Let's swap pet stories!

Suz

(the future) MRS. GERE
I don't know about you but I love to read animal stories...or watch animal movies...or watch animal shows on tv...and even the animal segments on America's Funniest Videos is always my favorite part of the show.

I've been trying to teach my sweet Miss Chloe how to "shake." Heaven help me, she is not the brightest bulb in the chandelier but finally, last Sunday, after 50,000+ lessons, she got it right.

:bravo: :bravo: :bravo:

So I screamed and danced around the room and pretty soon her older sisters Molly and Chelsea joined my hysteria and you know that Chloe was utterly confused and bewildered and delighted and she started dancing and barking along with the rest of us.

And, after the frivolity wore down, I had her sit again and said, "Shake."

And she stared at me with her beautiful blank stare like she'd never heard the word in her life. And didn't move a muscle.


:rofl:

Ah, parenting.

Now, I must say that since Sunday we have practiced 25,000 more times and she has it pretty much down pat.

Now she thinks that sit and shake are one command so she will put her bottom down and lift her paw up at the same time. And she lifts her paw like a seal lifts its arm and kind of "fwaps" it, stiff, like they do. And so now Chloe sits and "fwaps" her paw up in one fell swoop.

Thank the good Lord for these wonderful creatures and the joy they bring to our lives.

I have a million stories. Now tell me some of yours.

Suz



 

bby31288

Active Member
Thats cute. When we taught our Suzie to shake, we just say gimme your paw, and she sits down and picks up her paw...and then we shake it. LOL. I am a big dog lover too. I have 4, one rescue dog, on jack russell who is really bad and loves to chew anything including the cushion on the chair and he is 1 1/2 years old and still occassionally pees in the house...and two very sloppy, very smelly basset hounds...
 
F

flutterbee

Guest
:rofl: Too cute!

Baby Abbey likes to drape her body over the back of the dining room chair and attack her back feet through the slats. She's such a funny little thing.

She has also shut my computer down several times by walking on the keyboard. I can't figure out what she does. It doesn't reboot. She turns it off. And of course she's on the keyboard most when I'm on the computer, so I'm always in the middle of something when she does it. :hammer:

Jewel - our whippet-cross - is a bit on the neurotic side and when one of the kids leaves she does this thing with her food. She pulls the food out with her paw and then tries to put it back in by doing a sweeping motion with her snout. She will also put her toys in the food dish when doing this. If her food dish is empty, she'll do it to the cat food. I've come home to find the cat dish turned upside down into the water bowl. She also gives us fair warning that a storm is coming - up to an hour in advance - by hiding under the desk.
 

Marcie Mac

Just Plain Ole Tired
My four legged kids just loveeee dog bones - Tillie wants one when she wants one, and will bark and bark and bark and jump at you till you get up and dole them out. The longest I have been able to go is 35 minutes without folding, The other three dogs get theirs and promptly devour them - but not Till - she has gotta walk around for the longest time in front of them, bone in mouth, growling, taking great enjoyment from the droll now hanging from the others mouths. Does she eat it, nope - she will take it into the bedroom, drop it on SO's pillow and nose it till it is under the pillow, and lay down to protect her stash.

And Maggie, in the middle of the night, will start whining - I think she has to go out and potty - as I am stumbling towards the door in the den, I look around and she is sitting in front of the dog bone container, whining, quivering and drooling - She only does this if she knows bones are in the container. I had no idea that dogs get the middle of the night munchies. If I give her one, she is happy, and goes back to bed..

Marcie
 

Shari

IsItFridayYet?
I was trying to teach my dearly departed labrador, Humphrey, to use hand signals for what they call "blind retrieves". In the hunt test world, it means to direct your retriever to fetch a bird that is down but the dog didn't see fall.
In the end, you should extend your right hand to the right to make your dog go to the right. Left hand to the left for the dog to go left, and one hand straight up in the air to make him go farther back away from you. When you whistle, he is to stop and turn around and look at you for guidance.
Humphrey got everything but the "farther back" signal, and we worked and worked.
We were working outside one afternoon, we had our pile of "hidden birds" about 20 yards back and some to both the right and the left, and he was sitting halfway between them and me, facing me. We did some retrieves from the right and some from the left, and all was going well, so we started working on "back" again. I extended that hand into the air and said "BACK!" and he looked at me, stood up slowly, turned around slowly, and plopped his fat hiney on the ground right there and ignored every word I said from then on.
I couldn't stop laughing, his teenage rebellion attitude came thru loud and clear.
Despite working and working, he never did figure out what I was asking of him with that signal. So when he hunted, I had to be sure to send him plenty far back the first time and work him towards me instead of having to send him away from me. Was a bit of a "work-around", but it worked. He found the birds.
 

