Posted: 7/14/2006 5:39:59 AM EDT
My black lab (who is doing much better now since her injury/incident 6 week ago) will eat cat shit, drink out of nasty mud puddles. Will bark and whine if her water bowl contains a hair. In fact she won't drink out of it unless it is full of clean water a 6 ice cubes.
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Does she count the ice cubes....what happens if there is only 1 or 2? My older beagle will help the younger one dig and move rocks from under the fence so the younger one can get out of the yard, but as soon as the younger one gets out the older one gets pissed off and whines because she is all alone. She knows she is too big to get out as this has happened many times, but she still gets upset. |
Nice looking dog. Looks like a bigger version of my girl.  My lab also likes to carry around rocks that are about 2X the size of her head. My golden retriever won't touch a rock but he likes to carry around sticks that are about 8feet long. On walks he will first grab one that is 12 inches, then will drop it as soon as he sees one that is bigger until he is skidding timber. 
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The first time (and only so far) time I took my dog camping he would eat one or two bites of food then spill and bury the rest of his food. He did this for three days straight. One of the times he pushed the entire plate of food under the tent then covered the immediate area with an inch of dirt. He ate the same food we took on the trip just when we got back just fine. I think he is a GSD and Yellow Lab or Golden Retriever mix. |
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My golden retriever (close enough to a lab for government work) doesn't have quirks like that, but when we fill her food dish, she'll look up at us expectantly like, "is that it? You gonna give me some meat or something?" And she's terrible about jumping on people when she meets them. She could knock down a lot of people and would if she could. Not because she's a mean dog, but because she's so friendly that she just wants to greet them so desperately. |
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You need to nip THAT in the bud pronto. Our rottie would do that, but with an 82 year old MIL and kids coming over we had some remediaal training to fix that. |
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My yellow lab would be perfectly happy with a diet solely of cat shit, but if you're playing fetch with her and the ball lands within 5' of a dog poo pile, she creeps up to the ball, screams 'DANGER ZONE!! DANGER ZONE!!', and backs away slowly. Fetch is now officially over. What, you can dine on cat shit, but you can't go near your own poo?
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That is nasty...  My lab can't stand to go near his own shit let alone the scat of another animal! |
| My late lab Jasper was a character. That old boy would climb on top of our wood pile for a better view. If I said truck he ran to the door and would ride for hours standing up. I would groom him and he run straight to the pond and go swimming. Food, that was a different story. When I had my ski house in VT everyone wanted to give him their leftovers. He use to sit outside unleashed and wait for my neighbors kids to cut through the yard after school so they would pet him. He's been gone awhile now and I still miss him. |
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Dog 1 : Hey teach your human any new tricks Dog 2 : Ive taught him a good one. It was hard but well worth it. I make him clean my water. Dog 1 : Clean water YUKKK . Do you still drink out of puddles when he is not looking ? Dog 2 : No no I let him watch me drink out of puddles and when we get back to my house I make him do the clean water trick, thats the funny part you should see his face . Whose funny ? |
Sounds about right.... grabs one, drops it when he sees a bigger one, etc.... He still hasn't caught on though, that he can't walk through the front door, when he's carrying a tree branch about 4' long.  BOINK! Bounces off the doorframe, looks at it all cock-eyed, tries it again, then looks at me like I grew another head when I take it from him and toss it into the flowerbed for later..... 
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Oh man, you are describing my life! My Lab always finds the biggest stick on our walks that he can and proceeds to drag it to my front door. It looked like we were trying to build a log cabin with the amount of branches he had collected. The looks people give you are great when your 90 pound Lab pup is carrying a 15 foot long tree branch in his mouth down the sidewalk! |
Ha! Mine does the same thing as well. I am very thankful for that! |
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Mine is 1/2 lab and 1/2 Greyhound. When she eats, she takes about three kibbles of food out of the bowl, RUNS to her hiding spot, drops the kibbles, and proceeds to eat them one by one. Rinse and repeat. We took her to the river once. After she stopped shaking in fear (Oh, about 6 hours), she began running around. Then, right in between the chairs Camy and I were fishing from, she finds a soft spot of sand and begins to dig frantically. She just kept digging and digging until she had a good sized hole. Then she put her head in it, held it still, and ran in circles with her back legs like a retard drawing a circle with a compass. I kid you not, she did this for a FULL 5 minutes. Never did agree to go into the water. Lab my ass. |
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I have a hound/lab mix and loves the cat shit. We bought an automatic catbox to keep her out of it. And another thing... What's the big deal about gutpiles? Why does she have to find the biggest, nastiest, effing gut pile in the entire county to roll in? short story: Last spring, I let her and our beagle-mix run in the bean/corn field behind the house for a little bit (10 minutes tops), I call 'em in, the beagle comes back to the porch, but the other is diving shoulder first into what turns out to be the worst shit known to man. She comes back after having a few good turns at it. She happily trots to within a couple feet of me and I my gag-reflex goes into overdrive. I attempt to turn my head...doesn't work. She's looking a little confused-tail still wagging. I spew. She in turn tries to eat my chunks. I gag again. The girlfreind has to take over... she's learned that this guarantees an immediate bath and has somewhat put a stop to it. still, what drives 'em to do it? |
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I have a 2year old Siberian Husky, and after I fill up her water in the summer, she'll swoosh her paws in it really fast, causing me to give her more. Sometimes too, out of nowhere she'll just start running really fast around the yard. Nice black lab. It looks like my neighbors' dog. How old? |
Get the toe off the trigger!!! 
