Canine Puzzles
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Things We’ll Never Understand About Dogs
By Chris Robinson
Dogs and people have been living side by side for roughly 15,000 years. You would think, with that amount of time to study each other, that there would be nothing that we wouldn’t know about dogs and vice versa. Now, I can’t speak for the dogs’ understanding of human behavior because they’ve been very close-mouthed about how much they know and how they use it to get what they want from us. But, I can address the multitude of things we don’t understand about dogs and probably never will.
This inability to understand some of the things that dogs do has not been for a lack of trying. I’ve been around them for more years than I care to count because it reminds me of how many years have passed in my relationship with dogs. And, it’s not that I haven’t figured out some of the things that make dogs tick as I’ve successfully shown, trialed and hunted with them for, again, more years than I care to count. Still, there are lots of things about dogs and what they do that leave me completely befuddled. To wit:
How can a dog that weighs 90 pounds on the veterinarian’s scale swell to 350 pounds or more when he’s asleep on your bed and you need to move him? It’s also incomprehensible how a dog can hear the tiniest scrap of meat hit his dish on the first floor when he’s asleep on the second floor but can’t hear you screaming “Move” at decibel levels usually associated with an artillery barrage when you are trying to get him to wake up and shift his position when he’s stretched from port to starboard amidships on the bed so you can have a place to sleep.
There are more than 200 spruce trees in the two shelter belts that protect the building site on our property. But, the male dogs that have occupied home and hearth these many years have never used any of them as their toilet area even though these mature trees would be more or less immune to the ammonia and other chemicals in their waterings. This is not the case with the expensive ornamental evergreen shrubbery that decorates the front window area of one of the houses and which cannot withstand these repeated discharges of liquid dog waste. The dogs, for reasons known only to them, lust after the arborvitae for use as their personal latrine. Also, these same dogs that wouldn’t be caught dead using a mature spruce as a “marking post” are overcome with desire to put the same tree to that particular use the minute it is brought indoors and decorated with colored lights, bulbs and tinsel.
We have several maple trees on our property which shed copious amounts of leaves every fall. Leaves, incidentally, that the dogs ignore even when the leaf layer in the yard reaches a foot or more in depth. But, let anyone rake those leaves into piles and they become an immediate attraction for dogs which, despite verbal threats and menacing rakes, are obsessed with jumping into those piles and re-scattering all the leaves the second the raker departs the area to get the tractor and wagon to haul the leaf piles to the compost bin. Then, once the leaves have been re-gathered and taken to the compost area, the same dogs who couldn’t wait to jump into the leaf piles totally lose interest in the same leaves they were happily scattering all over the yard just moments before.
I understand how dogs could be attracted to days-old road kill and even rotten fish. It’s also easy to grasp why they might like to roll in this offal. Part of this desire is because they are hunters and one of the ways to sneak up on prey is by not smelling like a dog. But where this understanding breaks down is when you try to comprehend why they insist on bringing this carrion home and depositing it on the front steps or worse, if you’re not quick enough to catch them, on the living room carpet. It’s even harder to figure out why they insist on sharing the stench on their coats with you as even the most aloof seem to be overcome by an overwhelming need to be extraordinarily friendly when they are reeking of dead fish or some long-deceased critter even though you are screaming “Get away from me!” and threatening them with grievous bodily harm if they come any closer than 10 yards.
While we on this subject, just what is the attraction to spring cowplop when it is the byproduct of fresh green grass? My Brittanys have all been in love with springtime bovine excrement and seem to relish a roll in it as much as we humans enjoy in a trip to the spa for a massage and a shea butter body wrap. At any other time of the year, dousing it with porterhouse scent would not be a sufficient invitation to get them to roll in a meadow muffin but the springtime stuff is irresistible. What’s more, they are downright insulted when they show up anointed in this odious mess and the result is someone turning the hose on them to wash away the solid particles followed by at least one bath and probably more in an effort to remove as much of the stink as possible.
My dogs are all hunting dogs that barely react to the roar of a 12-gauge shotgun being fired practically over their heads other than to either follow the flight of a bird or mark for falling birds. In fact, they like the sound of the shotgun and also the sight of it because they know it’s a necessary part of getting birds in a place where they can get them in their mouths. But these same dogs absolutely freak out at the most distant rumble of thunder as they race about the house panting, shaking and whining. And, they come totally unglued at the sound of tree limbs snapping and cracking from the cold on subzero nights, barking and whimpering at this terrible threat.
