Pet stories, let's start again

[Claire]

Anyone have experience with pet esp? I call it EPP now, extra puppy perception, but my kitties had it as well. All of my doggies have been crate-trained to some degree. Rosebud was when we got her from the rescue facility. I don't think she ever had a home before ours, I think she was part of a litter that some idiot dropped off the highway. So she knows that if she is in her crate, someone will feed her and care for her.

But the seeming extra-sensory stuff just kills me. She goes into her "bedroom" (the crate) when she thinks we're leaving. At first we thought it was something we said to each other. So stopped doing that. Then we thought it was changing our shoes. But today, 45 minutes before we're to go out, she is lying in her crate. We haven't changed clothes, and really haven't discussed it. Is it mind waves we're giving off? We never have to ask or command her to get in her crate, because she loves it there. She has a hand-crochetted afghan of her own, a nyla-bone. We leave the TV on for her, and we give her a treat. All of the truly good things that have happened in her year -long life have happened since someone found her on the side of the road and put her in a crate. But ... how does she know?

 

[purple.alien.giraffe]

Our cat will usually go wait by the door about five minutes before Rol or I come home. He always seems to know and not just for stuff on a schedule like coming home from work but also coming home from something like shopping. He'll also come running into th kitchen to mooch if the hubby and I are thinking about having tuna, usually before we've finished getting the can out of the cupboard.

 

[PrincessFiona60]

Shrek says Latte' starts up waiting for me about 20 minutes before I hit the door. If I'm late she starts "yelling" for me.

Last night she was looking for Shrek when he wasn't home for the night.

 

[Bolas De Fraile]

I'm training a squirrel he/she is very clever

 

[babetoo]

i have a cool cover on my couch. looked over and saw a huge bump. charlie was under the cover so he could scratch on the couch. he is a big mischief maker but i love him. thomas, my older cat, always looks at him in disbelief when he does this stuff.

 

[PrincessFiona60]

i have a cool cover on my couch. looked over and saw a huge bump. charlie was under the cover so he could scratch on the couch. he is a big mischief maker but i love him. thomas, my older cat, always looks at him in disbelief when he does this stuff.

It really makes it hard to not laugh when they do this kind of thing.

 

[LPBeier]

We never have to ask or command her to get in her crate, because she loves it there. She has a hand-crochetted afghan of her own, a nyla-bone. We leave the TV on for her, and we give her a treat. All of the truly good things that have happened in her year -long life have happened since someone found her on the side of the road and put her in a crate. But ... how does she know?

Claire, I have two stories on this one but will tell you the one that most applies first.

I think I have mentioned that our little Joie (Joey), was given to us by a lady I sort of worked with (she was the administrative assistant of a realtor who was an ongoing website client of ours). We bonded over the fact that her boss was not the best person to work for as an employee or client. After she left she was expecting and while I was in culinary school and she was up with the baby, we would chat on MSN into the wee hours of the night (I went to school in the afternoon and got home after DH was in bed). She had mentioned that she had a little dog named Joie, but was positive this was not the dog she had picked out because that one was sweet and loveable but this one was hyper and she just couldn't bond with him. It turns out the husband never wanted a dog at all, and so here are two "parents" who are not showing compassion and love from the start. After the baby came Joie was persona non grata and the wife asked if we would like a companion for Violet. We said we would "try it out" but when I said it wasn't working she merely said well maybe it's time to have him put down because they can't take him back again (someone else had taken him in the year before).

Joey was "crate trained". He was put in there if he was bad, when they didn't want to deal with him, when they were in bed, when they were out, if the took him in the car, when people came over....you get the idea. So when we got him and weren't doing this, he didn't know how to act. I hated him....I mean I really hated him. I don't like admitting that but it was true. But one day, this little fluff ball came up beside me on the couch and put his head on my tummy and look up at me longingly and my heart melted.

Like Rosebud, his crate is his den - his fortress from the world. The door has long been taken off and he has a cozy little bed, but the crate must remain. He goes in at night, he goes in if he is scared and here it comes, he goes in if he knows we are leaving. Like you, we don't have to say or do anything and he seems to know. There must be something they sense that we can't even perceive - that they are about to be abandoned and they need to be where it is safe.

Both these dogs are rescues in their own rights and they have found people who love and treasure them and they don't want to lose us. When we are not there they need their only safety net, the crate!

All animals are very perceptive of their environments. My DH's sister's dog (they lived together for several years) used to know when DH was going to take him for a walk. DH couldn't figure this out for the longest time until he realized one day he stretched and yawned at his desk and Cola came running from the other room. That was the signal for him!

Sorry for this lengthy reply but I hope it helps.

 

[LPBeier]

Another Pet ESP story.

My cocker spaniel, Brewster, could tell time.