Steely

Active Member
Oh man......these are great stories.
One of the little joys in my life are my animals. They just are wonderful little creatures of comfort and entertainment. Recently we just got a 3rd puppy, who is nothing short of adorable. His mom died at 4 weeks, so he was just a babe, and very shaky about the big world. I took him to meet my parents one day, and of course, he would not leave my side, toddling everywhere I went. I went outside to dip my fingers in their pool to see if it was warm enough to swim in, and her comes my pup, flying towards me down the stairs. I turned around to tell my mom something, and I hear a plop. My pup had never stopped running - he must have thought the pool was cement and just had run full speed into the pool. He sank like a rock. I fished him out, and dried him off - but I could not stop laughing. Why would he have known it was water? He just thought he could walk on any surface - he was god! Just the image of him flying through the air running - and then realizing too late he had made a strategically crucial error - cracks me up every time I think about it.
 

totoro

Mom? What's a difficult child?
Oh I love the Fur stories... Our Gary,IN pound Kitty, Annie/Nanner- Is a calico with long fur. She is a roamer,hunter and thinks she is the worlds toughest cat!
We had to start having her shaved because she was roaming and coming home with burs stuck all over her fur on a daily basis from spring to fall... So we get a "lion" cut! Which is hysterical on a barely 5 pound little calico kitty!!!

Well she still thinks she is so tough so when a dog comes by the property she will run at him sideways, "puff" up and hiss!!! She looks like a little bald chihuahua... with the poof on the tail and head!!!

I almost peed my pants the first time she did it and my older neighbors next door said, "What the h#*l is that thing!" I couldn't stop laughing...
 
My childhood cat, an absolutely GORGEOUS long haired calico, was an addition to our family in the year 1977.
My father named her Farrah.

The last cats I owned were a brother & sister. This was about 12 years ago, when Mortal Kombat was real big. My older difficult child named them Johnny Cage & Kitana, after 2 of the characters in the game.

Kitana was awesome. She played fetch with crumpled up balls of paper. Like, for HOURS. If she heard you rolling up a ball of paper, from ANYWHERE in the house, she'd come running, and she'd just sit there and wait until you'd throw it for her. She never tired of it.
 

Fran

Former desparate mom
I have in my later years become a dog crazy lady. Now that my sons are up and out, I find I'm loving pups and pup stories.
I brought 2 rescue dogs home on Tuesday. They had been in foster care for 6 months so they went to the groomer before coming home. They have that lion cut. Never heard that term but it's very descriptive. They look so strange but at least they are clean.
Between physicals,teeth,grooming we don't have many stories yet.
They seem to want to slurp anyone walking in the door so far. They are very sweet.

As siblings, they sure like to growl and fuss over food. I'll let you know the stories as they come along.
 

donna723

Well-Known Member
Fran, good for you for giving a home to rescue pups!

My life among the "Boston Terrorists" is never dull! Having two of them is just about enough to do a person in! Ragan continues her hobby of "kitty watching" out the back door and she's completely obsessed with them. There's two mama cats and three kittens and they fascinate her. She's pretty well behaved and very little trouble. She turned five on the Fourth of July - for her birthday they each had a small scoop of vanilla ice cream with peanut butter on the top and a dog biscuit sticking out!

