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My husband and I have long deluded ourselves, thinking we’re smarter than our doggies and that we’re training them to live in our home, behave when meeting someone, etc.

Amber is in the photo above. She is a yellow lab, now 16 months old, weighs 92 lbs, and we’ve been told that she’ll continue her ‘puppy-ish’ ways until she’s at LEAST two years old. We’re working on all the regular commands, plus a few particular to our home, but Amber is very independent and will do almost anything to get her way.

Example: We have taught her to bark at the door when she would like to come in or go out. Amber has ‘learned’ this, but has embellished the lesson to include us. We now respond quickly if she either sits beside us and then says, “BARK!” so loudly that we jump straight up in the air, saying ripe words and moving quickly to let her out. A creative alternative to this is that she sits beside me when I’m on the computer and then puts her nose into my left armpit and then routes around, harder and harder until I laugh, get up and let her out. We are now trained to get up and go to whatever door she has decided to go to. Not only that, but she has taught us to reward her for barking to come in with a cookie. If we’re distracted or try to ignore her – she follows us around and then, when we’re least expecting it, yells “BARK!!”

She knows what time it is and starts running around the living room like a mad thing when it’s time for us to feed her in the evening. She won’t be put off, either, adding routing around, trying to climb up in the chair with us, or the dreaded, “BARK!!!” until the humans do what she wants. She herds us to the kitchen, waiting impatiently as we feed cats in the garage, fish in the tank, and then make food for her and Molly. She DOES go to her eating place and WILL sit until we put the food down and tell her “OKAY.”

This is sweet, elderly Molly, a cocker spaniel/schnauzer cross whom we adopted many years ago to cheer up our pit bull. She is now about 13 years old. Her mission in life is to make us laugh or say, “AWWWW!”  She has been a treasured member of our family, and she’s now finally adapting (mostly) to her bull-in-a-china-shop ‘sister’ who regularly runs right over her and considers her a personal chew toy. Without our doing anything, she has picked up on the bark at the door behavior and then demanding a cookie upon entering the house. We have dubbed ourselves ‘doggie doormen,’ not knowing what we did with ourselves before we were letting animals in and out. She growls and yodels to add to the furor surrounding dinner time, thinking she is one fierce doggie.

We are very rich in doggies, and they are DEFINITELY smarter than we are.