We had a huge yard, front and back, but he was used to going on walks to do his business and wouldn't go in the yard....that just wasn't right!

So, I would walk him in the morning, at 3:00 and after dinner. He would do a last minute pee in the back yard before bed, but that was it. One day I was on the phone and Brewster was on the deck. There was no gate on the stairs and no fence - he never left so it wasn't necessary. Well, looked one minute and he was sleeping soundly and then I turned to look out the window and he is walking across the street towards the little park which was in view from the house. I told the person I would have to call them back as my dog was loose. Sure enough it was 3:05. I ran and got the leash and some bags. Well, he did his business about 10 feet from the start of the park and sat there and waited for me to come clean it up...seriously! I leashed him, we went on with the walk and everything was cool!

He also knew when it was time for the mailman and would wait on the front step for him to pull up in the truck. He would walk with him through the block and they would end up at our place where the mailman would give him a dog bone and hand him our mail which Brewster would set down on the bottom step for me.

The day I had to tell the mailman Brewster couldn't go for walks any more because he had cancer, the man weeped openly. And the day we had our beloved dog put down because of the pain and suffering, our mailman said he just lost one of his best friends. So did I.

 

[Claire]

Another one was my starter husband. He was a shift worker. He woke at odd times of day, and came home at odd times of day. We lived on a radar site and he walked, so we aren't talking the noise a specific car makes. The cats (we had 3) always knew within 5 minutes when he was coming home. Be it early morning, late night, afternoon, lunch. The cats would gather around the trailer door. He said they did the same for me, but my duty hours were more or less regular most of the time.

Another one ... I've always like walking, and as a teenager, I'd leash our little doggie and take a walk. I'd sometimes wear my dad's old ski jacket on cold days. When I enlisted and left home, no one could stand to wear that jacket. The dog would go ballistic, expecting to be walked. It was relatively expensive, but Mom wound up taking it to the thrift shop to be re-sold because no one wanted to wear it once I left home!

My last dog, when we lived in Florida, could hear a Chevy Lumina coming from blocks away. We had one, my parents (who lived about 15 miles away) and across the street neighbors all had various makes of Chevy Luminas. The older dog didn't seem to know any differences in various cars that came & went from our neighborhood. But Keiki knew a Chevy Lumina. Keiki once got loose and Daddy was coming to visit. She followed the Lumina until he spotted her in the rear view mirror and picked her up.

 

[Claire]

LP, I had to crate train my first (as an adult) dog simply because we lived in Hawaii and knew we were going to have to fly her to Virginia eventually. I got her as a puppy and a friend who was a breeder/trainer told me to start immediately (she was 4 weeks old). Reward, never punishment. "You'll have to have her in a crate for many hours, remember that, and you don't want to make it worse than it has to be." She also told me which aircraft did not have pressurized baggage compartments. Thank heaven for that because they did have us slated to go on one that did NOT. I had to deal with the military beaurocracy to get all our tickets changed. I think the most lovely moment of the anxiety-ridden trip (and I'm not a very anxious person) was when we were changing planes at O'Hare and looked out and saw our dog's crate and the baggage handlers (it was pretty easy to see it was ours, it had to have special stickers identifying it as "foreign" "live" baggage) and the handlers were coddling her, talking to her, loving her up. I got to National airport (now Reagan) to find that there was a Chicago Tribune in the bottom, so someone took the time to clean her crate. Above and beyond the call of duty.

The other day someone told me she did not believe it was right to crate an animal. I simply asked her if she's ever come home to find an electrical cord chewed through? I have; luckily unplugged.

 

[DaveSoMD]

Another Ali story....

Ali actually has several names:

Pumpkin Princess - The first Thanksgiving we had her, she was then about 20 months old, she ate half of the pumpkin pie off the kitchen counter. Luckily it was early and I had time to make a new one for dinner that evening. The evidence - she when running down the stairs when she heard me coming up from the family room, the other dogs where down there with us.

Butter Queen - I won't count the number of times she has gotten the butter off the kitchen counter, whole sticks at a time. The evidence - she never licks it completely off her face. Can you say buttered whiskers

Cookie Countess - I was packing up Christmas cooking to take to work one morning. I turned around and walked 10 steps from the dining room to the kitchen to get some foil, and when I walked back, 1/2 of the cookies were off the plate and she was on the floor licking up the crumbs with frosting still on her face.

Sauce-ie: We were having dinner down in the family room, pasta and sauce, when we noticed that there was a dog missing. Then as if on queue downstairs she comes. "Anything she can get to?" " I don't think so." WRONG - she ate the entire pan of leftover pasta sauce that I left on the front burner of of the stove.

