Noses and ESP!

    

I feel I have to mention Minnie and Maisie’s keen sense of smell, particularly Minnie.  We can be down on the beach playing ball with the wanger (that’s a curved piece of plastic with a cup on the end to place your ball in to hurl it, for those who don’t know) and suddenly during mid run, her head throws back and her nose is in the air sniffing. As soon as she does this I know for sure that my friend and neighbour Michael has either just got out of his car  200 metres away or just stepped on the promenade 150 metres away!

She is absolutely amazing, she catches his scent from so far away! Don’t get me wrong he doesn’t smell or anything, he’s not got body odour but she knows immediately!

So why, oh why, do Minnie and Maisie have to get so close to another dogs poop to sniff it! Why can’t they just sniff the air like when Michael appears? They get their noses pressed right up against the offending poop that some lazy person who couldn’t be bothered to clean up after their dog left behind and twitch their noses then take a deep breath! Why?

Also, when they need to go to the toilet themselves, again in particular Minnie, they do a 10 mile hike with nose glued to the ground to find that one blade of grass or grain of sand to do their business! It starts off as a slow walk then goes to a canter and then gets even more desperate and really quickening the pace until they just can’t hold it any more!

Sometimes in the winter when I’m watching the cctv that’s aimed on the back garden when my hubby has taken the dogs out for the last time before bed. I see him freezing, getting exasperated with Minnie, waiting for her to decide where she’s going to have her wee! He dare not say anything to her because she would stop in her tracks to listen to what he is going to say then she has to start all over again! It looks like he’s mimicking her sometimes while trying to keep warm! Oh I must learn how to save what is recorded on the system!

   

Also we have to be ultra careful of the donkeys that frequent the beach.   We sometimes can’t even see them they are that far away but the dogs know exactly where they are. And it’s not the donkeys they are interested in its the poop!

More and more we are finding that we are having to spell out words rather than say them. Minnie and Maisie can be sound asleep (or so we think) and if we are chatting and say certain key words their eyes spring open the size of saucers and they’re up on their feet and ready to go! We have to spell out the words  b. e. a. c. h and  t. i. d. e and j. e. a. n. s,  w. a. l. k,   c. a. r,  d. o. g. s,   p. u. b,   c. a. t,   l. o. l. a  and we can’t say things like   ‘are you ready’   or   ‘shall we go’   or   ‘when do you want to go’   or   ‘I’m going now’   and many, many more words are off limits!!   It’s like we are auditioning for Countdown!

My hubby and I have developed our new way of speaking without really thinking about, it comes out of our mouths quite naturally now. What is really embarrassing is if you are out anywhere, (without dogs) say for instance at the shops and the assistant politely asks ‘ have you got anything nice planned for today?’ and you say  ‘ yes we’re going to take the   d. o. g. s  for a   w. a. l. k  on the  b. e. a. c. h   then go for a  p. u. b.  lunch!’  It’s only then that you become  aware that the beeping has stopped, your shopping is no longer being scanned and you stop filling your carrier bags and look up to find a cashier staring at you with a strange puzzled look on her face that you realise you were using  ‘dog talk’ !! This has happened on more than one occasion!

Its even worse when you’re talking on the phone and it’s not family or friends on the other end ( they all know we’re crazy)  and you suddenly start spelling out words or whispering lines that we don’t speak out loud!

But now the dogs have gone one step further …….. No, they haven’t learnt to spell, although I wouldn’t put it past them, and I think it is coming! They have mastered ESP (extra sensory perception).  They know what your thinking!

I can get up and think to myself  ‘right time to go to ‘ and before I can finish off my thoughts they are both up and shaking themselves off and looking at me as if to say ‘ready when you are, where we going?’!!!

If my hubby walks into town, they know before I do when he’s coming back. They jump up the sofa to look out of the window and there is no sign of him,  then he comes walking in to the crescent! How do they know he was only around the corner?

There are many many times this has happened and I think they are even zoning in on my friend & neighbour Michael’s thoughts too. Because they can be lying on the barking bench  hammock asleep, then out of nowhere they stand up and peer down at his flat and there is no sign of him but then he comes outside! How do you explain that?

So now we are finding ourselves humming a lot too so we don’t think things, we hum and spell words, hum and spell more words and I think our kids have already booked our beds in the local mental institution!