It’s Hard to Fool a Woofus; Or, The Nose Still Knows
Monday, October 22nd, 2007Considering the size of their brains, it is really quite difficult to trick a woofus.
Oh, sure, confusion isn’t a challenge: I once baffled Sunny for more than five minutes simply by switching a toy from my right (dominant) hand to my left one, with which I’d never played tug before, but having learned that monkeys are sneaky enough to have two hands, Sunny never forgot it. Did Mommy have something in her right hand and it proves to no longer be there? Sunny’s first guess is now that it is in the left hand.
It didn’t take Sunny long at all to learn that he couldn’t play fetch with the children of his original family because they’d only pretend to throw the stick. It took only two fake throws to teach him only to start running if he saw the stick leave a hand, and it took only one fake-out after a legitimate throw for Sunny to give up on them altogether. It infuriated the kids, but Sunny would only show interest when I was the one who said, “Hey, look, Sunny! A stick!” I have never not thrown the Object of Woofiness, although I am well known for throwing it in some unexpected direction.
But if it’s hard to fool a woofus to begin with, you haven’t a prayer when what you are trying to fool is the Nose. As I have discussed before, woofi know to trust their noses before all else, and no sensible monkey would bet against it either. So naturally that’s just what I did.
My new downstairs neighbor (new since July, when Meatman left) I shall simply have to call Biscuitwoman. She gives Sunny doggie biscuits, the colored crunchy biscuit bone type. From me, he’s always licked these things and left them lying about the place. From Biscuitwoman, he makes a woofy fool of himself and crunches them up happily.
The drama, as with so many woofy things, unfolds virtually the same every time. On seeing that I have picked up the leash and headed for our front door, Sunny starts bouncing and whimpering. I attach Sunny’s leash and open the apartment door. He charges out and down the stairs while I sit on our doorstep and change to my outside shoes. (I hope that in the house, when I buy it, to keep the floors clean enough to skip shoes, but that’s not happening here, so I just have two sets of shoes.) Biscuitwoman comes to her door, says, “I heard you making a fuss up there!” and gives him a biscuit.
Usually before I have my shoes on and am downstairs, I hear Biscuitwoman say, “No, you have to eat that one first!” Sunny nearly always takes whatever treat he has been given away a short distance, puts it down, and then comes back to the treat giver. I am not sure whether the purpose is just to get another treat or to get a “better” treat because most people will respond by either giving him another one or saying, “Oh, you didn’t like that? How about this?” and then gives him something else, usually higher in meat content. Maybe he is content with either response, since it gets him two treats. Unfortunately I usually spoil his plan by telling the treat giver that it is Sunny’s favorite mooching strategy and not to give him another until he’s at least eaten the first one. Biscuitwoman has by now become very accustomed to this behavior, hence her response. Sunny is a match for her if I’m still distracted with my shoes: he wanders around with the biscuit in his mouth until he has Biscuitwoman confused (it’s hard to tell whether he’s carrying it or not with his big soft mouth), he puts it down, and then goes back to her, and sometimes she’s fooled into giving him another biscuit before he’s eaten his first one. Eventually, however, Biscuitwoman and I get firm about it: eat the first biscuit. While he does, Biscuitwoman gives me one or several “for later.” Sunny always runs back to her to beg for a second biscuit; sometimes he gets it and sometimes she just says, “Your mom has it!”
As you can imagine, Biscuitwoman is one of Sunny’s favorite people. He knows her footstep in the lobby and will cry to go to her if she’s coming in from outside. He will fiercely bark at any interloper foolhardy enough to knock at the door of his Giver of Biscuits; he will protect her from all comers if I will only open the door so that he might charge to her defense. Nowadays I never know if a passionate plea to go Out is because he needs Out or because he wants biscuits. After all, just because he stops at Biscuitwoman’s door doesn’t mean he doesn’t need Out; it’s on his way, and he might as well mooch a treat if the mooching is good, right?
The more difficult problem is what to do with all those biscuits that are supposed to be “for later.” It’s proving to be very difficult to keep them hidden for later. I tried keeping them in a pocket, but it was the one Sunny sits next to if he sits next to me while I work, and he was soon crying and poking at it. Switching them to the opposite pocket didn’t improve matters for long. I tried putting them on a shelf, with some knitting supplies. While his location and announcement of their presence on the shelf (extending his nose as near to the high-up biscuits as it could go and whiffling the air in an exaggerated fashion, which is Spaniel for “Gimme those cookies, Mommy!”) was about par for a woofus, it was truly impressive how he reacted, a couple days later, when I took the ball of yarn down and started to knit with it. It took quite some time for him to satisfy himself that no, the ball wasn’t a biscuit, although it was cruelly masquerading as one.
I tried the beside box, which puts me and my cup of cocoa between him and the biscuits. Didn’t even work ten minutes. Currently there are three biscuits sitting on a different shelf, and Sunny was, until only a short time ago, telling me about how they were up there so I should give them to him.
Why isn’t he still asking? Well, he was pretty persistent about it, but I started working on this entry and therefore ignored him much better than when I was working on the September numbers. (Sorry, Bianca! ^_^;;;) And I have had an idea, which might add interest to long, boring woofus days.
The biggest problem faced by nearly every woofus is boredom. Their monkeys busy with other matters, the woofi find themselves expected to Do Nothing. There’s pretty much nothing harder to do than Nothing, for any critter evolved beyond reptilian patience. Yeah, dogs catch a lot of extra naps, but there’s only so much sleep a woofus can get. This is the genesis of the vast majority of “bad” woofy behavior (which really should be BAD, for “Being A Dog”), the desperate attempt to stave off boredom while the monkeys are Doing Something Supposedly Important. Sunny’s attempt is combined with separation anxiety, from which he has suffered since I was in the hospital a little more than a year ago. When I am away from home, he assaults the front door. I have trained him not to make a fuss so long as he can hear me: if he cries I either go further away or I don’t come closer until at least thirty seconds after he stops. I cannot, not being present, stop him from assaulting the door.
Helen suggested that I get a dog whistle and give it to Biscuitwoman and ask her to blow on it when she hears Sunny banging against the door. It occurs to me now that I might combine this with the extra-biscuit-hiding problem. First, don’t hide the biscuits; put them on a shelf and let him cry and beg and ignore his demands. He does get tired of that after a while. Then, when he is not looking (perhaps he’s busy napping or sitting Mouse Patrol or polishing off a bowl of woofy kibble or maybe just while I’m moving about, getting ready to go), hide the biscuits around the place. Then when the whistle Biscuitwoman has tells him that he should leave the door alone, maybe his nose will tell him that he could be using his time and energy to much better purpose by hunting down the hidden biscuits. Also, if he’s just plain dying of woofy boredom, he might have a wander around and see what goodies he can turn up. Of course that will teach him to eat food he finds, but it’s very hard to discourage a dog from doing that anyway. I figure (as do most canines) that if you are stupid enough to leave your food unattended and where a woofus can get it, you deserve to have it eaten by whatever woofi are in the area, so what’s with all the the yelling and hitting? Punishing the woofus for Poor Monkey Planning, are we? Ha! You deserve to go hungry, not the woofus!
Perhaps I should take Sunny for a trip out to the more distant but nonchain pet supply place this weekend to get a dog whistle and some more treats to hide. I could get some really good ones—maybe that freeze-dried liver he loves so much that makes his breath smell so awful!—for the more difficult and sneaky locations. We’ll see. It rather depends upon whether I get September’s numbers done before the end of the week. On that note, I’ll get back to work, and tell you later how the Hopefully Not Poor Monkey Planning went.
