more troubling. He took off after one of the cats yesterday, ripping the leash from my younger daughter’s hand, which scared her of course — she thought her cat was going to be eaten. Captain Jack (the cat) may be named after an immortal, but I’ve no desire to test the strength of the bond with his namesake.
- He’s a chewer! While working on terracing the front bank yesterday, I brought him out and tied his leash to a tree beside me (this is the non-fenced part of our yard). He shuffled around, found a stick and appeared to settle down to gnaw on it. After maybe ten minutes, he wandered over to the front porch sans leash. He had chewed through it. He didn’t seem to want to run or explore, he was just bored hanging with me, and wanted to see if mommy would give him some attention. It’s early days, but perhaps he will be content to just sniff about when I‘m working outside and not run off to explore. (Otherwise, he could be a bad gardener’s dog.) He’s also half destroyed his bed by chewing and ripping at it incessantly.