E.Shrew Guest Post: "Pavlov's Dog"

Have you ever heard of Pavlov’s dog? Well if you haven’t, Pavlov was a Russian scientist who was credited for describing classical conditioning. In a typical experiment, he manipulated the incentives occurring before the presentation of food…. like a bell. You ring a bell every time a juicy steak is fed to a dog and it becomes conditioned to getting steak when hearing the bell. He hears the bell, runs excitedly and starts to salivate in anticipation of the juicy steak.

So I have been cohabitating with Brett now for 101 days (who’s counting) and have come to realize Brett is Pavlov’s dog. Brett loves his dachshunds. He dances, sings and sleeps with them as we all know from the most recent tragic pee incident. But sometimes they are a bit much as they constantly demand attention. Just this morning, Brett was bitching and moaning how he longed for an uppity dog like Jack E. Shrew. (the Schnauzer pictured below)



You see... Jack is very well trained. I walk in the door and he kisses me passionately. He patiently waits for me to get settled. Then I decide to let him chase the chickens, toss a ball and give him a treat.

But what I noticed is Boudreaux and Pierre have Brett very trained. They start dancing up and down, running in circles and howling. Brett immediately cocks his head whimpers, “I love my babies” and administers a doggie treat. The dogs wink at each other.

Boudreaux runs to his designated spot on the bath mat and Pierre waddles to his doggie bed to stash yet another treat. In fact, it has become such a problem that our iRobot Roomba room vacuum cleaner continues to get lodged on the discarded doggie treats.

On the surface this is no big deal. We all love our dogs. What worries me is that we have 9 Chickens and a Rooster. I can tell you it is a fact that when Brett’s SUV pulls up in the driveway, Rocky the rooster starts his special dance. Brett cocks his head, whispers something I can not quite make out and heads to the chicken coop………