Callie, my fourteen-month-old Golden Retriever, has been “crate trained.” It’s the first time we’ve crate-trained a dog, and it’s worked great. Now, as she gets more mature, we’re giving her more time outside the crate. She’s even slept on our bed a few nights without disrupting our sleep too much.
But the last few weeks, she’s had to sleep in her crate again, because Barbara had some surgery and we don’t need Callie, in her exuberance, opening up Barbara’s stitches.
So yesterday morning, April 1, we were quite surprised when, out of nowhere, Callie ran across our bedroom and went straight into her crate. She was free to run around the house, but all of a sudden she bounded into her crate and sat in a perfect pose, at attention.
This was one of those “why-did-she-do-that?” moments that can make “dog-talk” such a challenge. How do you figure out what your dog is saying?
When we looked closer, we got the message. Callie was sitting there with Barbara’s running socks in her mouth. She was saying, “April Fools! I’ve got your socks and you can’t touch me in my crate because it’s off-limits to people.”
Needless to say, we collected Barbara’s socks, but we quickly replaced them with one of Callie’s prized toys, and she forgave us for encroaching on puppydom.
Most of the time, when a dog does something unusual, there’s a message. The problem is to figure it out. This one wasn’t too hard to interpret, but it was a fun April Fools!
