Not *my* dog but...
When I was a poor student I had a summer job to and from which I bicycled. On the route was a house with a large veranda and a tall wooden fence. Each morning, as I went past, one of the two airedales sitting on the veranda would see me, jump off, run to the fence, make a vain attempt to jump the fence (I assume) with the inevitible THUD as it didn't make it. It got to be relatively funny - I would have chosen a different rout had one been available as I worried about the long term durability of the fence.
I've always thought that airedales must have been out digging up someone's garden when God passed out the brains.
hstowe writes... >>much) to say... "No! You don't understand! Ben's DEAD! He died 2 days ago and I buried him!"
This urban legend has been around a while. This is the 3rd rendition (with various different dog breeds and victim-animals) I've seen so far.
But some of the dumb dog stories I've read remind me of an incident with Raven many years ago. I used to have a pickup truck which Raven loved to ride in the back of (no flames please! That was before I knew better) and she'd stand there with her head sticking into the cab through the rear window. Being an athletic dog, when we were going for a ride, I'd say "Load up!" and she'd jump right into the back over the side or tailgate. Going for a ride was the high point of her life next to swimming.
One evening when I came home from work, for some reason I backed my truck into the driveway, something I never did before. The next day, I was playing with Raven in the front yard and the dog across the street (the sweetest pit bull I've ever known) came over to play with Raven. They were having a high time when the neighbors started call Bandit to come home. Bandit was having too much fun with Raven to comply, so in order to get Raven out of the scene, I yelled, "C'mon, Raven! Load up!" at which point she stopped playing and ran for the truck. She jumped right up on the hood!
The scene that followed simply can't be appreciated without pictures, but here she was, perched on the hood of the truck, her feet sort of splayed out, nails trying to grab for *something* and a look on her face which absolutely said, "What the *HECK* is going on here?! Where's my truck bed?! Something is very, very, *wrong* here!" while she slowly slid off the hood onto the driveway. She then shook, looked around while stealing glances at the truck, found the back end and jumped in. Her expression became, "That was interesting. Now, where are we going, Mom?"
I just about had to change my undies after that, I was laughing so hard. She has never repeated anything quite so silly.
My golden retriever/austr. sheperd mix is not very bright, but she is very sweet and very obedient. One evening we were getting ready to go out to the movies and my husband gave each of the dogs a rawhide chew and Towanda ran outside through the dog door with hers. Usually we leave the dog door open so that they can go in and out. But for some reason (premonition?) I said I think we better keep them inside tonight while we're gone. So we called Towanda to come in. She promptly dropped her chew and looked to see what we wanted. When she realized we wanted her inside. she looked down at her chew "Oh no, they want me inside but my chew is outside". She proceeded to look back and forth from us to the dog chew about three times. Suddenly a little light dawned! She picked up the chew and carried it back in through the dog door. We were SOOOO proud!
When we came home 2 hours later, our neighbor was out in his backyard
washing his German Shepherd who had gotten skunked! See what I mean about the
premonition?
Wendee
A buddy of mine was out cleaning his Harley one hot summer day. He went in to get a beer, and when he came out, his rag was missing. Chalking it up to too many beers, he got another rag, and finished the job.
The next morning, he though he felt a fly on his nose, and swatted it away. It came back, and he swatted it away again (he was still half asleep, and hadn't yet opened his eyes).
When he felt the "fly" again, it was too mushy. He opened his eyes, and there was his rotweiller, straddling him, with his ass over my buddies face. There, hanging out of the dogs bung-hole was the rag he had lost.
That 80lb rotweiller went flying...
-- = Bob Starr = Rap is Crap
The other day, in the middle of this deep freeze we've been in, my fat and lazy American Spaniel leaned up against the woodstove in an attempt to get warm. (This is understandable, but...) He fell asleep and caught his fur on fire. So now, our normally golden dog has a black scorched patch on his hip.
