Expressions of Creative Animal Intelligence
Help
your pet to help you
Introduction
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There's
so much to be done each day around the house. You
are busy, the kids need to be woken up, the milk is
boiling over, the geyser has not been switched off,
a hundred and one odd chores that need your urgent,
immediate attention. That's when your pet dog or cat
also demands your attention...whining, wanting to
go for a walk, being pesky and irritable.
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What
do you do? How do you set right an early morning chaotic
start? Well, for one, you can keep a diary and record the
day's work that needs to be completed on the previous night,
long before you begin the day. You can reschedule some of
the work that you need to do in the morning to the evening,
afternoon or any other time during the day when you are
relatively freer. You can also keep your hyperactive, mischievous
pet out of trouble by helping him or her participate in
and help you to begin the day.
Teach your pets to wake up the kids
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Kids
don't wake up in the morning. They don't wake even
when you call them many times. You can try this one.
You can show your pet how to wake up the kids everyday
in the morning. It doesn't matter whether your pet
is a cat or a dog, they can both help.
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You can show your pet how to tap your kid's hand gently
as a wake up call.
If they don't get up with a gentle tap, you can show your
pets how to mew or bark, as a good morning wake up call.
Of course,you can do this only if your pet is an early riser
and wakes up before the kids do.
Show your pets how to carry a newspaper
This
can be made in to an interesting game. You keep your pet
busy, watching and waiting for the newspaper boy to deliver
the paper. Your pet could wait for the newspaper to be dropped
in your garden box, or wherever it is that the newspaper
is placed.You could show your pets how to pick up the paper
and place it on the table or wherever it is that you place
the newspapers.
Train your pets to switch off lights in the room
Make sure that you have pet friendly switches. Teach
your pet how to switch off the light in the room with a
flick of his paws. It's quite simple to do that. Make sure
that your pets never use wet paws when they indulge in this
exercise. Another option that you could use to be doubly
safe is to coat all the switches in your house with another
layer of insulation material so that your pet is really,
really safe. Alternatively, you could teach to carry out
this action only when told, not otherwise. That may be preferable
because that way, you can always check out whether your
pet's paws or dry.
Show your pets how to ring the doorbell
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You
can show your pet how to open and close doors. This
is a very useful skill because sometimes when everyone
in the house is in a mad rush and just too busy,
and the pet has been forgotten, sometimes a door
may be closed by mistake leaving your pet locked
and imprisoned inside the room. If everyone is too
busy in the house and are all in one corner of the
house, while your pet has shut himself or herself
up in another corner, then probably no one will
even hear the sound of his or her whines or mews.
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What
you can do is make sure that all the door handles and latches
in each room are really pet friendly. That means they should
be of the kind that is easy and comfortable for a pet's
paws to handle too, not just the kids. Once you have such
systems in place in the house, then it's a very simple matter
to show your pet how to open and shut a door.
Teach your pets to help you clean his or her corner
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Most
pets eat their food sloppily. That 's a fact of life.
There's nothing much one can do about it. However,
if you want to keep that space of the house clean
and without troubling yourself too much, you can.
What you need to do is to place a small, sturdy wipeable
mat below your pet's food bowl, that doesn't move
when your pet is busy chomping food from the bowl.
When your pet has completed a meal, you can train
your pet to pick the bowl out from the mat and place
it in the wash sink or alternatively, keep it aside.
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Then, you can show your pet how to pick up a mop and quickly
drag it across the surface of the mat.
This can be rather difficult to do. It will be easy for
your pet to learn and follow if he or she is a big breed
dog like a Labrador or German shepherd. You need to train
your pet about this only if he is a big breed dog, otherwise
it can be very vexing, both for you to teach your pet and
for your pet to practice.
Train your pets to leave your kids to school
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As
far as possible, you must choose a good school for your
kids that's very near to your home. Train your kids
to walk to school. They need to bike up and down to
school only if the school is more than a kilometre away
from the house. You can train your pets to accompany
the kids to school. May be, you can go and bring the
kids back from school and don't forget to take your
pets along too. That would be good exercise both for
you and your pets. |
Show your pet how to be a window watcher
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This
can keep your pet busy all day long, sitting by the
window sill watching for people coming. That way, you
can do all your work while your pet's busy at work too!
This is a very useful skill for your pet to develop,
because it's not all the time that your house would
look neat. There would be times when your room's in
a mess, your clothes are scattered all over the place
and you have n't had a bath either.
It is during such times that if you have your pet posted
by the window, that you get to hear the greetings of
visitors calling much before they arrive. That way,
you will have at least a few minutes to freshen yourself
and also tidy up the room. |
Of course, in most cases, people will always call before
they drop in but not with friends and relatives. T
hen,
it always helps when you have those additional five or ten
minutes before they actually ring the doorbell.
Conclusion
Your pet needs constant mental and physical recreation.
By allowing your pet to participate in day to day activities,
you help to strengthen the emotional bonds between your
pet and other family members in the house. Besides, this,
by involving your pet in physical and mental activity you
also help your pet to stay busy and good tempered.
