Masters And Servants

My dog Pebbles, whom most of you know, is becoming more and more demanding these days. I think one of you, Boy if I'm not mistaken said she has a Diva attitude and I'm inclined to agree with him. These days, she sure knows how to get what she wants and the worst thing is she's getting smarter by the day.

She struts around the house acting like a princess. Everything that's on the floor is automatically her possession, especially the big throw pillow we have downstairs. That pillow is exclusively hers and she guards it like a hawk.

She makes me do her bidding with just a look from those puppy dog eyes and if that doesn't work, she gets me in trouble by getting wifey to scold me into doing her bidding ... LOL! She's darn good at it. If I don't do something for her, she goes and sulks with wifey and the next thing I know is, wifey will be coming after me to do what she wants!

Like I said, she's getting smarter by the day. In fact, just today, she showed us how smart she really is becoming. A few weeks back, we took her for her first out door walk around the park near our house. We never really let her go outside cos she runs around all over the house and often plays or even sleeps on the bed with us sometimes. We don't want her attracting any ticks or unwelcome critters on her body.

But we decided that maybe she needs to run around outside once a week or so. So she went for her first walk a few weeks back. You can view a short video of it here ... It was also one of the first times she had a collar and leash on. She wasn't too happy with it at first and refused to budge. It took a little prompting and after a while she got a little used to having a leash and collar around her.

So we decided to get her a body harness with a lighter leash as the earlier one was one of those steel ones which was probably weighing her down a little. She's only  used that body harness twice before for her walks and she knows exactly what it's for now.

This morning, when I woke up, she came to me, sat in front of me and stared at me. She does that when she wants something done. As usual I ignored her. Unperturbed, she just sits there and stares at me knowing that I'll eventually give in. So I look at her and ask her what she wants.

She gets up, goes to her leash and body harness and nudges it with her nose and looks at it longingly and then turns and looks at wifey who immediately says,

'She wants you to take her for a walk la!'

Huh? Since when does she start demanding for walks? Then wifey takes the body harness and she immediately jumps into in and waits for the leash to be clipped on to be taken out. I still refuse to believe that she knows the significance of the body harness and refuse to put on the leash which in turn leads her to sulk at wifey's feet.

'Now look what you've done, she wants you to take her for a walk la.' Wifey says.

Hmmmm ... to test a theory, I put down the book on roadside assistance I was reading and clip on the leash. She happily gets up, wags her tail and starts dragging me to the door. Darn, that dog really wants to go for a walk. The moment I open the front door grille, she continues to drag me outside. Ok, now comes the part that really amazed me.

Normally if I let her outside the house in the porch area, she would without fail go to the side fence wanting to start a fight with the neighbours dog (who is twice her size, mind you) but this time she just drags me to the front gate and starts pushing against it looking at me as if to say,

'Open the gate already you moron and take me for a walk!'

I was shaking my head in disbelieve at how smart this dog has really become! She know that it's time to go upstairs if we start closing all the doors and windows and will immediately go to the stairs and wait for us. She knows the difference when I'm going to work or when I'm going out and leaving her alone at home.

She knows where her snacks are and will sit in front of it and stare at it if she wants a snack. She knows that it's time to sleep and will jump off the bed at night and call it a day without disturbing us. She knows when we're awake in the mornings and will jump in bed and snuggle up between us. She knows when we tell her 'no more, come, sit down, up, inside, quiet, no' and lots more commands.

She really has come a long way since the first time she came to us. Back then, she was a quiet little jittery dog, now she's the queen of this house who often times gets me in trouble with wifey when I refuse to do her bidding. I wonder what else she's going to learn in the next few weeks? Maybe she'll start saying,

'Hey moron, take me for a drive and get me a nice collar with some bling, bling on it!' LOL!
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