How exasperating and infuriating isn’t it when your dog simply refuses to walk down the path you want him to go. You feel as if you could do him some sort of serious injury, this supposed best friend of yours, if he doesn’t capitulate and agree to do as instructed.
We have just been through such a “situation” with the affable loveable family pet Labrador Sophie. Sophie will do everything you want her to do, she is soooooo obliging and usually co-operates above and beyond the call of duty.
She is what I’d call a good dog.
First I must explain that Sophie was “fixed” even before she was collected from the welfare organisation, as a tiny little bundle of joy. But we were careful to take note that a puppy isn’t only for Christmas… or July, when she arrived.
Whilst dogs may not have much in common with birds, both however do build nests. Traditional nesting behaviour is common in dogs who need a safe warm place for delivering and raising their pups. Whether domestic or creatures in the wild, they follow the same trends. Sophie, having been “fixed” – what a strange euphemism, as if something had been wrong with her in the first place, has no need for a nest.
But, does Sophie know that she doesn’t need one?
(Above): Sophie nearest the camera, shares the new bed with bigger brother Benny, who, as usual, is hogging the warmth of the fire.
Apparently nesting is not uncommon in spayed bitches. The fact that the bits that produce the puppy-eggs and look after the unborn pups have been permanently disconnected does not affect the bits in the brain which control behaviour.
So, Sophie’s “cycle”, if I may humanise her a bit, is set up to think like a bitch, a girl-dog, a mother of pups and one of the aspects of that cycle is not PMS, perhaps it does contain a few mood changes (difficult to tell, as Sophie is always such a pleasant natured dog). One such aspect, I suspect, may be the whole ritual of nesting (on a superficial scale) – in dog years, she is in her prime late teen years – the time for settling down with a kennel and a picket fence and little ones nibbling at her nipples.
On a number of occasions, she has performed this round-and-round twirling and digging and ruffling up the bed-covering, trying to get the co-operation of the foam inside to form a cup-shaped nest in which to cuddle.
And this is where we get to the crux. She shares a bed with brother Benny. She always has shared everything with him, and they prefer to snuggle together instead of lying apart. He is part of her, and she pined in a heart-broken manner when he spent a night away at the vet’s with his damaged foot.
So, Benny considers the bed to be his property, but what will happen, Sophie silently asks herself, when the puppies arrive (aside: we know that there will never be any, but Sophie’s medulla oblongata doesn’t!)
So Sophie performs the next step in the nesting instinct:
She pees on the bed. Not simply a little wet spot – a huge deluge, so that the bed will be imprinted with… dum, dum, dum…. The Sophie Factor. The parfum de maternale!
The parfum, whilst not as offensive as cat’s wee, most certainly still requires human intervention in an indoor environment. Wee-soaked foam mattress cannot be effectively, economically or permanently cleaned back to what we as humans consider, a hygienic state.
After the third dose of parfum de maternale, a decision was taken to buy a new canvas bed, one which can be maintained in a “nice” smelling state, raised a couple of inches off the floor, based on the design of a trampoline.
And the old bed? It was relegated to the extermination furnaces. Both Benny and Sophie stood looking on sadly as it was time to say farewell to their favourite soft smelly bed. (apologies once again for humanising!)
This is where the fun begins.
The new rectangular bed is slightly bigger than the old one, allowing for the hang-over of head and limbs and the slip-and-slide-fall-off factor because of the extra height of the sleeping surface (may I refer to the trampoline-like fabric surface as the “mattress”?) above the floor. Benny, like any self-respecting bachelor, needs no second invitation, steps on and curls up for an afternoon snooze. Sophie, like an undecided female shopper in Beds-R-Us, stands around looking at this ugly structure in completely the wrong colour. It’s too high off the floor, too narrow and the wrong colour green. She walks around it a couple of times and then goes to curl up on the doormat instead.
The first night of the new bed. And then the fun continues, with vocals!
No sooner has the TV been switched off, the dogs have been out for last ablutions and the lights have been switched off, than the Sophie-alarm starts up. It is much like an air-raid siren which is reserved for when she unfortunately finds herself on the wrong side of the door, which is reserved for the tattle-tale habit of “come look what Benny’s up to!”, which she uses to call humans. I call it a “belp” , which is a short sharp high-pitch hybrid of a bark and a yelp.
A belp an be delivered at variable volume, generally starting off at a placid 1.0 rating, which is used as an introduction at 5:30 in the mornings to remind Clayton that he should get out of bed, to serve the dog breakfast. If there is no response to a B1.0 , then it automatically upgraded to a B2.0 (this is much like the Richter scale, being ten times more powerful than the B1.0). The next belp which will follow after waiting a respectful minute or two, is yes, upgraded to 100 times the initial B1.0
The system works pretty well, as other dog-owners will be able to confirm.
This first night the belp came in sharply at B2.0 – serious stuff afoot. Sophie was having none of this trampoline nonsense – it was to be a soft foam parfum-laden bean-bag-type boudoir furnishing…. or.. belping! Clearly this would be a battle of the wits.
Next morning the light sleepers among the humans arose bleary-eyed. Sophie slept all day in the sunshine outside.
The next night, resolute humans resolved not to give in. Sophie is only a dog, for heaven’s sake! The Belping was starting to take on the proportions of a Tchaikovsky overture, not unlike his 1812, with the regular canon-fire commemorating the Battle of Borodino.
So the 2014 Battle of Sophio continues. Belping on deaf ears.
After much coaxing and many threats, Sophie sometimes gets up onto the trampoline monstrosity, but has not, as yet, capitulated. It remains Napoleon versus the Russians. It remains to be seen which one of us is the Napoleon in this battle!
Footnote: I do not claim to be knowledgeable when it comes to animals. After all, this is a work of fiction. I would love to hear more from readers about Sophie’s behaviour and the simplest way in which to get her accustomed to her new bed!
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