Monthly Archives: March 2013

Happy Easter!

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Today is Easter Sunday. This is a big day for humans. In our house they have a big breakfast and one of the highlights for the humans is wonderfully coloured eggs. I have been studying these eggs last night when they were preparing them. It looks like very hard work to me. They made eggs which were brown coloured. For this they peeled the skins from a lot of onions and boil the eggs with them. The egg are then a very deep chestnut brown. The other eggs were white eggs which they boiled in the usual way and then placed in little cups with a coloured eggs. With this method they made yellow, green, pink, blue and red eggs.

eggs

My humans can be a bit disorganised and they did not start making the eggs until late at night. Bonnie and I decided that we were going to bed and went to sleep before they were finished. Usually Bonnie gets up first and together with Sasza they will try and wake one of the humans. This morning I get up first and went downstairs. I was very surprised to see the eggs on the table. It was even more surprising to see that someone had placed a chair beside the table so I could get up there.

They obviously wanted to make it easy for me to get up and check out these eggs. So I did. I started by sniffing them. They smelt good. I decided I would just eat one. It was clear that they would not have put them on the table if they did not want me to eat them. I then ate another. At this stage Bonnie decided to help and very quickly we had eight eggs eaten. There were now two left.

I knew that the humans must like these eggs too. Otherwise why did they put so much work into preparing them. I put one in my mouth and brought it upstairs to Peter who was busy pushing up the z’s. The egg rolled from his pillow to just beside him and the coolness of it woke him. Humans do not think when they first wake up but once they do start to think they immediately jump to conclusions. In this case the conclusion was right. Peter rushed downstairs to see egg shells rather than eggs on the table.

I think he was not happy!

House Training

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There are difference between dogs and humans. The human sees a puppy. The human falls head over heels in love with the puppy. They bring them home. Everyone in the family falls head over heels in love with the puppy. The puppy does something quite natural. The human looks at it, turns it nose up a bit, scalds the little puppy. The puppy gets the message and after a while stops doing it.

When the human is house training us, we make mistakes, we learn, we sometimes get a little chastised but in the end we try and figure out what are the rules and we try and keep to them. The same does not happen the other way around. You can put all the effort you have got into house training your human and they may never get the message.

Take shoes! Sorry I did not mean you to go off and find the nearest pair of slippers for a good chew. I meant, let us considers, shoes. As part of their house training humans have to learn that if they have a new pup in the house and they leave there favourite pair of fine leather shoes on the floor in the same room as the pup there is a strong chance that the pup will chew the shoe.

You would imagine that they would be like dogs and be able to learn things. We make a mistake, we get chastised and we try and learn from the mistake.

With humans it is very different. They come in from the shops with a very expensive pair of leather shoes. They try the shoes on and then leave it on the living room floor. We see the shoe and have a sniff. Nice chewy leather! Another sniff. Irresistible chewy leather! We have a little chew. Then get caught. Our human goes wild. We get called a few names, maybe a sharp slap. We get the message, the human does not want us to bite the shoes.

But wait! They leave the shoes in exactly the same place. We know they were very angry about something. We thought they were angry about our chewing their new shoes. However, it must have been something else. Why would they leave the shoes on the ground for us if they did not want us to play with them? So we sit down and have a nibble wondering what exactly the human was annoyed it.

We definitely need to house train humans and the first thing they should know is if it’s on the floor the dog will chew it.

Selecting Your Human

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A human is for life not just for Christmas!

Dogs, particularly young pups who are nervous about being adopted by the right people, are always sending me emails about this subject. “Rusty, how will I choose the right human?” “Rusty, can you tell what a human is like from their smell?” Almost every day I get an email from a pup on this matter. They know they are getting a bit older. They know they will have to leave the nest and move in with a human family soon and of course, they are nervous.

Selecting your human is possibly the most important thing you will do. A cat might get up and leave if their human does not treat them in absolute luxury but a dig is different. A dog has a reputation to maintain. A dog has to look after its human. When times are bad the dog must console its human. What is even worse is that if one of its humans argue with another who has to console both of them? The Dog!

There is a myth among dogs that you should choose a human that looks a bit like you or smells good. However, sometimes when they first meet it is not obvious that the dog and the human will soon become the closest of friends and one day everyone will comment that they have started to look uncannily alike. Humans, have also this ridiculous habit of destroying some perfectly good odours and replacing them with very strange perfumes and soap and stuff. No-one has been able to understand this.

As I am sure you have guessed I have some good advice for these pups. They should not worry about selecting the right human. You cannot select your human. Something just happens!

Humans have the same idea. They keep thinking everything is logical and they want a dog with a brown patch and a nice personality and not too noisy and does not eat their slippers. They then get a dog like me or you and of course, we eat their slippers and are very noisy.  Humans should know better. The best relationships they have happen by pure chance. There is no logic in deciding which family a human child gets born into. It just happens!

We don’t select our human, we just find ourselves in a new family. If we are lucky they will have some very old, very smelly slippers to get our teeth into.

Rusty.

My idea for this blog

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When I told other dogs about my idea for this blog. They were impressed really impressed.

“Rusty you are very clever”, said one. “Rusty it is an honour to sniff the butt of one so brilliant”, said another.

Anyway you get the picture. The dogs I chatted with were all impressed that once again I had come up with a brilliant idea which could greatly improve the lives of dogs and their understanding of their humans. Nothing like this has ever before being attempted before.

I wanted a human collaborator for this blog. (it is easier to get them to press the keys on the computer, not for any creative work!) I went to discuss this with Peter. He spends far too much time looking at a computer screen doing what he calls work. Work is apparently a card game called Solitaire. I have spoken to other dogs who say their humans also do the same sort of work. Solitaire Corporation must be the most important organisation on the planet to have so many humans work on its problems so much of the time.

“You mean a blog for dogs like an idiot’s guide or a dummies guide?” asked Peter.

I rolled my eyes to heaven, said “good grief” to myself, and explained to him that if a dog saw a blog like that they would wonder who the idiot or dummy this blog was intended for. My blog was for intelligent dogs, brave dogs, clever dogs, beautiful dogs. Generally dogs are really smart animals. However, there is one gaping hole in their wisdom. Humans! This blog fills the gap. It role is to explain Humans to dogs.

Please read before chewing the mouse!

Rusty