Recently, my youngest daughter, Emily, was telling how her mother’s dachshund, Izzy, had become an “escape artist.”
Emily was home from college having dinner at my former wife’s house. Emily’s mother, Anne, put her two dogs in the back yard. If she let the dogs stay inside during a meal, they spend the entire time begging for food.
Later, Emily looked up and saw Izzy lying on the driveway. The dog had escaped from the back yard by digging under a loose board in the fence and pushing aside the board and a heavy shovel that was holding the board in place.
When Emily told me what Izzy had done, I said, “How can a dog that’s so dumb do something so smart?”
There I go being anthromorphic again. Anthromorphism, or personification, is the attribution of human motivation, characteristics or behavior to inanimate objects, animals, or natural phenomena. Almost all of us are guilty of it, especially pet owners.
Determining an animal’s intelligence can be tricky because so much of what animals do is hard-wired into them by nature. But animals can learn. Some, including dogs and cats, can remember events.
Some animals also dream. That’s obvious to anyone who’s ever watched a sleeping dog or cat twictch and move its legs.
I think that most of time when people say a pet is being “bad” or disobeying, it’s just a dog being a dog or a cat being a cat. For example, a woman once told me she had her dog neutered “because I can’t stand the thought of him running around fathering all of those illegitimate puppies.”
As I said, it’s called anthromorphism.
Anne has told me that if she says Emily’s name aloud, Izzy will sit up and look around. Sometimes the dog will start running around looking for Emily.
So maybe Izzy isn’t dumb, after all. But she certainly is annoying. When Anne or my daughters return home, the dogs start scratching on the back door. When the door is opened, Izzy immediately runs outside. She becomes so excited that she almost always wets on the carport floor or the driveway. And if you sit down inside the house, Izzy is going to jump on you. After all, her belly isn’t going to rub itself.
When I met Anne, she had two cats, a mother and a daughter. The mother’s name was Maggie, and she didn’t like me very much. The daughter, Spooky, was the runt of the litter and seemingly afraid of everything. Spooky was only still around because no one wanted to adopt her.
Maggie was one jealous cat. After we got married, I told Anne those cats were NOT going to sleep in our bedroom. Maggie would stand outside the door and wail. One morning, she reached under the door and tore off a piece of it. I gave up.
Kittens meow for their mothers when they want something or are in distress. Some researchers believe that adult housecats meow solely to get humans’ attention. After all, adult cats don’t meow to communicate with one another. Other research says a pet cat believes its owner is its mother, or at least a substitute.
Spooky, who lived to be almost 20, rarely meowed. Maybe it was because she hated her mother.
I think some animals are more successful training their owners than vice versa. I once had a cat named Rollo that I dumped on my parents when I moved to Georgia. They grew to love that cat, especially my father.
Rollo learned that if he went past the kitchen into the den, he would have to leave the house. So when he wanted to go outside, he walked into the den and sat by the patio door. If the cat was ignored, he would start walking around in the den. In no time at all, he would be let outside.
Later, my youngest sister dumped an ill-tempered shih tzu named Pepper on my parents. He was had to stay outdoors at first, but finally he was allowed to come into the washroom and kitchen.
Pepper soon won my mother over by going where he could see her while she worked in the kitchen. Later, he began following her everywhere.
My mother and that dog became devoted to one another. Meanwhile, Pepper barely tolerated — and occasionally bit — the rest of us.
In the space of a year, Pepper went from sleeping in my parents’ garage to sleeping in their bedroom.
I guess Pepper wasn’t so dumb after all. Mean. Perhaps psychotic. But definitely not dumb.
• Contact Charles Corder at 581-7241 or ccorder@gwcommonwealth.com.
