"Bang, bang," old dogs!!!!

Lady, definitely not dead here.

They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks . . . and really, our dogs learned their basic commands and then seemed to skip the rest of the learning curve. My friend, Julie, has a dog and he plays dead. I mean really dead. Julie says, “bang, bang” and Raider falls to the ground and theatrically puts all 4 paws in the air and lays there until Julie offers him a treat and he is quickly undead.

                I would love it if our dogs would even learn a fraction of cool tricks that. Lady won’t play dead or fetch a ball and sometimes she decides that staying is too much work, although she does lay down a lot . . . but then again she’s over 10 years old and that’s like, well ancient if she was a human. Lady is a border collie mix and very smart . . . I know she adores me, she really wants to be good, but for the most part I’m just happy she sits and stays (sort of ) at least she listens when I call her.

Gus, the rat! . Ready for the trick and then the treat!

 “Lady, come!” and there she is, ever so hopeful for a snack. Casey, our 12 year old Golden Retriever, however, if you call her, “Casey, come!” Nothing. I have seen cats that behave better than this canine. . . as a matter of fact, we had a rat named Gus, that came when he was called. He’d show up with both dogs to get his treat too. There’s only 2 options if you want Casey to come to you . . . either yell her name really loud and show her the treat or go and clip the leash to her collar. And still she might pee out of doggy angst. Good grief.

We have a friend of the family, Cameron, who really loves dogs, probably because he owns something like 9 cats (his dad’s a vet, need I say more?) and he especially loves to get our dogs to do tricks. Which I find amusing because I’ve tried for years to get Lady to do the bang bang trick or even just catch a treat and not snap at empty air and then get into a wrestling match with Casey, or even Gus, who stole more treats due to Lady’s miscalculation on catching treats! Lucky rat! So watching Cameron work with the dogs, I thought it was good for the dogs to get a work out, but I was hoping Cameron wouldn’t be too sad that Lady was, well, really beyond the learning new tricks thing.

And then an amazing thing happened. We left the dogs at home with Cameron while we went on our trip over Thanksgiving, which the dogs thought was most excellent . . . I heard, although still haven’t witnessed, that Casey did, in fact, come when he called her. However the most amazing thing of all was Lady learned how to do the BANG BANG trick. Oh my goodness. I was so excited when I saw Cameron pick up a treat, and loudly say, “bang, bang” while pointing at her. Flop. Little grinchy fluffy paws straight up in the air. Where she stayed until Cameron said, “good girl” and gave her a dog snack, which really taste like air.I know, I tried one once. I bet the dogs would do tricks for Cameron for ice cubes, those treats are so boring.

So the next morning I wanted to show David how very cool his dog was and that she really was super, uber smart. I took a piece of pancake and said, “bang, bang” while pointing at Lady. Flop. Little fluffy paws straight up in the air. Yeah! I was so excited I tried it again. “Bang, bang!” Nothing. Lady sat and stared at me, very confused. I tried it again. I emptied my imaginary gun into that dog and nothing. She just stared at me, not blinking. She was definitely not dead. And then it occurred to me. Of course you can only do the dead trick once.  Dead’s dead. It takes time to recover from being dead. So we did a few other tricks and I tried again. Yup, dead as a doornail until it was time for her treat.

I wish Gus was still around . . . I bet I could have taught him the bang, bang trick! Yeah, Cameron! Now can you teach the dogs to sweep up their own fur?