Canine children

One thing that I have noticed about people who either no longer have children at home or never had children is that their pets tend to become their children. All the attention that would have gone to children is now tranferred to their animals. I don't think that I am quite there yet but I have been giving our four furry family members more attention lately. As someone who has studied animal behavior, I am still puzzled, amused and sometimes amazed at their behavior. Piper, our Sharpei-Border Collie mix, is interesting to watch. She is about 3 years old but still acts like a teenage dog. A couple of days ago I bought a couple of soup bones while I was at the grocery store, one for Piper and one for Kozmo (American Eskimo-lab-? mix). I hadn't done that for a while and it didn't take me long to remember why. The dogs had been happily chewing on their bones while Bob and I were raking leaves. Suddenly, we heard a lot of barking and growling. I went to investigate and found Kozmo guarding his bone, snapping at Piper when she came near. I looked all over but couldn't see Piper's bone. She appeared to be totally clueless as to it's location. However, when I asked Kozmo "where's Piper's bone?", he ran over to one of the freshly dug holes (Piper is a digger, unfortunately) and looked at me. Piper immediately ran over and began to growl at Kozmo. So I reached into the hole, dug around, and sure enough, there was the bone. After wiping it off I gave it to Piper. She chewed on it for a bit but after a while she was carrying it around the yard, running in circles. There seemed to be an air of desperation about her, like she just HAD to bury it. The next day both bones had disappeared so Bob dug them up. Later, Piper was standing over both bones, not allowing poor Kozmo near them. She was moved inside so Kozmo could gnaw on his bone in peace. Today both bones were missing again but Bob felt he had better things to do besides digging for bones. (Imagine that!) I had been considering buying new dog beds but perhaps Piper is still not ready for that. When we first got her she managed to pull her foam dog bed through the dog door to the yard where she proceeded to destroy it. Once she had finished off her own bed, she did the same to Kozmo's. Poor Kozmo! He loved to curl up in that bed. After trying other beds (which she destroyed), they ended up with plywood with old carpet stapled to it - the one thing that Piper can't pull through the door or chew up. We keep hoping she'll grow up! Or develop more brains! We still love her, though. She's one of the family.