How the dog feels about rain

[kate_nepveu]

Emmy is a German Shepherd mix, the mix being something small, floppy-eared, and no more a water dog than a German is. She is also crate-trained, and her crate (which is much too big for her) sits immediately to the right of the back door. Chad has a picture, complete with mangled literary reference.

This morning, a summer thunderstorm was pouring down rain when we got up. I let her out back, in case she needed to go to the bathroom that badly. She didn't, I let her in—and she went directly into her crate and curled up in a little ball at the very very back.

I asked her a magic question ("Are you hungry?", which usually gets her running from anywhere in the house) and put down her breakfast. She stayed curled up in a little ball at the very very back of her crate. I tossed a treat in her bowl, and she came out to eat. When she finished eating—right back in her crate.

I made my own breakfast before our morning walk, instead of after, hoping the storm would pass. Normally she'd be around my feet as I buttered my toast, hoping I'd drop some; lying at my feet while I ate, hoping I'd drop some; and snuffling for crumbs on my chair after I finished. (She likes toast.) Today, she stayed curled up in a little ball at the very very back of her crate.

I coaxed her out by talking to her, rubbed her ears, and told her that she was a good dog and the rain had stopped. (It had. I wouldn't lie to her.) She wagged her tail and snuffled for toast crumbs . . . until she saw me getting my rain gear. Then she went and sat behind the farthest corner of the dining room table. When I asked her another magic question—"Do you want to go for a walk?"—she went directly into her crate and curled up in a little ball at the very very back.

I tried to coax her out again. She wagged her tail just a little and rolled slightly onto her side—either to show her belly, or to make it harder for me to get at her collar, I'm not sure. What she did not do, was move.

I sighed. I checked the window to confirm that the rain really had stopped. Then I crawled into the crate and clipped the leash onto her collar.

Once I did that, she reluctantly got up and suffered herself to be taken outdoors. And we had a very nice walk.

But boy, does she hate the rain.

Comments

[texas-tiger.livejournal.com]

Poor puppy! *grin*

[kate_nepveu]

A frequent refrain around our house is how it's _so_ hard to be her . . .

[sraun]

Yours is intermediate between two of mine - one of mine (not the one in the icon) tries to climb! when there's a severe storm. Another one (the one in the icon) doesn't mind if it's raining, but refuses to get his feet wet! If the ground outside is wet, we have to literally carry him outside and set him down far away from the door.

[kate_nepveu]

Emmy is fortunately too big to carry, or to know that she could demand carrying. She's inconsistent about getting her feet wet. When the street is wet, she often wants to walk *right* in the *middle* of it, I think because it's driest there; but she happily splashed through quite a lot of much at the side of the road this morning.

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

Hah! My housemate has a half-Labrador who doesn't like to get wet. One morning, after he'd been sent outside, I found him standing on top of the storage bench on the covered porch because the floor of the porch was set and he didn't want to stand on it. If he had a crate to crawl into when threatened with Outside in rainy weather he'd be in there with Emmy.

We figure he must get it from the cocker spaniel or the Rottweiler bits in his background.

[kate_nepveu]

Seriously, because the Lab I know best is like a duck when it comes to water.

[genarti]

Awwww, poor pup.

Our old dog was a soft-coated wheaten terrier, which is an Irish farm breed with quite a quantity of soft fur. (So is our current one, but of a very different temperament.) Her hair always got matted because she disliked being brushed and we were bad at remembering to do so often enough, so we had her clipped close for the Cincinnati summers we lived in at that point.

The first time she got clipped was, we think, the first time she actually felt rain hit her skin. And she cringed away from it as if it were acid, with this look of utter shock at the world at large.

She did get more used to rain, in time, but she never got to really like it.

[kate_nepveu]

That would be startling, wouldn't it? Poor thing.

(Emmy *likes* being brushed. You bring out the brush, she trots toward you, leans into the brush, and stays put for a really long time. She's a weird dog.)

[prince-corwin.livejournal.com]

No, my dogs loved that, too. They had short, straight hair, so the process did not involve ripping out tangles, and they seemed to view it as a sort of mechanically-optimized petting-and-deep-fur-massage session.

[genarti]

Mom always teased her that she was an Irish breed, for pity's sake, and ought to be genetically accustomed to rain.

Shockingly, this made little impact on Shenanigan.

(Hee! I think it matters if you start them when they're young, which is a mistake we made with Shaney. Our current dog does not actively like it, but he puts up with it amiably enough because he gets a treat afterward.)

[prince-corwin.livejournal.com]

Is it the rain, specifically, or the associated thunder?

[kate_nepveu]

It's the rain. She gets very wet, stays wet for a long time, and hates it.

She's sometimes a little nervous with thunder, but not to the point of having a problem like some dogs.

[prince-corwin.livejournal.com]

Weird. Most other dogs I know love the rain and the attendant mud it creates in a back yard. But, correspondingly (and especially for big hunting dogs bred for sharp ears) they tend to hate and fear the thunder.

Your dog may actually be a cleverly disguised cat.

[kate_nepveu]

Don't tell Chad!

[cofax7]

Oh, that's adorable.

[kate_nepveu]

She is awfully cute.

[leighdb.livejournal.com]

Our Holly was a border collie-terrier mix, and adored water. Not that I especially remember her being wild about rain, as such, but she would go MAD WITH HAPPINESS whenever we went up to the summer house at the lake, and would spend more or less every waking moment trying to cajole someone into throwing her ball into the lake so she could swim out and get it. Over, and over, and over, and over...

Maybe she learned it from my aunt's Lab, who was the swimmingest dog you ever did see. She was also not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and used to jump in the lake after us kids and swim in circles around us, trying to guide us to shore, because obviously we were drowning even though we'd been swimming in there for her entire life.

Oh, and for dogs and dislike of wet, I trust you have read and laughed hysterically at this (http://www.missdoxie.com/current.html).

[kate_nepveu]

No, I hadn't--thank you, my own problems were already small, but now are much, much smaller.

(Also, that person needs a good dog trainer, but you knew that already.)

[calimac.livejournal.com]

My understanding is that it's very unusual for dogs to dislike getting wet, though perhaps that's mistaken.

The truth I do not stretch or shove
When I state the dog is full of love.
I've also proved, by actual test,
A wet dog is the lovingest.

-- Ogden Nash