My youngest Boston, Katy, is a hoot! She's a lot like having a hyperactive toddler in the house - in to everything. She's always smiling, always happy, constantly snorting and grunting, never met a stranger - friendliest dog there ever was! I take her to the vet and Katy "works the room" like a politician running for office. Before we leave, she's introduced herself to every person and every pet in the waiting room - whether I want her to or not. She gave me a terrible scare a few weeks ago. She had a big swelling come up underneath her on her belly and her vet was almost sure that she had mammary cancer. She's not even three years old yet! It can spread very quickly to the lungs and when it does, there's not much they can do. So she had really extensive surgery to remove the back pair of mammary glands - no fun for her. But luckily, they found it to be PRE-cancerous, no malignancy yet. It still needed to be removed but she should be fine. She had two 3" long parallel incisions with about 12 stitches in each one.

So here's the funny part - the vet told me that if she started pulling at her stitches or licking them, to buy her some baby "onesie" outfits and put them on her so she couldn't get to her stitches. Has to be the kind that snaps closed at the bottom - just a t-shirt won't do. And sure enough, she started licking her stitches! So I measured from her collar to her tail and was off to the baby department of our only local store! And I now know that it takes a Toddlers 24-month size to fit a chubby muscular 26 pound little Boston girl! And the ONLY thing I could find that would fit her and was long enough to snap closed at the crotch was a bright yellow knit sunsuit! It has orange and yellow ruffled straps at the top and little appliqued orange slices on the pockets - like she needs pockets! And it came with a matching bandana and socks - only two socks though! I dressed her up in her new clothes and she was NOT happy. She HATED her sunsuit, and she hated me too! She must have felt so restricted that she assumed that she was now paralyzed and couldn't walk! She just stood there in her little yellow sunsuit, glaring hatefully at me for making her look silly and for taking away her ability to walk! And yes, I DID take advantage of the photo op! The pictures are hysterical!
 

skeeter

New Member
we have two rescue boxers. Both are about 9 - 10 years old.

Buster came to us when he was 9 months old. We quickly figured out that he was BADLY abused, and to this day we have to watch our voices around him, or if we go near him with a broom or such, or he will cower and submissive pee. But he's pretty much typical boxer - he "kidney beans" (turns his body in half and wiggles), he "kills" toys (shakes the heck out of them), and loves to "box" (whap you with his front paws). He talks and sings, especially to the harmonica or penny whistle.

Wyley came to us when he was about 3 years old. We figured HE had been raised alone, in a cage. He was petrified of carpeting. He had NO boxer traits, or even dog traits for that matter. But he was big, dumb and loveable.

Wyley has come to realize that he's "supposed" to do a lot of the things Buster does, but he just doesn't quite get it. He'll pick up a toy Buster has dropped - shake it a time or two, then just lay down with it and use it as a pillow. He will actually sit and watch Buster and then look at us with an expression that says "am I supposed to do that, too?". Wyley thinks every person or animal is as friendly as he is. He also loves going to the vet, and now that NL is working there, he thinks every time NL puts his uniform shirt on he's going, too!

They both obey husband well, they obey me ok, but they don't obey the kids at all. They think the kids are litter-mates. Buster knows what everyone's car sounds like and is at the door long before you arrive. Wyley still hasn't gotten the idea that people come out of cars.
 

mum2JK&TH

New Member
This isn't really a training story but had easy child and I in stitches this evening.

easy child was cooling out her pony this evening which usually means a walk around the barn owners house. She does this every time she rides. Anyone who is familiar with horses will know that these creatures will notice any small thing that is different or out of place and be afraid it will eat them. Tonight was no different. There was a feeding bag left out in front of the owners house that had never been there before so her pony was very nervous about the possibility of it coming to life and eating him. He was slowing stepping away from it but making sure to keep both his bugged out eyes on it at all times. easy child decided to turn his head away from it and all of a sudden he jumps all four legs spread eagle. easy child and I look down and its a rock that must have caught the corner of his eye and scared him, lol!

I still have to wonder why they were chosen to take many into battle??!!
 

Hound dog

Nana's are Beautiful
:rofl: :rofl:

Suz, you're Cloe had me cracking up. Sounds like a basset hound we had once.


<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body"> I dressed her up in her new clothes and she was NOT happy. She HATED her sunsuit, and she hated me to! She must have felt so restricted that she assumed that she was now paralyzed and couldn't walk! She just stood there in her little yellow sunsuit, glaring hatefully at me for making her look silly and for taking away her ability to walk! </div></div>

Gool Lord! Donna how could you?? I nearly landed on the floor I was laughing soooo hard. :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

These stories are too cute!!

