POOR DOG (OR IS HE ?)

I’m not sure whether we should ever dare to under-estimate the intelligence of dogs. Maybe if our politicians took some notice of them we might have more sensible laws than ever emanated from the Federal Department of Stupidity.

For a brief moment let us just float off into the realms of fantasy and try to imagine, as they sit there looking fondly into our eyes, what these mutts are really thinking.

Dogs do have a stupid side just like we humans. Take for example the day that I installed a Doggie Door. It was this occasion that made me believe that maybe he was a little dyslectic. At first he was happy to enter and exit through the flap and all was good in the world.. However after a couple of days I attached a sign found in the shed which read ‘Beware Of The Dog’.

Well … it seems I had put the non-existent cat in amongst the non-existent pigeons for after that attachment he stood back trembling and unable to use it. Asking him what was wrong his reply surprised me.

“I’m not going in there” he said, “that sign says beware of the God.”

“Don’t be silly”, I said, “that word is Dog”

“I don’t care, even if it’s a dog do you think I’’m going through that flap to be mauled?”

The dog also seems to worry about where he is going whenever we drive away from home he whimpers and whinges and drools constantly all over the dashboard of the car. However, when driving back home he curls up on the passenger seat or his fluffy pillow behind the passengers seat and drifts to wherever dogs drift off to.

While Peppie is out of the room, probably for a poop, I might mention that the poor thing has such a low image of himself and a self-esteem that is almost non-existent, he worries like mad every time I leave the room, he wants to be my constant companion and seems to find great pleasure in nuzzling up against my bag of nuts when he sits with me on the lounge watching ‘Wibbly Pig’.

He will not leave me alone it’s like living with an obsessive compulsive body hugger, and the eyes, the bloody eyes, they constantly follow you around the room either looking sad and depressed as if contemplating suicide or bright and happy as if he just found an endless tube of bone marrow.

Medically speaking dogs must have extremely acidic tummies almost capable of dissolving rocks. He can gnaw down a bone the size of a steers leg to swallowing size in one sitting but it doesn’t come back out that way. I seem to expect that he should be grimacing in pain trying to pass a sheeps shank out his anus in the same condition it went in.

I noticed too that he can be a tad jealous at times if he thinks his position might be being usurped. The day I brought home my first two goats, Mum Donna Kebab and her son Shish, Peppie was eager to hop up into the tray of the ute so I allowed him in. Immediately he was up and mounting Donna to show her who was the boss around here. I separated them and put the goats in the small yard for quarantine.

The next morning, after he realized that the goats did not sleep in the house he was content to let them be. He’s good with the goats although there is the occasional brief confrontation between them over some misunderstanding in the yard. Usually while Peppie is playing marbles with their droppings.

As an aside, I advise readers not to purchase goats from anyone down a Teesdale. The first morning in quarantine showed every indication of a massive infestation of worms in their guts to the point where four week old Shish was a close to karking it just as I am preparing to let them loose.

A good drench a week apart and they are fine again. However I do believe that the impossibly slow growth of Shish was caused by these worms. After six months he is little bigger than when I first brought him to Godfrey Zone.

Since becoming the foster parent of a whippet there are a number of things I have noticed about dogs.

Unlike Alpacas they know when to come in out of the rain just like we humans.

To smell like as Fox you roll in their shit and then come and sit on the Lounge. Fox Poo is particularly nasty.

They know how not to do things for themselves. Even though he has a doggie door I still find I am occasionally opening the whole door for him.

If humans really are at the top of the evolutionary tree how come it’s us who have to pick up their poo.

Dogs know how to give you ‘the eyes’’, little wonder we always run out of the best biscuits.

“Alright but this is the last bickie!””

Yes - Dogs are sometimes smarter than us.

“ I don’t sleep in your bed why do you try to sleep in mine”

I suppose I should sum up this story with a couple more short tales. I have already mentioned that he seems a little dyslectic and I’m sure he’s trying to tell me he has Obsessive Repulsive Disorder, he has difficulty concentrating on the television even when ‘Wilfred’ is on and seems he is overly worried about the fact he might get Procrastinate Cancer if I don’t keep providing him with big bones.

He is presently on a diet having topped twenty kilo’s from his normal sixteen and seems to dislike me calling him Lardarse and claiming he is just big boned. His weight gain was more than likely being brought on by the fact that he had recently lost a couple of gonads somewhere in Ballarat. What a day that was, the moment he realized he was about to lose them he went off like a bloody Catherine Wheel that had fallen off its stick and his tail grabbed at every stick of furniture between the front door and the sleeping theatre.

When asked by his girlfriend Diva where they had gone he claimed that he had hit his head, got percussion and they had just fallen off so as to avoid admitting he had been taken advantage of.