So .. now we have a "doggie gate" across the kitchen doorway that is kept closed after dinner, when we are cooking, or when anything is out. Even though she could jump over it in a heartbeat, she hasn't. She seems to know that the gate means stay out.

 

[PrincessFiona60]

ROFL!!! What a great dog...

 

[Dawgluver]

What a smart girl!

 

[PrincessFiona60]

What a smart girl!

She's just trying to tell him she likes his cooking.

 

[purple.alien.giraffe]

While watching my cat freak out over his favorite toy (the lower half of a wire clothes hanger tied to the cat fishing pole) the following popped into my head:

Psycho feline
Spazzin' 'bout the fish line.
We better tighten that screw
it's been loose for a long time.

And I thought about it for a minute wondering from where it came. I knew that the song was familiar but what was it? Then it hit me. Stuck, by Limp Bizkit, only my brain had adjusted the lyrics...

Sigh. Facepalm. Head shake. I'd inadvertantly pulled a dad.



(for those who don't know dad/GW writes his own parody lyrics for songs sometimes)

 

[PrincessFiona60]

While watching my cat freak out over his favorite toy (the lower half of a wire clothes hanger tied to the cat fishing pole) the following popped into my head:

Psycho feline
Spazzin' 'bout the fish line.
We better tighten that screw
it's been loose for a long time.

And I thought about it for a minute wondering from where it came. I knew that the song was familiar but what was it? Then it hit me. Stuck, by Limp Bizkit, only my brain had adjusted the lyrics...

Sigh. Facepalm. Head shake. I'd inadvertantly pulled a dad.



(for those who don't know dad/GW writes his own parody lyrics for songs sometimes)

ROFL! Ummm, yeah...the things our Dad's teach us. I tend to over explain and I have to start a story from the very beginning..."There was a big bang and the universe was created...and that's how the car got stuck in the front door of the bank."

 

[PrincessFiona60]

My Nephew went to Roosevelt Lake for the weekend:

Patron and his mommy, second picture is the Halloween costume I got him, it glows in the dark.

 

[purple.alien.giraffe]

ROFL! Ummm, yeah...the things our Dad's teach us. I tend to over explain and I have to start a story from the very beginning..."There was a big bang and the universe was created...and that's how the car got stuck in the front door of the bank."

Oh, I never over explain things like my dad. What? What's that look for? Don't know what you're talkin' 'bout.

Although I'm certainly not guilty of needing to start from the beginning. Mine is more, "Hey, I should tell the story about a-z" and then I start at p, realize that d is kind of important to understanding p so I jump back to it and explain through h even though I probably only needed to go as far f, then jump past p to r, s, and t, then remind my audience about p and fill in q. Then the conversation will move to 1-100 and I realize I forgot to mention l, m and n which were also a good part of a-z but there is no opening to mention it. So hours later after you've left and a-z and 1-100 are long since past I'll be talking to BT. And when he pauses in telling everyone about alpha-omega because he can't remember where theta fits in I'll mistake that pause for his being done and blurt out 1, m and n because it's stuck in my head and I just have to tell it to someone before my brain bursts.

This is why I get along with cats and dogs so well. If all else fails and I can't find a person to tell l, m, and n to I can tell a cat or dog and they at least look at me like they are trying to listen. It sounds crazy I know by it gets rid of the mental itch.

 

[PrincessFiona60]

Oh, I never over explain things like my dad. What? What's that look for? Don't know what you're talkin' 'bout.

Although I'm certainly not guilty of needing to start from the beginning. Mine is more, "Hey, I should tell the story about a-z" and then I start at p, realize that d is kind of important to understanding p so I jump back to it and explain through h even though I probably only needed to go as far f, then jump past p to r, s, and t, then remind my audience about p and fill in q. Then the conversation will move to 1-100 and I realize I forgot to mention l, m and n which were also a good part of a-z but there is no opening to mention it. So hours later after you've left and a-z and 1-100 are long since past I'll be talking to BT. And when he pauses in telling everyone about alpha-omega because he can't remember where theta fits in I'll mistake that pause for his being done and blurt out 1, m and n because it's stuck in my head and I just have to tell it to someone before my brain bursts.

This is why I get along with cats and dogs so well. If all else fails and I can't find a person to tell l, m, and n to I can tell a cat or dog and they at least look at me like they are trying to listen. It sounds crazy I know by it gets rid of the mental itch.

That is priceless

I love it and you are definitely trying to break my ribs.

 

[purple.alien.giraffe]

My Nephew went to Roosevelt Lake for the weekend:

Patron and his mommy, second picture is the Halloween costume I got him, it glows in the dark.

Haha, can you imagine being in the dark and seeing glowing skulls and crossbones suddenly bouncing toward you accompanied by a miniature panting noise? The mischievous side of me thinks that would be a great prank.