My dog Molly is a australian shepard mix.

Molly has a huge hollow plastic ball that she herds around our back yard all day. I have a rubbermaid box that I store her ball in when I don't want her chasing it. She gets furious with me for putting her ball away and will knock over the box, open the lid, and start herding her ball again. Molly used to have a nervous breakdown if the ball would go into the dog kennel, even though she was the one that would herd it in there. FINALLY I figured out that to her the ball is a COW, and the kennel is the BARN. But once she gets the COW into the BARN, she has no clue as to what she's supposed to do. :rofl: So now when she's outside playing I'm careful to make sure the kennel door is closed.

Betsy is our basset/lab mix. (product of Precious and Rowdy) She's always cracking us up. Since both her and the baby were little we've had a heck of a time keeping the baby's binkys away from Betsy. Now she'd never bother anything else, just the darn binkys. Everytime I'd catch her with one, she'd have it in her mouth just like a baby.
So all this time I've been looking for the rubber dog binkys. I finally found one the other day. I bought two. Betsy was in heaven the moment she saw them. She's been walking around the house with one in her mouth almost constantly. :rofl:
 

Stella Johnson

Active Member
SO recently found out that nothing in his house is safe anymore. His cat that I gave him last December has started jumping up onto the door knob to push it down to get into any room he wants to go in. :surprise:

Totto, my little terrier, has started to hate my mother. Not sure what happened but every time she is here he growls when he sees her. She walks in and says hi to him and he growls. :bravo: He has never done this to anyone before. Guess he knows how psycho she is at times.

Steph
 

donna723

Well-Known Member
:rofl:

Daisy - That IS what they tell you to do if they've just had surgery and won't leave their stitches alone!

I finally had to take the sunsuit off of Katy, but we worked out a compromise about it. She promised not to pull at her stitches and I promised not to dress her up again. I kept her sunsuit with me the rest of the day, and if she started in on the stitches again I'd reach for the sunsuit and she'd stop immediately! Hey ... whatever works!

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
 

hearts and roses

Mind Reader
I have enjoyed reading these great stories! How cute and funny. My pups bring me such joy. My H once asked me if I had to choose between him and the dogs, which would I choose. I told him the pups because they would never ask me to choose between him and them. Besides, they don't have RLS and can sleep with me all night without waking me.

Well, our 5 year old cairn, Sophie, loves to swim in the big pool with us. When we're in, she will scale around the pool, balancing herself carefully until we pull her in. We taught her how to hang ten on our boogie board. She even knows when to dip and balance herself as we whip her around the pool - it's a blast to watch. Sophie also thinks she can fly, as she chases birds and quite literally tries to lift off the ground. We call her Rocketdog! It's hysterical.

Nala, the 7 year old cairn is a food addict and loves all water except the big pool. One Christmas we put her in our bedroom so we could eat without her merciless begging to our family and friends. Midway through dinner, one of our guests asked if we were holding someone hostage in the basement....the cries and yelling that H and I had ignored and blocked out were Nala crying to be let out. She sounded almost human. Well, we let her out and then everyone was appalled that she was such a rude little beggar. Once we went to a favorite summer spot on a strangely warm February day. The pond was ice, but Nala didn't seem to notice as she tore free from her leash and ran towards the water, skidded onto the ice and fell through. Minutes seemed like hours as I almost dove in after her, restrained by H. We all went to the closest corner without ice and called her to us - she swam fast and made it out. I wrapped her in my sweatshirt and we brought her home. She was a hero that day for making it out alive! (as if she were in the alaskan moutains or something-hee hee).

