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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Oswald is a professional whiner. He whines any morning
we are getting up too slowly for him. My husband and I are late night
people, so we rarely get up before 10 am and Oz is very used to this and happy
about it as he loves to sleep, but since the daylight savings time, he’s
ready to get up every morning at 9. Fortunately if we ignore him for
about 10 minutes he’ll go back to sleep until we are ready to get
up. He also whines if he wants to go out, he whines if he wants to play
and he whines if he wants food, or for that matter, for you to try to feed him
and then him sit/stand there looking at you like you’re crazy for 5
minutes before he finally decides that kibble is an acceptable form of food.
<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>He also barks a lot when he’s around his cousin dogs
(2 very tall Rhodesian ridgebacks and a mini schnauzer). It’s like
he wants them to play with him, but he doesn’t play when they come near,
he just barks like he’s trying to say “Come steal my toy, I dare
you!”. It’s really funny because the other dogs won’t come
near him. They know he’s the boss and he’s not going to give
up his toy, but usually start barking back. I haven’t seen it, but
apparently he can trap them in the kitchen of the in-law’s house by lying
in the hallway and giving them the look and a slight growl while just laying
there. He’s very nice to them usually, but I think he was just
trying to show them who’s the boss.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> My favorite form of his communication is when he wants
to play with a person. He has one form of playing and it’s similar
to the way he plays with dogs because he wants me to try to take his rawhide
away. It usually starts in the bedroom, where he hides his rawhides in
the closet under the mess on the floor. He barks and barks and barks like
he wants you to find his bone, but he hides them so well that we can never find
them (I guess having a messy closet will do that ;) ). Soon enough I have
to come into the room and encourage him to get his own bone and sometimes he’ll
drop it once or twice for me to throw and him retrieve, but apparently he
thinks that gets old really quickly. Then the second part of the game
starts, he starts chewing the bone and then it’s time to start barking
again. I know this means he wants me to try to take it from him, but once
I come near him he starts growling. At first I thought he was being
aggressive like he was going to bite me, but eventually we learned that the
growl noise is basically just a pre-bark noise. Once I keep trying to
take the rawhide away from him he starts barking with it in his mouth and
running away from me. This is especially funny because it’s one of
the only times you’ll ever catch this guy running (unless it’s
after a cat he’s stalking on a walk). He will continue to bark with
his rawhide in his mouth, running all over the apartment trying to get away
from me until eventually I let him win. If I give up before he’s
ready to quit, he’ll just sit there and look at me and drop the rawhide
and start barking at me again, at the same time guarding the rawhide very
closely. If I come near him he grabs the rawhide back and the running
around barking with his mouth full starts again. Eventually whenever he’s
ready to quit playing he’ll chew on it some more and off to a new hiding
spot in the closet or maybe on the bed under the pillows or a blanket (this is a
good spot because we don’t keep our bed made, so we don’t notice it
until we are in the bed covering up). It’s a really fun game to
play, now that I’ve learned all of his rules. I guess he’s
doing well with his slave training after only a little more than a year of
owning us. I’m so glad he has though. I don’t know what
I did without him all these years. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>--Kat, owned by Oswald<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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