My wife’s Italian Greyhound is very light and delicate AND extremely hyper and needy in the morning, jumping on my legs with nails out, eager to play and mouth my hand. She settles down after a while, but for that first 30 minutes, while I’m trying to work on coffee and breakfast, she’s WAY over-stimulated.
I’ve tried bonking her with a square pot holder and a rolled dish towel, but she sees cloth as a possible play toy, and she has not been suitably impressed by the correction. Her morning antics are very self-rewarding for her, and fairly irritating in their frenetic fury.
Enter a rolled-up Amazon Prime padded envelope. Wow! It makes a BIG noise when smacked, but there’s NO power behind it. The size and noise enough is intimidating to her, and though she’s only been smacked with it once, the SOUND of it being slapped against my own arm has seriously impressed her. I just have to hold up the rolled padded poly envelope (it weighs maybe 7 grams), and suddenly I have a very clear “NO AND CALM DOWN” that she seems to deeply understand.
It’s funny, but I’ll take it; a bonker with a difference.
1 comment:
Once again you've hit on something that I'm very curious about. Genetic memory(or instinct) and sound. There is something about that sound. Even in pups or dogs that have never been struck by a rolled up magazine or newspaper, or ever struck at all, they seem to instinctively know what it means. This is minus any threatening posture from me, words or other sounds. The other sound that I've witnessed like this: snake rattle. Maybe the sounds are related to them...? I've yet to see even the youngest pup not recognize snake rattle as a warning sound. They don't have to be taught that the smell of smoke is a bad thing, either.
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