And, speaking of stupid.... Our other dog a female German Shepard got tired of playing fetch with sticks and balls. She likes rocks - not small rocks- big (nearly) boulders. It takes all your strength to throw the stupid rock and then she tries to catch it in mid air. Everyone around holds their mouth in pain and sucks their teeth. Luckily, she has bad coordination, she never catches them. It also keeps her teeth well worn down (in case she bites).
Another dog we had a few years ago was a fierce pound-and-a-half mutt. He would go out on three day squirrel hunting missions. On this one occasion, the squirrel was in a hollow tree stump. The dog (erroneously named Socrates) jumped in the stump after the chirping squirrel and was stuck head first, butt in the air, tail wagging. He had that squirrel cornered now!
Same mutt as above once stood in front of an oncoming skidoo for 3 minutes. Everyone was yelling at him. The driver of the skidoo could not hear us. He ran right over the dog. All four legs went straight into the snow below him. After the snow machine had passed we dug him out unscathed.
But Socrates was not without worth. He once took on a bear that was hanging around our house. The bear threw him about twenty feet after he bit the bear on the leg. Another time he followed my father into the woods. My father did not know that he was there. His long fur got all matted with snow, and he could not walk any more. As the sun went down wolves started antagonising him waiting for him to die. Luckily my father headed home before they got him. He shoed away the wolves and carried the half frozen dog home.
Socrates died of natural causes at the age of fifteen (earth years).
karey.
mcmurtrey@cobra.uni.edu writes: My sisters yellow labrador should get a prize for stupidity... He'll eat "anything" (no dirty comments please) he basically ate their back deck on the house... One day we went out and noticed that the outside thermomoter was gone... we found bits and pieces of it laying around... conclusion he ate a thermometer... he is therefore so stupid that the mercury couldn't kill him.... Reminded me of the toons game where your characters can survive a lethal encounter if they're too stupid to know that it should kill them...
YAY! Finally an opportunity to tell the tale of my friend's dog Rex.
Rex is a Dobie, and is about as ferocious as a .. uhh.. well, about as ferocious as John Waters (it's funny if you don't think about it). Anyways, Rex, aside from being amazingly stupid, but basically good- hearted, will eat anything, but here's the catch.. it has to have mustard on it. I received a letter from George (Rex's owner) while I was in the loony bin, telling the tale of how he and a Swedish exchange student who was staying with him attempted to see if they could "fill" Rex.. uhh.. as in, make him full.. like as in he doesn't want to eat anymore. I wish I had the letter handy, so I could be sure I didn't miss anything.
Some of the food items Rex ate: They get increasingly ridiculous for effect.. I sorted them.)
A package of all-beef hot dogs (in the package, but he didn't eat that)
About half a loaf of Jewish rye bread, slice-by-slice, with mustard.
Part of a tub of margerine (the little size, not the whopper).
A whole can of whipped cream, straight out of the can, even though he
was terrified of the escaping gas sound initially.
A bag of frozen peas! (I'm told this was nearly a full bag).
A marzipan pig.
Several Aunt Jemima frozen waffles (required mustard).
A bar of modeling clay (the plasticine kind)!
A photograph of George's brother (required mustard).
A blank page out of Anders' (the exchange student) passport.
and, finally..
About half-a-dozen of those no-melt ice-cube balls. (They're these little
plastic balls filled with water that you freeze and use as icecubes so when they
melt, they don't water down your drink.) Yes. They required mustard.
On a slightly more disgusting note, George's previous dog, Thor (say, T'or) used to eat socks out of the laundry basket. The disgusting part was that the socks wouldn't digest which (how can I phrase this delicately?) would basically turn Thor into a sausage factory.
"Hey.. what's my sock doing out here in the.. WHOA!"
fletcher (no names have been changed to protect anybody!)
Your friendly plagarist is back again to let you know how the Des Moines Register's Stupidest Dog contest turned out.
