strangest/funniest thing your dog has done (toy, chew, kids)

[netwit]

My husband and I were reminiscing about our last dog who passed away two years ago and some of the strange or maybe smart things she did. "Breadstick" (not her real name because no one here could pronounce her real name which is in another language) was a chicken killer dog. The very worst thing to have on a farm. (I've never had a dog who killed chickens before or after this).

According to general farm/rural wisdom, the thing to do with a chicken-killing dog is to take out the shotgun but I am not that kind of person, and so when I discovered Breadstick (maybe a year old at the time) had totally and completely decimated my dozen goslings, dozen ducks and dozen baby chicks the day after we got them, panicked by the once-a-killer-always-a-killer ideas I had grown up with, I concentrated on trying to teach her that whatever other animals were on the farm were a responsibility - not a meal.

I took her to the (new) poultry on a leash to introduce her to the idea that she is not allowed to kill them. We progressed to the point where while she would eye the chickens, she knew it was wrong and left them alone. But her wanting to get at them was still there - I could see it in her eyes. I kept an eye on her and periodically reinforced the idea that the chickens were off limits to her.

The new chickens managed to grow up unscathed.

Then one day I walked to the garden and right at the back of the garden, in a straight line I was startled to see the chickens. They were more or less right along a row of vegetables but they looked too "low" in the ground and they did not go cackling off when I walked closer. The closer I got, the stranger it looked: it looked like they were marching mostly underground. I couldn't imagine how they had gotten themselves into such a predicament.

I actually reached down to pull out one of the "underground marching" chickens when I saw that they were all dead and Breadstick had buried them with their heads and necks sticking out - and propped their heads up on the far side with garden dirt so that they were erect, and from a distance looked alive.

The whole scene reminded me of when a kid knows he or she has done something wrong and decides after the fact to cover it up as best as they can.

I've always wondered if she did it like that for that reason (she hadn't eaten them).

Ultimately the dog meant more to me than chickens. Kept dog, gave up on chickens.

[BlueWillowPlate]

Wow, that's an amazing story, Netwit.
Breadstick did her best, but on her own terms, I guess.
I don't have a clever story like that.
But when I read 'funniest,' I immediately remembered a story about our first mastiff, Tucker.
We were in a smallish house at the time, it was during the winter and I had gotten a carbon monoxide plug-in detector. Tucker had a certain spot where he liked to lay near the detector. His most common position had his rear end up against the detector.
You can probably see where I am going with this.
The detector would periodically go off. Maybe once a week. At first Tucker was a bit taken aback by it, but later he got used to it. He didn't fart all the time, just every now and then, and we would hear that piercing alarm.
I finally moved the detector.
In this case, we really could "blame the dog."

[Chemistry_Guy]

My dog usually runs to greet me whenever I get home, so I was surprised when I got home and she was not waiting by the door. I figured my wife had taken her for a walk or something, so I was not alarmed and I did not go looking for her. After getting changed I stepped into the bathroom and found her hiding in the shower with her tail between her legs. When she saw I was not mad at her she perked up and started acting normally. I knew that she had done something wrong, but whatever it was wasn't obvious. Later that night, I found an empty chewed up tupperware container 'buried' under the edge of an area rug in the living room. As soon as I found it, the pangs of guilt must have struck her again because she hid under the dining room table and whimpered.

Also, she has a toy that she loves more than any other. When she plays with it, she often knocks it far under the bed. She crawls in after it, but gets stuck under the crossbar support and cries until we pull her out. She will do this repeatedly, but only for this one toy. When other toys go under the bed she is only willing to put her head and neck under and not the rest of her body.

[latetotheparty]

sometimes i wonder if dave has some cat in his background.... he is so lanky and limber.... and since it started getting cool this fall, he will lay down across the heating vent between the cat trees in my bedroom when we come back from our walks.....





he usually has his arms and legs more tucked into the cat trees though......

[Dorthy]

We took in a stray who was about 2 years old at the time. He is a blue heeler and it was clear from the start that he hadn't spent much, if any time inside of a home before. One day I walked in the dining room to find him sunning himself through the window as he laid on the dining room table. A few days later I found a puddle on the table next to a potted plant. he had peed on the plant on the table. He's a lot better now and no longer pees in the house or gets up on the tables (or counters ) although he does spend a lot of his time outside perched on top of our BBQ grill.

When we first got him we realized that he could jump our fence and on trash day he'd jump it and go out on a trash eating binge. One morning we caught him jumping the fence and getting into our trash which was on the curb and bringing parts of it back into the yard to share with our other dogs. He's fully contained now so those days are fortunately over for him.

He is a very strange dog but we sure do love him.

[Beau&Cloe]

We keep cut up pieces of hot dog in a baggie in the fridge as treats. Now when Cloe wants her treat, she goes to the fridge and frantically starts doing her tricks all at once. She sits, speaks, flails her paw in the air and then flops on the floor and rolls over until someone gets her the treat.

[jasper12]

Sam, felt like all the kids needed to be "circled" or herded. He would run circles around the kids in the yard all day. Trying to keep them together. He was never trained to do this, he just did it.

And he had a "wiggly giggly", he loved that thing, and would chew it up. Finally, I told him, if he chewed up another one, he was not going to have one again. And he did not chew it up the next one I gave him.

[netwit]

Reps to all of you (except jasper and latetotheparty since I needed to spread the love around) for sharing your stories. Some of these stories sure make you wonder what dogs all understand.

[atina33]

stole 2 sticks of butter that I was going to use for baking and stashed them in a little hole behind a fence which only had enough space for her snout to pass through. When I ran around looking for the butter, I went outside (on a hunch) asked her where they were and she led me right to them.

[SouthernBelleInUtah]

Both my short-coated boys like to lie against the heater grills. But my long-coated part GSD girl just lies down wherever, sometimes in the midst of winter on the tile floor of the entry! Maybe she's having hot flashes?