Tuesday, December 20, 2022

The ongoing saga of B-B and B Part 23: Toy Stealing to Mutual Carrot Chomping

These contrasting videos were shot on the same day, less than a 1/2 hour apart.  Are these two behaving like siblings, or what? In the first one, at around 7:50 p.m., B decides that B-B cannot have his blue rubber and rope tug toy and makes some interesting vocalizations to determine toy ownership.




In the second video around 8:15  p.m. I had given them several full size carrots cut in half so that they would each get a few pieces.  Surprisingly, they still share common chunks of carrot. (Not shown in the video but they did share and took bites from some of the same carrot halves with their heads right next to each other.)  I would have thought they'd be more inclined to fight over the food.  When we first got B-B a year ago there would be some sharp reactive growls and behaviors from B over food and food bowls but now they take turns licking out each others food bowls and will even take turns with some foods.  B-B tends to wolf things down as quickly as he can but B takes her time.  However, sometimes she surprises us and eats more quickly.  She'll move over to B-B's portion and they communally eat from the same bowl with no signs of aggression or territorial/reactive behavior.  We have worked to make sure they both ate separately until they both seemed satisfied and used a spray bottle with water when one went to steal a treat from the other one.  We also put them on leashes when they get a long lasting treat like a cow ear so they have separation from each other to just keep one (mostly-I mean entirely-B-who would happily keep many treats to herself even if just to hoard them away from B-B who barks in frustration when she hogs some of the toys).  Maybe carrots are just the magical sharing treat since they've done this before: https://cookingandorscience.blogspot.com/2022/05/the-ongoing-saga-of-b-b-and-b-part-9.html


 

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