First place:
"Sparky came to live on our farm about two years ago. Sparky was raised in a
fenced-in yard to be protected from traffic. Sparky somehow learned to chase
cars on the road...by running along the fence inside the yard. Now Sparky is
allowed to help his master outside the confines of the yard fence. Sparky can
hear a car coming down the road and immediately runs *inside* the yard to
chase cars as he has learned.
Second place: Cassie[a golden retriever] was in our back yard last fall and apparently watched the kids swinging often enough that she thought it looked like fun. Next thing I knew she was barking and whining by herself and when I came out to see what was the matter there she was caught in not one, but *both* swings and couldn't get free.
Third place:
When Newfy [a Newfoundland-lab mix] was just a year old, we had him out on one
of his familiar walks in a small fenced-in woods. After several minutes, I
stood in the 10-foot fence opening and called him. He came charging at me,
tail wagging.
When he was within a few feet of the opening he veered to the left and slammed head first into the fence. So much for a dog's natural instinct. Our 130-pound puppy knocked himself out and snapped the cruciate ligament in his right knee.
After a costly involved surgery we hoped his poor judgement had passed, but not. On advice from our veterinarian, we set on an excercise program to help him recover. My husband, his brand new mountain bike and Newfy set off. Not more than five minutes later I heard my husband yelling for Newfy to stop.
Our 'puppy' had again veered, cutting my husband off and causing him to fall,
which would have been bad enough except Newfy's leash had tangled in the
handlebars startling him and causing him to take off running, tail between
legs, howling, dragging the new mountain bike that he feared was chasing him.
Honorable mention:
Ten years ago Mickey [a yellow lab] ate a box of tampons, then drank a
whole bunch of water. 'If you know the mechanics of tampons, that wasn't a very
good idea.' So the dog gets uncomfortable, and her breath smells like a big
tampon, and X's husband calls the vet. It was evening, so he got the answering
service. Embarrassed to tell (the service) what happened, he kept saying he
just needed to talk to the vet, but (the service) persisted.
Finally he told her that our dog had eaten a box of tampons. The operator proceeded to cover the phone and yell to the rest of the answering service operators that this guy's dog ate a box of tampons. One of the better calls, I'm sure! Mickey was OK after some induced vomiting.
Also rans:
Misty ducks when she's in the pickup as they drive under an overpass.
Then there was the category we came to call Gastronomic Misdeeds, by far the most popular[a total of 126 letters were received by the Register in the two weeks of the contest].
Dogs seem to function on the logic that that it is best to eat everything; whatever turns out to be a non-food item can always be gacked up later. If it's a noun, a dog somewhere in Iowa has eaten it.
Among other items, we got stories about dogs that ate:
Keys, coins, purses, soap, a cactus, squirrels, firewood, used Kleenex, gloves, socks, a VCR remote control, dead stuff of all kinds, wicker baskets, a disposable razor, pins, marbles, golf balls, tampons, rocks, four boxes of chocolate covered cherries, steel shavings, ball bearings, cat poop, mini-blinds, a library book, homework, shoes, lit fireworks, holiday cookies, paychecks, lottery tickets, dice, fish hooks and the crotches of innumerable pairs of panties.
We got no less than six letters from owners whose dogs had eaten panty hose. Five managed to, uh, digest the delicacy, the sixth dog had to have a $700 operation to extricate them.
Mr. Reynolds.....
I just had to tell you about my dumb dog
My husband and I have a two-year old Boxer, named Barron. According to all the descriptions we've read about Boxers, they're supposed to be smart. One even went as far as to say, "The Boxer's expression displays it's vast intelligence." The only thing our dog's expression seems to convey is "Duh." This dog has done his share of stupid things. For instance:
My husband has taught Barron to jump into the back of our truck when he says "Load up." Well, one day I was just getting into the back of the truck to get something out and Barron was in the yard. I had only opened the tailgate and was about to open the camper top door when out of nowhere, Barron comes flying up and trys to "Load Up". His face smashed right into the camper top door and he fell backwards off the truck with a look like "What happened". Another time I had opened up the camper door but not the tailgate and he tried to leap into the back. His front part made it but his legs got stuck straddling the tailgate. He's done this many times so now we make him sit and stay until eveything is open.
