There’s not much smarter than a six year old Border Collie street dog. Stormy does some amazing things, but subterfuge is not something you see a dog do very often.
Stormy spends most of his day down in the street. Owl and Blondie are playing mouth duels on my grass. Storm stools up the driveway to see these locking canines. The guy turns on a dime heads back down to the bottom of the driveway where he is facing the garage.
This little son of a gun starts barking, facing the garage. It’s an alert bark. Blondie flies down the driveway looking for action. She runs up the road. I’d love to know what she was looking for, and then she heads down the road all ready for something. When she get back to Storm, I want to say she had a quizzical look on her face, but I won’t.
Blondie and Stormy stand there nose to nose for a minute, then head up the hill together. Blondie didn’t seem to mind that she’d been had.
The direction Storm faced seemed to have nothing to do with the message. She looked for something in the road. She took off like a bat outta hell. Owl responded to the call, but only went halfway down the hill. Stormy is still working on getting rid of Owl, so he can’t be too careful.
Owl is starting to use his leg more. I’ve been doing some passive range of motion exercises with him. The hock injury was new; the hip injury wasn’t as fresh. He may have been hit by a car.
At dinner time Owl is now the first to eat. Stormy takes the second bowl and Blondie walks all the way around the veranda to have her dinner overlooking the lake.
I wish some of the behaviorists on my list could see these guys in action. What I’m wishing everyone to see is the depth of dog language and relationships.
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This post made me laugh. I have seen this "doggie lie" phenomenon in my own yard played out many times. I have one bitch who lies to the group. I believe her motive is slightly different (speculation of course). She loves to run out to the end of the yard alarm barking at whatever exciting might be going on on our quiet country road. Most times there is nothing. Days when there is nothing fun to look at and the rest of the dogs are chewing sticks or doing other non exciting things, she will look around at them all, then go about halfway out and let out an alarm bark while facing them. The rest of the dogs jump to their feet at which time she spins around and runs toward the corner of the yard with all of them in tow. She then enjoys the run with her buds and loses interest while the rest of them try to figure out what it was they were barking at.
ReplyDeleteAmazing to me what they think up. Amazing that Stormy used the tactic not for entertainment but seemingly to distract and redirect Blondie... Dogs are pretty good "trainers".