More Dog Tales

We've had Dusti for three and a half years now. It was my first dog. I wasn't always sure what to expect. I think I'm understanding a lot better now. I've also got a copy of the book How Dog's Think which I need to read rather than just skim.

I have three more observations.

• Positioning: I've noticed that during the day, as I'm working at home and Duncan is at school, she'll position herself, if possible, so that she can see what both Lynea and I are doing. That usually involves lying on the back of a chair in the living room, so she can look into the office where I am, and down a corridor to the room where Lynea is. As we move around the house, she'll adjust accordingly.

• Farting: Yes, all dogs do it. I can remember a pub I used to go to by the canal in Exeter in England that had a large Irish wolfhound that used to lie in front of the fire and every now and then let one off that would clear the room. Dusti is usually more dainty then that. They typically are silent-but-deadly, and only occur after she has eaten some people-food that disagrees with her. We have noticed that when it's an audible fart, she'll look back with a disgusted look on her face as if to say "where did that come from?" and quickly scuttle across the room as if to try to get away from it. It would be quite amusing if it wasn't for the smell.

• Burrowing: At night, Dusti sleeps on the bed with us. If it's cold she'll wedge her butt right into one of us, and try to put her nose under the top blanket to keep it warm. Some of the last few nights have been quite cold. We've got a smoke detector where (I think), the battery is starting to die. It'll give a beep about every 45 seconds. The strange thing is that it'll currently do it only in the dead of night when it's really cold. When I go looking for the particular detector that's doing this, later in the morning after I've got up, and the heat has been on, the beeping has stopped. Presumably this is a natural property of electricity. Feel free to educate me here. Anyway, this beeping is affecting Dusti at night. She tries to push up the blanket with her nose and get completely under it. As you can imagine, this is not conducive to getting a good night sleep. I suspect the only solution to this one, is to get up in the middle of the next cold night, hunt down the malfunctioning detector, and replace the battery then and there.

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( Jan 10 2008, 11:18:22 AM PST ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [8]