elise_rasha | Dogs do learn from cats

I know there are people out there who are very down on dogs. Oh, they're stupid, they don't learn anything, they bark too much, blah blah blah. Cats are way smarter than dogs. While I am the first to admit that, if you told me I had to choose between having a cat or a dog for a pet that I'd choose a cat over a dog, the truth is I love both types of animals. I'm not fond of certain breeds, and, as a writer, a cat is pretty low maintenance. Dogs require activity, a social order of some kind, but they're not entirely stupid.

Yesterday, while sitting at the dining room table (that no one is really eating at anymore) in my mother's house, my stepdad's puppy (her name is Solstice) was rubbing up against me as if she were a cat. Now, with the exception of October 2014 to September 2015, I have always lived with having at least one cat in the house. I know how a cat behaves when trying to gain a human's attention for just about everything. This dog's behavior was truly very cat-like, and she's a Black Lab mix. Given that there are two other dogs (my sister's) and three cats (two of them "belonging" to my sister as well) in this house, this shouldn't be too entirely surprising for me. It was only because I wasn't expecting this dog to do that.

To be in this house with these particular dogs is refreshing for me. Not just because I know how my mom and stepdad treat the dogs, how everyone in the house treats these dogs, but because they're not expected to do anything more beyond what a person can handle. That might not make sense, but, when you deal with little dogs and you know they have a smaller bladder, you kind of expect accidents to happen when they can't hold it any longer and they can't get outside. That's just how it goes, and my mom and stepdad understand that. My grandmother, not so much, no matter how often I pointed it out to her.

But that's neither here nor there. The thing is, dogs are smart, and, when they see the family cat getting away with something or behaving in a particular way, they try to mimic the cat in order to gain what the cat has, not realizing the human knows the difference.

Of course, I am used to dogs being quite smart. When I was a teenager, my mom had a Siberian Husky named Smokey duh Bandit. That dog knew the words "out", "outside", and "cookie". He got to where he knew when we were spelling those words so as to not get a reaction out of him because, well, when he heard the words "out" and "outside", he wanted to go out. He heard "cookie", and he expected a treat (because that's what we called his doggy treats). He never learned it from the cat, but he did learn!

Truth be told, when I am able to get into a place of my own or to buy a house of my own, I want to get me a few dogs and a few cats. I honestly believe a writer needs both. Cats because they're affectionate (when they want to be), and they customize themselves to their humans. Dogs because they remind the writer to get out, to walk around, and to play.

That's just my two cents, though. ^_^