The Bully

Occasionally I give Nigel and Divot bully sticks to chew on. I found organic bullies at Only Natural Pet Store ( www.onlynaturalpet.com) They love these chews and get very excited when I even start the preparations for it. The preparations are that I get out an old beach towel to cover the carpet in my office (this towel is referred to as “the binky”). When the binky is placed on the floor, they each go to it and sit, knowing that a chewie is coming. Once chewies are handed out, they each go to one end of the binkie and stay on it while they enjoy a chew. They are both so good about this and I don’t ever remember specifically training them to do it! As is Divot’s usual custom she begins to enthusiastically chew on her stick and this lasts for less than a minute because she has realized that she really wanted the one that I gave to Nigel. Please understand that it doesn’t matter which stick she gets – she always wants the other one. I never take Nigel’s stick away from him to give to her because that wouldn’t be fair. So, Divot waits him out. She sits as close to him as politely possible, while imploring me to take it away from him, occasionally giving out a little whimpering sound although this has no effect on Nigel as he happily chews on his stick. When he has had what I consider a good amount of healthy chew time, I will offer him a carrot and he drops the stick and runs to the kitchen with me and Divot, thrilled with this turn of events picks up the stick that is nicely primed for her and has her turn at it. This is the way things normally go but several weeks ago, Divot realized that she’s missing out on something and she set out to rectify the situation.

When the time came, I offered Nigel a carrot as usual and we headed for the kitchen but as I was feeding him pieces of carrot, Divot suddenly came running into the kitchen with the bully stick in her mouth. This is a good size stick and she is a small dog so it was a very funny scene. She quickly dropped the stick, gulped down a piece of carrot, picked up the stick and quickly headed back to my office, the bully stick hanging from her mouth like a huge cigar. All of this happened in mere seconds! Just as suddenly as she left however, she returned with the bully stick still in her mouth and she headed for the patio door throwing me a look that said, “Gotta go potty!” so I opened the door and out she went. She relieved herself, the bully stick still in her mouth, came in the door and trotted past me with a glance that said, “Thanks!” and headed back to the binky in my office. Apparently this bully was just too good to let go of, even with nature calling. She had never done anything like this before and I would love to see her do it again and hopefully get photos of it.

"I Really don't see why I can't have that one"