The Dog Who Knew Too Much

We used to have a Berger des Pyrenees named Margot.  Now that sounds all fancy for a sheep herding dog, but there it is.  These dogs have been around for centuries in the Pyrenees mountains in France.

Sheep herding dogs are notorious for being quick.  Margot was no different.  She was a perpetual motion machine.  Anytime she stopped moving you could just see in her face what she was thinking… “what’s next, what’s next, what’s next?!!!”

Beyond being quick, she was also smart.  She was too smart for her own good.  Actually, that’s not true.  She was too smart for OUR own good!  Not only was she smart, she was cunning.  She loved to chase the cats.  Our poor cats were taking their lives into their own paws if they dared to leap to the floor.

Margot loved to chase our black cat Echo the most.  She made his life miserable.  But the really strange thing was what she would do with our female cat Lily.  Margot would hump her!  I have never seen a dog hump a cat before, and certainly not a female dog humping a female cat!  All we could do was shake our heads.  We’d tried everything to make her stop, but it soon became evident that Lily wasn’t running away.  I’m not sure what that says about her, but back to Margot.

We have a dog door so the dogs can go outside anytime they want to.  Margot figured out that when she exited the dog door the cats would often jump down from whatever perch they were on.   Once she learned that, she would go out the dog door, wait on the other side for the thump of a descending cat, and rush back in for a chase!

The cats weren’t the only ones being duped by Margot.  If she barked like hell broke loose, Levi would jump off the bed to investigate.  Margot took that knowledge and would bark at absolutely nothing.  This would make Levi leave the bed and then Margot would get his cushy spot there.  It was all pre-warmed for her.  She was no fool. She was tricky!

When we got Levi, he was an adorable little Great Dane puppy.  Margot took one look at him and she took charge.  He was housebroken almost immediately.  I don’t know what she told him, but he listened.  Even when he weighed 120 lbs more than she did, she could still back him out of a room.  If he didn’t do what she wanted, she would take him by his throat!  She never hurt him, but by gosh, she got her point across!  Margot did not suffer fools gladly.  She was a “take no prisoners” kind of dog.

We knew we were in trouble when she learned how to how to open doors.  She could stand on her hind legs and take her paws and twist the knob!  After that, she was unstoppable!  We finally had to replace the door knobs with a type she couldn’t work.

I can’t leave out the potential homicidal maniacs.  Margot often thought people were coming to kill us.  At least you would think that by the ruckus she would make.  If someone was delivering something, they were coming to kill us.  If the trash man came, he was coming to kill us.  If friends came, they were coming to kill us.  Even the mailman was coming to kill us and he didn’t come any closer than the end of our driveway.  No one was above her suspicion. One day a delivery person came at the same time the trash man came and she was apoplectic!  I thought she would come unglued, but she lived to bark another day.

We lost Margot about 8 months ago and the house just isn’t the same.  No more crazy barking, no more being herded through the house, and very few people are coming to kill us.