Canis lupus hominis

Posted in Absolute Piffle, dog behavior | Tagged shih tzu, Shitzoo | 10 Comments

10 Responses

1. on March 4, 2013 at 9:20 am Long Life Cats and Dogs

   :D Cheapest fencing I’ve ever seen. Love how it has to knock them over by mistake before figuring a way out.

   
   
   • on March 4, 2013 at 2:58 pm chervilmeadow34

     How dare you imply that shih tzus are not very bright, well maybe not quite the brightest, but they are a sheer delight to own!

     
     
2. on March 4, 2013 at 9:54 am massugu

   I already hate that duck!

   
   
3. on March 4, 2013 at 1:13 pm chervilmeadow34

   Ho ho, that sweet looking dog is exactly like one of ours with the name of zuki, except ours is usually a bit tidier.
   Peter

   
   
4. on March 4, 2013 at 1:36 pm Mary

   Aw…if only we had known about the repellant powers of Pepsi cans back when my family’s shih tzu was constantly escaping the yard. Could have saved her an untimely death by car.

   
   
5. on March 4, 2013 at 9:03 pm jlt

   I think this is kind of a cool video. The dog shows very good spatial awareness of her body and the cans because it took quite a while before she accidentally knocked a can. She is very polite with her choice to accept the people’s weird idea of putting her in a square made of cans. It doesn’t seem that odd to me that she would choose not to knock over the cans. I’ve owned 3 40-50lb dogs who could be kept in a room by leaning a baby gate across the door opening. Any of the dogs could have easily leaped or knocked the gate over but they chose not to do so after I explained that was unacceptable behavior. She is also a cute little thing.

   
   
   • on March 5, 2013 at 5:19 am bearcoatpei

     That’s what I was thinking rather than her being a bit dim. Dogs are all different and her not jumping out or deliberately knocking the cans immediately just means she’s got a co-operative type personality rather than being independently minded. It doesn’t make her stupid, it just means she trusts her owners to have a reason for doing something like that rather than thinking “screw this stupidity” and dealing with it immediately.

     I have a dog gate on the bottom of the stairs and both dogs know they are not allowed up there by me. It’s about 5 feet tall resting on the bottom step, but my TM can jump 6 feet from a standing start no problem. He’s never once attempted to jump it and neither of them would even think of trying to push past me when I open it to go upstairs. But when “granny” visits we often have the bearcoat pushing past her in a flash and the TM following if he’s in an opportune place at the time. They know exactly which visitors they can run rings round as a tag team and which ones they can’t get away with it on.

     
     
6. on March 5, 2013 at 8:03 am megrim43

   How I wish Papillons had a “co-operative type personality” instead of a cunning, devious and exploitative one!

   Elizabeth

   
   
   • on March 6, 2013 at 6:34 am bearcoatpei

     But they’re ever so cute while doing it.

     
     
7. on March 5, 2013 at 11:38 am peggy Richter

   I think JLT has it. The dog had had it “explained” to her that the owners didn’t want her going over the cans. She was quick enough to exploit the gap when it occured. I bet this was a trained exercise (don’t jump or go over the cans). I also agree that dogs can recognize barriers that really aren’t — I have a dog that is trained to jump into a sheep enclosure on cue (it’s a requirement in French course herding) but who won’t go over the much lower x pen and dog gate barriers, NOR go over the sheep fence on that same enclosure other than on cue. It took 5 minutes to teach the dog the cue on “jump over”.

   
   

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