Thursday, November 10, 2005
Bad Animals
Never mind that those wonderful, misunderstood animals don't know any better. Never mind that I enjoy owning both of them, after a fashion. Why does my cat like to wake us up by biting our heads, and why does my dog think that if it just growls and looks scary enough, 15 pounds of it will be able to intimidate 150 pounds [you wish!] of me?
While I'm on the topic of pets, why won't the dog just bloody well give up already? Its snout is hatched with cat-cuts. The other day I picked a claw sheath out of the side of its face. Stubborn, stubborn terrier.
While I'm on the topic of pets, why won't the dog just bloody well give up already? Its snout is hatched with cat-cuts. The other day I picked a claw sheath out of the side of its face. Stubborn, stubborn terrier.
Comments:
Ha ha! Good link; I did read that article, and found it quite useful in modeling the dog's behaviour. For some value added, note that the Stanley Coren mentioned in the article has written several books on the subject of dog behavior, and his day job is as a psych professor at UBC.
As might be clear here, I'm trying to establish a nice, boring dog-human relationship in which I am the pack leader, and the bloody dog is attempting direct challenges to the leader's authority. So I do weird dog-things with my animal like have staring contests in which I must (for important dog reasons) always win, down drills (basically, put the dog in a down position using a leash and keep it there until it calms down, and so forth.
The multiple tries at the cat is purely a Jack Russell terrier thing, or maybe just this dog. Previously, in my parents' house, a dog much larger than the then-resident cat managed to learn very quickly that the cat was mostly made of pointy bits and was To Be Avoided. The dog is only half Jack Russell; the other half is Australian Red Heeler, a very serious working breed, or to put it another way, this is a cross of two of the most energetic small dog breeds out there.
I found a good overview of typical Jack Russell breed "personality". If you read between the lines, you get the impression the author is trying to say you might get lucky because Jack Russell temperaments are wildly variable, so you might get one that's not too bad due to pure luck.
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As might be clear here, I'm trying to establish a nice, boring dog-human relationship in which I am the pack leader, and the bloody dog is attempting direct challenges to the leader's authority. So I do weird dog-things with my animal like have staring contests in which I must (for important dog reasons) always win, down drills (basically, put the dog in a down position using a leash and keep it there until it calms down, and so forth.
The multiple tries at the cat is purely a Jack Russell terrier thing, or maybe just this dog. Previously, in my parents' house, a dog much larger than the then-resident cat managed to learn very quickly that the cat was mostly made of pointy bits and was To Be Avoided. The dog is only half Jack Russell; the other half is Australian Red Heeler, a very serious working breed, or to put it another way, this is a cross of two of the most energetic small dog breeds out there.
I found a good overview of typical Jack Russell breed "personality". If you read between the lines, you get the impression the author is trying to say you might get lucky because Jack Russell temperaments are wildly variable, so you might get one that's not too bad due to pure luck.
