Five Curious Habits of My Poodle🔗

The offering🔗

Most dogs aren't happy if someone stands beside them while they eat. If you are standing next to mine at mealtime, you might get a piece to taste, just like he sometimes gets one from our food.

Yes, my poodle spits out his very first kibble right at the feet of the person standing next to him. It almost looks like giving a symbolic share of the prey.

He only does this if a loved one is standing nearby. Since he always eats only the amount he needs, never more, he can be left alone with his next meal. When alone, he never does this.

He has had this habit since puppyhood, although it was an everyday thing back then and now happens only occasionally.

Ball games🔗

Balls have a special place in my poodle's heart. He loves fetching them from afar and also snatching them out of the air. But he can also roll them with his nose.

In one of the flats we lived in, we had a routine of playing soccer while I hung the laundry on the drying rack. He brought his favourite ball. I kicked it into the other room, where he caught it, carried it back to the doorway, and rolled it toward me with his nose, like he was passing to a teammate.

The rules of this game evolved over time, but he learned that he played on one side of the doorstep and I played on the other side, and his passes became more accurate every week.

Since we moved from that flat, we rarely play it anymore, as the usual place for the drying rack is not by a doorway that would serve as a visual guide dividing the room in half. But we still play it occasionally, and his technique is still perfect.

Telling the time🔗

Every evening, the nagging begins exactly one hour after his companion takes her medicine. Regardless of the actual time, it's always one hour after that.

We didn't want to believe it at first, but he kept doing it day after day. Twice a day, his dog companion gets medicine, which she should take on an empty stomach. That means they receive their breakfast and dinner one hour after the medicine is taken. And, sixty minutes later, he starts jumping enthusiastically and calls us with every possible body language signal.

We've measured it. His error margin is 2-3 minutes on average, but many times he is perfectly punctual. Somehow, exactly one hour later, he switches into "let's eat" mode.

Expressing 'yes' and 'no'🔗

When he was excited, he used to make small sneezes that looked like nodding in agreement. Also, when something uncomfortable happened, he would usually shake it off to ease the tension. It looks like shaking his head "no."

When he was little, I started to take it literally. Only for fun at first. I asked him questions, and whenever he gave one of the two signs, I interpreted it as a 'yes' or 'no' answer.

From this game, different signals grew out. Short, soft nose puffs and little disagreeing shakes of his head. For example, he uses the first when he asks for something from the table that he can't reach and I'm touching the right object. He uses the other when he doesn't want the food we offer him, or he is unhappy about something we asked of him.

The talking poodle🔗

It's absolutely shocking how many things he understands from our conversations. I mean, you can watch videos of border collies memorizing hundreds of toy names, or you might have heard about dogs like Stella the Australian cattle dog, who learned to use buttons to communicate.

But when we find him preparing for something we haven't even discussed with him, but only between the two of us, we can't help but be amazed by his language skills.

Not only does he understand a surprising number of things, he also has his own way of vocally expressing himself. Of course, he doesn't use words, but rather hums, grunts, and mutters. On the other hand, his intonation is so human-like that his opinion is obvious even to people who have just met him.

Sometimes he even comments on movies. It has happened several times that when a character said something annoying, he made a resigned sigh, like the one that would accompany a facepalm.

Obviously, I'm pretty skeptical of my own observations. I've seen a lot of owners project intentions onto their pets out of pure love. Maybe my pattern recognition plays tricks with me, making me cherry-pick. But the most fascinating is when my wife, a former dog behavior specialist, is just as astonished by my dog's antics as I am, if not more.