The house we live in has smooth tile floors and we have area rugs over top. Poor Barron spins out everytime he hits the tile and can't get his footing. It reminds me of the scene when Bambi gets on the ice pond. So, being the smart? dog that he is, he will hop from area rug to area rug to avoid hitting the tile. Sometimes he'll forget though when we throw a toy or when the cat runs by. Then he'll take off as fast as he can, hit the tile and run right into the wall.
This is the same dog that will shake his head while he's standing by a wall or piece of furniture and will slam his head really hard into it. As far as we can tell, it doesn't faze him a bit.
Barron is a huge bully to every other dog and small animal in the world except his cocker spaniel brother, Dusty. He still acts dominant over Dusty, but Dust has long since been fixed and could care less about who's in charge. So, it surprised us greatly to learn that our big bully is extremely chicken about loud noises. Whenever we have a thunderstorm (and that's daily in Florida) he starts shaking and running around the house. I usually let him up in my lap (well, his head anyway -- he's too big) and he shakes and whimpers until the storm is gone. One day he was in our back yard and a loud clap of thunder came out of nowhere. It was very loud and very close. I heard the tinkling of a chain towards the front yard and went outside to look. Sure enough, the big 70 pound baby had cleared our five foot fence and was going 90 miles an hour down the street. I'm not sure where he was headed, but if we hadn't called him I think he'd be to California by now. We'll, I could go on forever about our clown. He's been a huge pain at times, but he's always kept us laughing with his antics.
We have two Sammys, one (Nick) is pretty intelligent, the other (Laika) is pretty dumb. After we had Laika for about 6 months or so, we were sitting upstairs in the loft watching a movie one Saturday night. We typically give them a treat, so they were both up there with us. For some reason, after finishing her treat Laika finally decided to notice the medium sized stuffed animal that had been sitting on a stereo speaker since before she was born.
My wife and I noticed that she was acting weird and finally figured out that she was "stalking" the animal on the speaker. We watched this for a few minutes as she gradually inched forward to be able to smell it. Well, her front paws inched forward, her back paws were firmly rooted. I had no idea that she was so long.
After this went on for 5 minutes or so, I decided to move the stuffed dog down onto the floor so she could check it out. I figured that she would clue in that it was nothing when I picked it up and set it down. After I put it on the floor she really got curious, and cautious. She wouldn't come within 5 feet of it. About this time, Nick noticed that Laika was interested in something so he gets into the act. He runs over to the stuffed dog, sniffs it, and decides that can't be it, there must be something else. Laika in the meantime is still stalking it, even after Nick went up to it she wouldn't.
As Nick was standing behind her trying to figure out what she was so interested in, she decided to bark at it. Not a lot of barking, just one. We were nearly rolling on the floor by this time. After the first bark got no reaction, she decided to bark at it again. Right after she barked, Nick barked. I never knew she could move so fast! Evidently, she thought the stuffed dog had barked back which startled her so she tore out of the room. Her sudden movement scared Nick too and he also raced out of the room. After my wife and I could stop laughing enough to breathe we called them both back up. I took Laika over so she could sniff the "dog" while I held it.
She no longer thinks the stuffed dog is real, but anytime a new stuffed animal shows up in the house, it's the same thing all over again. Dogs, you've got to love them.
Steve Dillinger
One day we heard our Schipperke barking upstairs and we couldn't figure out what the problem was. When we went upstairs it turned out the broom had fallen and the handle laying across the threshold of the door. She would not walk or jump over it and kept barking until someone came and lifted her over the broom handle. She has done the same with vacuum hoses too. I guess one never knows when an evil broom or vacuum is going to attack.
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