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Not too many gutpiles in our neighborhood, so my dog settles for the next best thing. Our cats kill rodents-a-plenty and leave them on our stoop. Sometimes voles, sometimes mice, sometimes squirrels. My dog picks the dead ones up, eats a good half, and tries to bring the rest inside. If it's small, she can often succeed by hiding it in her mouth. This, as you may guess, is not an ideal situation. One time a vole had been ripening on the nice oriental rug of my mother's home office for a good two weeks when somebody stepped on it. Crunch, splat, stink. And you can't yell at her for it because it happened two weeks ago, no way she remembers it. At least we can catch her when she has a full-size squirrel, tail and all, hanging out of her mouth. Usually. 
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catshit, rotting mammal carcasses, vomit... something tells me I should stop buying Science Diet and Iams mini-chunks. id save 40 -60 bucks a month. I can get the above for free. |
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Our Great Pyr, if he has been in the house, will run out into the middle of the yard in spin around in three or four circles, barking in every direction, then go on to do other things. We always just figure he is annoucing his presence. He seems to forget what he is doing a often, for example, if a chicken runs by, he will start running after it, but if the chicken stops, he will just keep running in the same direction until he gets bored or smell's something else and starts digging. (BTW, he will drink from the pond or the sump pump, but will only use his water dish if it is clean and has ice (sim. to above). He loves ice, but it is a riot, for he will stick his whole head in and come up with one in is mouth and 5-6 frozen to his beard that are just hanging there. And he will keep busy all day when it snows by making hundreds of snow angels. (Well he just lays on his back and wiggles in the snow, they don't so much look like snow angels...) |
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way back there was a 2 page discussion on this. One answer was an instinctitive predatory trick of masking the scent with the smell of prey. |
thanks! makes sense... domestication can't root everything out I guess. |
That is called butt-tucking and my Lab does it as well when he gets really excited or after digging. Looks funny as hell, like they are out of control. |
Im in the same boat. I had my Lab at a Buddy's house for the 4th of July and he was swimming in the pond. All of a sudden he came on shore and spotted a portion of what appeared to be the goopy, rotting, dead carcass of a groundhog that the owners boxer had killed. He proceeded to roll his head all over that thing. By the time I got over to him and got him out of it, it was too late. He smelled horribly putrid. I bathed him 3 times that evening. |
I had no idea! I was laughing histerically - looked like someone had pinned her head in the hole and put ice all the way around the perimeter. It was surreal it was so funny! Almost cartoonish. Are there theories on why they do this? Is it just a sign of being extremely happy, or pride in the fact they can dig AND fetch, or are labs just attention whores? |
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My parent's chocolate lab right now is at our summer cottage on a lake. She is in heaven. Most of the time she's in the water chasing the ducks or begging me to throw her ball. Being only 1 year old, she is impossible to wear out. Good thing she is very friendly and somwhat obedient. We had lots of rain recently and the lake water rose to very high levels. It also washed lots of debris and dead fish ashore. Would you believe this dog can find a dead fish in piles of debris and seaweed, dig it up, carry it onto shore, and try to roll in it? Fourth of July weekend she was trying to drag a dead 2 or 3 foot carp out of the water to relish in its stink. She also goes crazy when she's fresh out of water. She rolls and rolls and rolls, hops up, then charges across the yard at breakneck speed in a big loop the flys back off the dock into the water. Sometimes she strolls up to you just out of water then shakes dry, soaking evreything in range. Funniest thing is, she'll dig into a basket of fresh laundry, and always find a sock to run with. It's amazing, she must rely on scent because she certainly can't see anything. Dogs are the best!
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My Lab will usually butt-tuck while running around crazily with not much regard to what is in his way. It is the funniest thing you will ever see. I think they do it when they get really excited about something. It is not exclusive to Labs either as I have seen other breeds do it as well. Here is a link about Butt Tucking, also known as the "Crazies" www.woodhavenlabs.com/lab-faq.html#buttuck |
Whenever it's time to switch the laundry from the washer to the dryer, mine runs into the laundry room and sits by the washer. I have to let her sniff each piece of clothing before it goes into the dryer or she whines and barks at me. Frankly, I think she's addicted to Downy. My dog's a Downy huffer. 
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