Last night I watched as our dog Maisy carefully slunk up to my desk, picked up one of my business cards delicately in her mouth, and walked past me looking guilty before hiding in the spare room. This morning I woke up and discovered that at least twenty business cards had been methodically torn to shreds and left in a neat little pile.
It brings a whole new dimension to the excuse “the dog ate my homework” doesn’t it?
We brought Maisy home from the Dogs Home almost two years ago now. She fit in perfectly – a quirky family needs a quirky dog. She’d been mistreated and finally found by council workers, wandering in the Northern Suburbs of Hobart – not the ideal home for a sheep dog.
Two years later, some of her quirks have faded. She no longer hides from visitors, she will finally accept food from our hands and she doesn’t cower at loud noises anymore.
However Maisy still eats paper, used tissues being her preference, these she steals from wherever she can find them. She still cowers away from the broom and she’s still worried that we’ll slam a door on her as she ducks inside and out.
Some of the quirks she has developed since living here. She stalks the cats intently, pretending that they are her sheep. She likes the chooks to be neat and tidy in a tight little circle and she will herd them until they fall into line. Pretty standard things really, for a border collie.
It’s not only our dog that is a little weird, it’s our hens as well.
Hen #1, the lavender bantam – she has anxiety issues. Of course, she watched her entire flock get slaughtered dogs, so you can forgive her a certain amount of nervousness.
Hen #2, the lavender araucana – she is agoraphobic. Before coming to live with us, she lived in a back yard, with paling fences and no horizon. She spent the first two weeks here hiding in the hedge and garden and when we first convinced her to go out into the paddocks, she had a minor chooky meltdown. She probably thought the sky was falling, with the wide open spaces and the horizon in the distance.
The cats are however, pretty normal. This belies their harsh start in life, as they were dumped in parkland when they were six weeks old. An animal lover rescued them, offered them on freecycle and we collected the slightly feral kittens a day later. Cat #3 however – something happened to her before she came to live with us and she isn’t the biggest fan of people all around. I suspect a serious amount of taunting from her previous neighbours – what else makes a perfectly nice cat suddenly a little vicious? Worming her is a three person job and she frequently attacks my ankles for walking too close to her.
Of course, none of this matters, as all of the animals fit in quite nicely with our quirky children and us, the slightly weird adults.
All in all, we make a pretty interesting family.
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Have you had any pets with quirks?
