Nobody told me that my dog would be weird… ?

The eagle eyed amongst you will spot that I’ve used the above photo on this blog before. The post was about different breeds of dog- part of my ‘tips before you get a dog’ section. Have a read if you haven’t already… if you want.

Let’s face it, all humans have some sort of weird tendency. For example, I like to stress continuously over very minor details, overthink absolutely everything and stick to a routine very closely… come to think of it, maybe I have OCD. My point is that all dogs, just like humans, have weird tendencies. Something I hadn’t really considered before I got Clover.

My mums dog, Morgan (the brown spaniel in the photo), is the weirdest dog I’ve ever met. He LITERALLY cannot go a second of the day without a trainer in his mouth… but that’s not all. Whilst holding the trainer, he circles round and round the closest bit of furniture- a chair, a table, a foot pouffe. He is relentless and would do this for 24 hours a day if he didn’t get told off. I get tired just watching him. His tail wags the entire time and I would just love to have access to his thoughts to find out what he’s thinking of whilst doing it. Not much, I expect.

Then we’ve got Bailey. Bailey is the ginger spaniel in the photo. Bailey very sadly died not long ago. She was ten years old and had become very poorly. When she was alive, she would eat tissue paper on walks if it had been dropped on the ground. She also had to find the biggest, longest, chunkiest, heaviest stick (often more like tree trunks) and carry them the entire walk, hitting us on the backs of the legs every time she went past. She also whined (I say whined, it was more like something out of the exorcist) every single morning at about 5.00am until someone got up to be with her, just so she could sit on their lap. Very needy and, whilst it is awful that she has left us, at least the family can now get a bit more sleep.

Scrumpy is a lovely girl, (the clumber spaniel in the photo- the white one!), but again, really odd. She’s obsessed with my step dad and doesn’t care for much else. She likes my mum if she gets food out, and then she’s back to slumbering around near my step dad again. She really offers very little in general.

Murphy, the black spaniel, is the best boy. He’s getting really old now so I can’t slag him off too much. His weird trait is that he HAS to make eye contact with you constantly. He’ll stare at you until you meet his gaze and then he’ll hold it. He often follows mum round staring at her so much that he isn’t looking where he is going and constantly trips over things. He fell off a bridge doing it once.

Shandy was our old family dog. A lovely golden Labrador. He passed away many years ago. We loved him so much but there was no denying he was weird. He used to fart, scare himself and then get embarrassed when he realised what he had done, and leave the room. Every single time. Unlike a certain Miss Clover I may add (see post ‘nobody warned me my dog would fart so much’ for further info!). Sometimes, rather cruelly, we’d say ‘phwoar Shandy’ even when he hadn’t farted, and he’d still get embarrassed and leave the room. He also used to zoom round the house every time mum closed her glasses case and he used to spend hours in the local stream bringing out bricks. We think he could have been a builder in a previous life. He also tried to pick up the white lines on the road a few times. Lots of weirdness to work with there for dear Shandy.

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Nobody told me my dog would be weird. ?

And then we come to Clover. Precious, darling, perfect Clover. Kind of. Clover has many weird tendencies. For example, she loves sitting on the stairs but if you walk near her she cowers and faces the wall. I would like to make a point that nothing bad has ever happened to Clover on the stairs. She did fall down the bottom four once when she was younger and was doing zoomies round the house. But she only has herself to blame for that, and nobody was nearby at the time to warrant why she might be scared of people being near her on the stairs in future. She also still zoomies up and down the stairs so it can’t have scarred her that much.

She also cowers when we leave the house. She gets excited to go for a walk, we put her harness on, I open the front door and she’s suddenly terrified… for 3 seconds until we get to the end of the drive and then she’s trotting along perfectly happy and keen as mustard. See- weird!

Another weird tendency that Clover has is that some days she’s scared to walk on the grass in the garden. I’m not kidding. One minute she’s led on the grass, basking in the sun or sniffing the plants, the next minute she wont go anywhere near the grass and walks round the entire garden on the wooden sleepers to go for a wee. She’ll then put just one or two paws on the grass and do her business then hop straight back onto the sleeper and walk all the way back round. She’ll also go BEHIND bushes to avoid walking on the grass… and then the next day she’ll be out zooming across the grass again. It’s often the same when we’re out walking. If we are in a field and there’s a track round the edge, she won’t dare come off of it. She’ll walk perfectly behind me or in front of me and wont go onto the longer grass. Once I cut through across the middle of a field and then had to wait for her whilst she made her way round the entire field because she wouldn’t divert her course off the track. She didn’t like the long grass that day.

But wait, there’s more. I do genuinely think Clover has a mild case of Claustrophobia. If the path we are walking on is too narrow, she freaks. She won’t walk next to me, or even behind me, she has to be in front. If I start walking too near her during this time, she just stops dead and won’t move until I’ve backed off and given her some space. Kind of understandable, but also most of the paths I’ve referred to are wide enough for three or four people to walk side by side so I person think she’s overreacting…

Want to read more? You can head back to the homepage, visit top ‘tips before getting a dog‘, or check out more blog posts at either ‘the dog ownership topics that nobody warned me about’, or ‘a diary of my ruff reality.’

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*Disclaimer- I have no animal related qualifications whatsoever. Which begs the question as to exactly how much of my advice you should take. This isn’t really an advice blog- not properly. It’s more of a ‘these are my experiences- maybe we can all learn from them’ type of blog. You should probably seek actual qualified veterinary/animal behaviourist/dog dietician advice if you genuinely have any dog related concerns. I’m just here to share the things I’ve learnt in my three years of dog ownership. Some of which may be useful- some not.*