People in the canine world often say dogs do not understand that certain actions, such as digging in a newly planted flowerbed or dragging a half-dead mole into the house, are wrong. This is not strictly true. Some dogs, and by this I mean my two year old Basset Hound, Erasmus, are quite intelligent and know exactly when they are doing something that they are not supposed to be doing. Sure, dogs lack the moral framework to classify activities into “good” and “bad” categories but there is always a handful of dogs that know certain activities are off-limits.
This would be why a few months ago, Erasmus sat at my elbow and looked extremely guilty as he watched me clean up a hand-sized puddle of blue ink off the carpet. The ink came from a ballpoint pen he had seized upon during a brief half-hour when I was out of the house. I came home after a trip to the store to find a blue-smeared dog waiting to greet me. Let me state for the record that I didn't yell at Erasmus, rub his nose across the Smurf-colored stain, lock him in his kennel, ground him from bones for a week, or swat him with a rolled-up newspaper. In short, I didn't do anything to indicate that I was highly displeased with his actions, but he nevertheless sat quietly and watched me with penitent eyes while I attempted to salvage the cream-colored carpet.
This isn't the only time Erasmus has shown me that he knows what is taboo around the house. If I come suddenly into my bedroom, he is likely to scuttle frantically out of the master bathroom where he has been rooting through the trashcan and eating used cotton balls. As he races past my legs, the expression on his face clearly states, “No, Mom, not me, I wasn't getting into anything! So, you don't need to bother going into the bathroom to check!”
But I do check and that is how I discovered that once Erasmus had taken a used tampon out of the trash. I carefully searched through the house, but it was nowhere to be found. As I looked, Erasmus sat in a corner, watching me with carefully and trying unsuccessfully to appear nonchalant, but guilt was clearly written over his droopy face. If the expression wasn't enough to convince me of his culpability, I found the tampon in a coil of dog poop a few days later.
When he's not furtively rooting through the trashcan or cruising my office looking for unguarded writing implements, Erasmus is trying to sneak his bone upstairs. He loves the real bones I get for him, but he doesn't love the fact that I make him keep them in the basement so they won't stain the upstairs carpet. Numerous times, I have heard him quietly pad up the stairs, bone clenched in his jaw, with this special quiet footstep he has just for these occasions. At the top of the stairs, he stops and carefully sweeps the room, making sure the coast is clear. If his eye lights on me, he sighs, turns around, and heads back downstairs without me having to say a word.
Now, in all honesty, I know my dog is a dog. I know that he lives by a particular set of moralities that calls for eating, pouncing on, chasing, and barking at everything that takes his fancy. I know that all my numerous house rules such as “no scratching the carpet” are completely bewildering and unnecessary to him. He has no concept of good and bad, right and wrong. But I also know that Erasmus is smart enough to have picked up that certain behaviors are not acceptable. Most unfortunately, this has not prevented him in the slightest bit from carrying out said actions; it has only taught him to be sneakier about doing so.
On the plus side, Erasmus' stealthy tendencies have made it a little easier for me to head him off early. I can be in my office typing away and hear him quietly bringing his bone up from the basement or sauntering towards the bathroom. Without disturbing my comfortable position, I can shout out, “Don't event THINK about it, Erasmus!” This is usually enough to halt any unwanted activity before it becomes unbendable. I'm not finding anymore ink spots on the carpet. Then again, the pen may not have passed yet.
