Artaware's Blog

I feel close to my friend Evi Schumacher because we’re kindred souls in anthropomorphyzing (is that a word?) life – especially our dogs.

Evi wonders if her dog remembers losing his first home and coming to  hers when he saw her using a walker (hopefully temporarily). He had a worried look on his face. Did his first owner give him up due to health and lack of mobility?

That made me wonder if my 75 pound Great Dane mix has a memory of his beginnings in Southern USA on Christmas Day, 2015.

Thanks to Evi’s sensitivity, I try to attribute memory to my dog because of his behavior – his response – to the word “crate” as in “Get into your crate.” He does it so joyfully. He loves his crate. Did his first foster person instill that joy?

I find my boy completely ignores me if there is any annoyance in my tone of voice asking him to “Come to me.” If my voice drips with “Oh what a good boy…” – he responds immediately. Tone of voice is important to him. Early on, he may have learned that. And, he teaches me to emphasize it – even to the extent of tricking him to come with a nice voice even when I’m displeased with him.  I have to figure out a different way to change bad behavior than with tone of voice…

Thanks Evi, for pushing me to give intelligence to the canine species here-to-fore not considered much.

This entry was posted on February 17, 2019 at 4:47 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.