Is there a doggie psychiatrist in the house?

[stgulik]

So, we said our good-byes to our dog Daisy last week. Cancer has taken another good soul. Now she's gone, and my husband, my daughter and I have been searching for all our best pics of her and passing them to each other on Facebook chat. A sort of three-person memorial service for the internet age.

When the other two dogs line up for Milk Bones, they leave the exact amount of space Daisy used to take. It'll be a while for that space to close up, I'll bet.

They are both terrier mutts with lovely, tiny brains, and occasionally they seem to wonder why it's just the two of them. Here's the weirdest example of their befuddlement. (Don't read this while eating.)

My kid came over to do her laundry a few days later. While she was visiting, the youngest terrier did something she's never done before: she brought some dried dog poop in the house, put it down on the floor near the couch, and started ... playing with it. Like, rolling it around. We wondered if it she found it in some corner of the yard, recognized it as a relic of her old friend, and brought it into the house, to the only human nearby, in order to ask about the missing dog who originally laid it ...? Or to share it with family, as a memorial for the doggie age ...?

I mean, if the poop even was Daisy's, which hello. We're no poop experts. All I know is, that act was decidedly a one-off for the young terrier, and it was freaking weird.

Comments

[tudorpot.livejournal.com]

After my father died, his dog was quite distressed. I gave her one of his sweaters that still had his scent.

Re dog poo, playing with it isn't as bad as eating it. Some dogs do, I had to stop Sophie from doing this.

[stgulik.livejournal.com]

I did the same with a towel of hers--put it in her dog bed for the others to visit if they wanted.