Dog Eat Doug by Brian Anderson for August 17, 2019

Humans can be cruel.

If it’s on the internet, it must be true. Search on “Stupid pet tricks.”

I dislike when people do that – poor poochies don’t get the persons weird, cruel sense of humor :( grrrrrrrSorry Annie – just someone being mean to you :(

Yes, they can be very cold hearted!

Poor Annie…finally gets to play & Dad pulls this stunt on her. Great face(s) on Annie in panel 2 & in panel 1 as well.

We threw snowballs for our dogs. Benny would look, then turn and give us such a look!!! But, ol’ goofball Jean-Luc, would dig and dig and dig, then give up and come back to us for more. Ah, dogs!!!

Ha! I only fooled my Shep/Lab mix once with a fake throw, when she was a puppy. But, she was so smart that she never fell for it again! Ha ha, poor Anne! Her look says, ’Why human? Why?

Her world’s breaking. What have you done?

Poor Annie…. and she thought she Wanted To live with humans…. Ah, the learning curve-

That is a stupid trick. It makes the dogs less determined to find things. They have that nagging idea that the master might be fooling them. How fun is that?

I suddenly feel guilty for every time I did this to one of my dogs.

I don’t recall ever doing this to my dog. One thing I did do was hit the brakes too hard sending him into a heap on the floor. Even though he just scrambled back up and stuck his head back out the window, without a reproachful look, I never did it again…

Our mini-Chihuahua (RIP) would let me do that once! Then she would glare at me and wouldn’t move until she actually saw the toy fly.

And now Annie’s faith in humanity, gone [sob].

On a happy note though, Annie’s off guard duty.

A long, long time ago, some friends of my father’s had several golden retrievers. They had a special throwing toy specifically designed for training the dogs for retrieving ducks during duck hunting. Dogs learn. They learn when you throw something and when you don’t. They learn to track arcs, and to tell when they’ve lost sight of the prey and have to regroup. You don’t “trick” dogs by pretending to throw stuff. You get them to recognize when you’re being a jerk. You’re training them to tell if you’re jerky. If you get too jerky, they’ll go look for someone else to play with.

…and we can pretend like we think the table legs are trees next time we need to relieve ourselves. We can prank, too!