These are the quirks of my dog set. Currently, it’s Emma and the bell. Emma, my rescue setter, runs for the hills when a bell rings on TV. You can’t hear a phone or doorbell ring without Emma frantically pacing, as she thinks someone must be at the door!
Hannah and her bowl… Hannah was the dog of my heart, the first one who’ll be waiting for me at the other side of the Rainbow Bridge. Hannah didn’t like eating out of her bowl. We had to hold it for her for about four or five years. She used a special little puppy-sized bowl. And she had to have small chunky kibble so she wouldn’t choke. She was a dainty eater.
Hannah also had a neurosis about crinkling paper. If the paper bag was crumpled and tossed into the can, it would slowly un-crinkle and Hannah would freak out. It was, for her, akin to a Hitchcock movie to listen to the slowly unraveling bag. The whole trashcan would have to be moved to an adjacent room to accommodate my neurotic setter.
One of my friends’ dogs hated umbrellas and would chew on anything related. Another had a dog, a boxer, that would sit on a suitcase to prevent anyone from leaving on a trip.
When I was growing up, we had a poodle that wouldn’t cross the threshold of the kitchen. And for the remainder of her life, Mitzi never entered the kitchen.
When I brought Emma home seven years ago, she had a severe neurosis of men. We made up a profile on the type of man that upset her. He was tall, and he had a baseball or work hat on. He was a blue-collar guy, as they lived on a farm. The problem was, every guy I knew played golf and came into the house sweating, wearing a golf cap and usually swinging a club. That absolutely freaked her out and set her pacing. It was Rainman Emma for the first few months.
But the dog park helped to cure her. When she saw how many guys at the park loved their dogs, it suddenly dawned on her (kind of like Helen Keller and the water in “The Miracle Worker”) that some men loved dogs! It opened up a whole new world for her. Men would come to the fence and make a big deal of her. Now she’s the biggest flirt in town. She prances to and fro, showing off her fancy Irish Setter step and waiting for someone to comment on her good looks.
She’s a regular social butterfly, and that’s a setter thing. But she still crawls into anyone’s lap that happens to be near if it thunders. The Thundercoat helps her a lot, but woe to the one who is close to her if it happens to be thundering in the middle of the night. She’s on you like “white on rice”!
My other setter, Chloe, is very afraid of the cat. Mind you, the cat’s never touched her. He’s never so much as laid a paw on her. But it doesn’t matter. It will be so quiet in the evenings and I’m so proud that the dogs have not made any noise when I let them out late at night. But suddenly, I would hear this awful shriek. Chloe thinks the cat is near, but he’s not even close. He just has to give her the “evil eye” and it’s enough. She bays and yelps as if she’s lying wounded in the middle of the road. She’s the only animal I’ve ever had whose real fear is simply IMAGINERY pain!
Hannah and her bowl, Hannah and the crinkly paper, and Chloe’s fear of the cat that hasn’t even touched her. Emma and the bell, her dramatic and diva-like pacing, her fear of thunder, and her fear men and her subsequent showing off for men. Mitzi who wouldn’t go in the kitchen
These are the dogs I have loved and their quirks. I could fill a couch with the stories of my dogs and their individual psychoses, but I wouldn’t trade a single minute of it!
