A Pilgrim’s Digression

Fair warning: do not read this post over breakfast, lunch, dinner, or a noontime snack.

I sometimes wonder about the much-vaunted intelligence of dogs.  They are quite smart in some regards, as any dog owner knows who has had a dog that seemed quite literally to understand every single word said to it.  I just wonder, sometimes, if we mistake their devotion to us for true intelligence.

I am prompted to ask just how smart dogs really are by the behavior of our pup, Saffron. The dog eats shit. Literally.

Cat shit. Dog shit. Probably human shit, if any were available. Pretty disgusting, no?

Every time I take her out, I have to be constantly on guard against her nosing around and wolfing down one of her own turds. And even though we try to clean up her waste from our yard, there are plenty of cats loose in the neighborhood, all of whom seem to prefer to use our yard and flower beds as their personal litter box.

You have not known the meaning of disgust until you have been licked on the mouth by a dog that has eaten shit.

Briefly after college, I roomed with a guy who had a pedigreed Scottish terrier that would eat shit. I often walked the dog while my roommate was working, and again, I had to remain ever vigilant to keep the dog from having a tasty snack as we walked our route around the block.

And when I was a kid, our dog loved to eat horse turds. My grandpa would always bring home a load of horse manure for his garden every spring, and mine and his dogs gorged themselves on the fresh, grassy turds that rolled off the truck, prior to being plowed up.

But this dog, Saffron, seems to regard poop as the ultimate delicacy. Every time I take her out, after she pees she snoops around looking for shit to eat. She usually takes a crap herself, but the majority of her time is spent looking for a meal. Even when I have picked up her poop, she will eat the shit-smeared grass that remains.

On the bright side, we housebroke Saffy quite easily. After only a few weeks, she already scratches at the door and waits patiently for me to take her out. Also, as rough as Brendan is with her, she still loves him. I have largely stopped yelling at Brendan about the dog, except when the noise gets on my nerves. As Lynn has pointed out, even when Brendan hurts her, the dog comes back for more. They play rough together, and I just have to accept that. With me, she plays calmly, chasing a ball or chasing me around the yard. With Brendan, she likes it rough.

If Brendan were really hurting her, or annoying her, she would run and hide the way the cat does.

So I am largely over being a nervous wreck that Brendan is going to break her neck.

She’s a sweet dog, though not always sweet smelling. When we got her, we intended her to sleep in her kennel beside our bed. By the second or third night, she was in our bed. Soon, she began sleeping on my pillow, curling up around my head so that she breathed in my ear as I slept. When I am gone during the week, she sleeps on Lynn’s pillow as well. To me, this is just one of the benefits of having a small dog. As a kid, I slept with my dog, so I am very comfortable with the extra warm body; Lynn doesn’t seem to mind, either. I think she has become attached to the dog as well, though she might complain about her sometimes.

Of course, a problem arises when one wants to do “other” things in bed and the dog is whining on the floor, wanting to be lifted onto “her” bed to sleep.

Overall, adding this member to our family has worked out well. Of course, there is another new member to our family as well. Our foster child came to live with us about three weeks ago. That is probably a separate blog post in itself, as is an update on my Grandma’s condition. So I will stop here, and save those topics for later in the week.