Sunday, February 26, 2012

Hide and Seek with Dorothy

I don’t know whether this is a specific talent of Dorothy’s—since I never thought to try playing it with my pug—but Dorothy is a dab hand at hide and seek.  It is really quite impressive!  We show her the toy we are going to hide and let her give it a good sniff.  Then, one of us has to hold Dorothy back, while the other goes and hides the toy in the other room.  When it is hidden, we release the hound, so to speak, and Dorothy goes charging off to find the toy.

She really uses several senses to help her find it.  First she looks all around the room at the usual spots.  If she doesn’t see the toy with her eyes, all of a sudden –  vroomp! – her nose goes vertically up in the air, and she uses this vertical nose position to get in the vicinity of the toy.  Once she calculates that it is nearby – schwoomp! – the nose goes down to the ground and she starts sniffing the trail of the toy until her nose leads her to it.

And all this generally takes her about 30 seconds.  She really seems to enjoy it too—she gets all excited and pants and can’t wait to figure out where the toy is next.  Dorothy likes to use her brain and figure things out.  She’s a smart bulldogge!

Dorothy with stuffed donut, triumphant:
I can't explain my success; it just comes naturally.

3 comments:

Sean said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Sean said...

We need a bigger place so Dorothy can practice her skills. :)

elisabeth said...

That's hilarious! Roxy is wondering why she doesn't have a family who plays hide and seek with her.