Our first cairn was Jocko and this was a dog we rescued with very little information. We knew he was 6, we knew he was neutered and we knew he was always hungry. We quickly learned that Jocko was so afraid of thunder that he literally pooped himself while spinning in circles. He once escaped during a thunder storm and ran around our front yard barking at the sky! He could only turn to the left, never to the right. We'd try to trick him with snacks to turn to his right, but he'd only go left. It was a fun trick to show friends and family. The woman who gave him to us said his owner was French so whenever he misbehaved, difficult child would tell people, "He's not from around here, he's from France - that's why he doesn't know how to act". Haha - well, Jocko fell ill and I tried to find his medical records so I called the vet on his Rabies tag. Turns our Jocko was not from France at all! He was owned by Murray Schwartz in Queens NY!! LOL. Anyway, Jocko always dressed for Halloween and always as a Devil. It fit him. He's no longer with us - had to be put down. But Nala and Sophie are perfect little cairns. Last year they dressed as a Princess (Nala) and a SuperDog (Sophie, due to her flying abilities).
 

Shari

IsItFridayYet?
I have another to share, tho its not funny.

After DEX left when wee difficult child was a little being, it was just myself and difficult child 1 at home (easy child 1 wasn't there at the time). We were getting ready to go camping. Wee difficult child was about a year old. difficult child 1 was amazing with wee difficult child when wee difficult child was tiny, he tried so hard. Anyway, I thought he was watching wee difficult child while I got ready. He thougth I was watching wee difficult child while he got things ready. Turns out, neither of us were, and we realized this when we bumped into each other in the garage.

Our place at the time was small, but we had kept our horses and grazed them in the fenced yard as much as we could, in order to save our pasture. We had them out that night. difficult child 1 headed to the road to look (the most prominent danger), and I headed to the horses. We had 4 at the time, my mare, her colt, difficult child's paint mare, and easy child 1's ancient mare he called "Grandma", because she was so old, but her name was Red. But don't be fooled by age, Grandma was the orneriest one of the bunch. She tore out more fence in a year than the rest of the herd in a lifetime, she ripped the door off the stall, she was terribly buddy sour, in other words, she could be a pain.

Anyway, I found my mare, the colt, and difficult child 1's mare together grazing in a corner of the yard, but no Grandma (we have a 3 acre yard, so...) When I finally found Grandma, she was standing near the clothesline, just standing. Wee difficult child was on the inside of her front leg, with his arms and legs wrapped around her leg, sitting on the ground, giggling. You could see the grazing circle around her where she had eaten all the grass she could reach without moving, and there she stood, the looniest horse we owned, a tiny babe perched precariously between her giant feet, but so very calm and collected and knowing, waiting patiently for us to retrieve wee difficult child so she could rejoin her herd.

I walked up to her and plucked difficult child from between her legs and no more had him out of her way when she bolted, whinnying to rejoin her buddies in her usual, crazy, chaotic self. Don't ask me how they know, but they do...
 

Kathy813

Well-Known Member
Staff member
My first funny pet story is really about a stupid human trick ~ mine. A few years ago, I had taken my dog to the vet, parked the car, reached across the gear shift and picked up the dog and got out of the car. As I walked toward the door with the dog still in my arms I got a glimpse of movement out of the corner of my eye. I turned back only to see my car rolling backwards across the parking lot, over a curb, and slowly down a hill until it got stopped by a tree about halfway down the hill.

The worst part was that it rolled by the picture window on the side of the building so everyone inside saw what was happening and ran out to see if anyone was hurt in the car. They found me (still holding the dog) standing at the top of the hill in shock wondering how I was going to explain this to my husband.

:rofl:

My story was and still is that the dog must have knocked the gear shift into neutral when I was trying to get her out of the car.

It took a tow truck and $70 to get the car back up the hill. Luckily, the car wasn't damaged ~ just my pride.

We still go to the same vet but I always very carefully make sure the car is in park!

The other cute story is that Abby, my Shih Tzu, can follow three commands: sit, shake, and lie down. The problem is that she gets them confused so when we pull out the treat bag and say a command, she does all three to make sure she gets her treat. She does them in order ~ sit, shake, down ~ over and over figuring she will hit the right one sooner or later and get a treat.

~Kathy
 

Hound dog

Nana's are Beautiful
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body"> so when we pull out the treat bag and say a command, she does all three to make sure she gets her treat. She does them in order ~ sit, shake, down ~ over and over figuring she will hit the right one sooner or later and get a treat.</div></div>

Well, now that is right smart of her, isn't it??

:rofl: :rofl:

I'm really enjoying this post! :smile:
 
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