There are acres and acres of cropland surrounding the building site with much of it tilled for crops such as corn and soybeans. Not only is it easy digging but no one would notice if the dogs dug out two or three corn or soybean plants or even some grass. Nor would there be any appreciable economic loss if that’s what was destroyed in their apparent compulsive need to dig. Logic would dictate that these areas would be prime for digging. But logic, convenience and even ease of digging are clearly not factors taken into consideration when dogs are choosing an excavation site as the crops and even the plants in the vegetable garden go totally unmolested. Instead, they insist on doing their digging in the flower garden where virtually every plant represents a major investment. Chemical dog repellents merely attract them. Catching them in the act of digging and addressing them in very blue language at maximum volume doesn’t faze them. Even registering your disapproval with a considerable amount of negative reinforcement only seems to make them sneakier about fulfilling their desire to dig up the flowers. The only certain solution seems to be erecting the kind of stout fencing that pretty much defeats the aesthetic purposes of a flower garden and then electrifying it. Anything less and you may as well resign yourself to a steady influx of bills from the garden center.
There are an abundance of small, wild critters in every rural setting. Why then are dogs so attracted to skunks and porcupines when there are rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks and even mice to chase? I’ll admit that it requires much more effort and a considerably greater expenditure of energy to catch a rabbit or a squirrel than it does to get within molesting distance of a skunk or a porcupine, but chipmunks and mice are not exactly speed record holders. But my dogs totally ignore rabbits and only make enough of a bluff charge with squirrels to get the critter to scamper up a tree. Part of this is the fault of training and yelling “No fur” every time something without feathers jumps up in front of them but skunks are furry and under all those nasty quills so are porcupines, so why doesn’t the “no fur” training carry over to these critters? The dogs will go out of their way to harass a skunk even after skunks have sprayed them numerous times. Being hit one time with CS gas was enough to convince me that I didn’t want to repeat the experience. You’d think a skunking would have the same effect on dogs but it doesn’t. In fact, it makes their desire to get at a skunk even stronger. The same for being quilled by a porky. I’ve been stuck a few times by porcupine quills. Not only do they hurt, they burn. It’s an altogether unpleasant experience and certainly not something you would deliberately seek out. But, having once been quilled by a porky never seems to deter a dog in any future encounters. As for chasing mice, I once observed the following vignette: A mouse came out of an adjacent room into the living room. The mouse spotted the dog snoozing on the carpet. The mouse stopped and sat up on its haunches. The dog woke up, saw the mouse and essentially said, “Oh, hi. How are things with you?” The mouse seemingly responded with what appeared to be “Oh, just fine and you?” “Couldn’t be better,” said the dog. “Well, must be off,” said the mouse as it trotted unconcernedly into the room from which it came. The dog apparently replied, “Nice seeing you again. Ciao,” and resumed his nap leaving it to the house owner to wage unrestricted warfare against the rodent.
There’s also the matter of the toy box. Now, I know there are some dog trainers/owners who gag at the mere thought of a toy box for dogs. But, I happen to believe that it’s far better to have toys for the dogs to chew rather than the maple rocking chair or the cherry wood coffee table. Of course, the dog owners/trainers who retch at the idea of a toy box probably never let their dogs in the house, so my argument about toys as a deterrent to furniture chewing is probably pointless. But, for those of us whose sporting dogs, hounds, terriers, working breeds or herders double as house pets, dog toys are a necessity and a box to keep them out of the way when not actually in use, unless you enjoy tripping over stuffed animals and stepping on squeaky toys in the dark on your way to a nocturnal bathroom visit, is also a requirement. You would think that the dogs would select what they wanted to play with at any given time, tear the stuffing out of it and that would be it. Not so, at least not in my house. Here the great sport is removing every last toy from the box and scattering them throughout the living room. Once scattered, that’s the last time they’re touched until they’re picked up by the beleaguered house owner and returned to the box only to look up a half hour later to find all the toys removed from the box and once again scattered hither and yon in the living room.
It’s true that for centuries humans have been trying, frequently without success, to understand why dogs do what they do. In the end, perhaps the only sensible explanation for why dogs do what they do is because they are dogs with their own peculiar desires, inclinations and instincts and these behaviors, as exasperating as they may be, are just part of the price we pay for their love, companionship and their not inconsiderable assistance in finding and fetching game or helping us in our work.
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Posted by ralbee
on Jan 12 2016. Filed under Current Articles, Editorial, Featured.
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