Science, Songs

No Turd, No Canine

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I love a good study of something that can’t be measured, which is why I fell immediately for some sparkling new research I saw yesterday about jealousy in dogs. It is even more wonderful than another obscure bit of science that I used to love about contagious canine yawning.

It’s not that I’m fickle, but after caring so much about what dogs must think when I yawn at them, I do need something fresh to occupy my mind and keep the excitement alive.

This latest experiment is just so charming.

Researchers emotionally provoked thirty six dogs by having the owners, in the presence of their pets, give attention to three different things – a book, a moving, barking toy dog, and a pumpkin-shaped Halloween candy bucket.

The book was read aloud. The toy dog and the bucket were talked to and petted like they were real animals.

The actual dogs were not interested in their human’s interaction with the book, but had a negative reaction when their owners coddled the fake canine.

A certain amount of butt-sniffing was done with regard to that toy dog. There was no similar behavior around the Jack-O-Lantern bucket because neither dogs nor science can tell us where a pumpkin’s butt is located. Is it on the bottom or at the stem? Time to fund another study.

At any rate, the canines showed a significant amount of alarm when it seemed like there was a new (phony) dog on the scene.

The conclusion: Dogs get jealous.

An alternate conclusion: Dogs get embarrassed for you when you act like a plastic bucket and a scentless stuffed dog are really alive.

But if dogs do get jealous, they will need songs to soothe them through their pain. My nomination: Marvin Gaye’s “Heard It Through the Grapevine.”

No one loves you like I do
You’re my man, and I’m “Old Blue”
But then you picked up a new dog at the store
Between me and that pup
You know I loved you more.
So it took me by surprise when I snuffed
and found out your new pet was stuffed
Don’t you know that no turd means it’s not canine?
Fundamental to the design.
Let me tell you no turd means that’s no canine!
That’s the news that comes from behind.
Honey Honey, yeah.

What’s your favorite song about betrayal?

63 thoughts on “No Turd, No Canine”

      1. okey dokey-

        When one grows up in western Iowa with conservative type parents in the 1970s, one is stuck with more country music than one cares to admit in most circles. But you guys, I figure I can trust 🙂

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      1. As I recall, when I first joined the trail, at least one baboon – don’t recall which one – expressed a lack of appreciation for her vocal style.

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    1. And then there are these exquisitely painful words in “Graceland”:

      She comes back to tell me she’s gone
      As if I didn’t know that
      As if I didn’t know my own bed
      As if I’d never noticed
      The way she brushed her hair from her forehead
      And she said losing love
      Is like a window in your heart
      Everybody sees you’re blown apart
      Everybody sees the wind blow

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      1. the thought occurs–most songs are from the point-of-view of the betrayed. Not that often you find one by the betrayer.

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        1. Ooo, but here is another in that vein.
          surprised I had to think so hard about it, it is so deeply painful

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    1. My dogs treat all stuffed animals the same – as stuffy toys meant to have the squeeker chewed out of them!

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      1. My old wire-haired dachshund, Pablo, turned all stuffed toys into rags within hours. He was just ferocious. I’b buy used, stuffed toys at garage sales for him, and he’d have a couple of hours of release for his instinct to kill small, furry beasts.

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        1. The big issue at our house is that my Irish Setter firmly believes that all new toys are hers and hers alone. She guards them, particularly from the cats who aren’t remotely interested. If a toy goes under a bed or in the basement for awhile, when she finds it, then it’s new again. After about a week, then she lets up.

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    1. “You’re So Vain” always puzzled me. The line “You probably think this song is about you” suggests the song is really NOT about the person described as “you”. But of course it is. So a reasonable response would be “You’re so angry, you think this song about me is not about me.”

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  15. I confirmed canine jealousy once. I was throwing retrieving dummies into Lake Minnetonka from my parents’ dock. I threw one and then asked Tessie, my wife’s springer spaniel, to get it. She was afraid of the high jump off the dock to the lake. I asked her again to get it. She did a lot of false starts, whinnying with fear.

    I said, “That’s okay Tess.” I rubbed my past Brandy, the dog I loved and shared my life with for 14 years. “Brandy can get the dummy.”

    Tess let out a strangled yowl and leaped instantly out into space to go get the dummy. I couldn’t give this to you word for word, but her scream translates roughly as, “The HELL she will!”

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  18. “You can have her, I don’t want her, she’s too fat for me”.

    (Don’t ask me how I know about this one. My dad used to burst into singing this, at random moments.

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  23. Wait a minute. Not all broken heart songs are songs of betrayal. In any number of the above songs I see no indication of betrayal. Wising up, sure, and getting the hell out of here, but where’s the betrayal in that? Am I missing something?

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    1. It depends– is it wising up and leaving, or is somebody in fact being dumped? All depends on how you look at it (or listen to it).

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    3. depends on how you define betrayal, maybe? maybe some people wised up and get out of there because the other person betrayed them by being a jerk.

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    1. The night was black, rain fallin’ down
      Looked for my baby, she’s nowhere around
      Traced her footsteps down to the shore
      ‘fraid she’s gone forever more
      I looked at the sea and it seemed to say
      “I took your baby from you away.
      I heard a voice cryin’ in the deep
      “Come join me, baby, in my endless sleep.

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  27. Terribly off topic, but two guys arrived at my house at 4:45pm this evening, and by 6:30 my house had gutters and down spouts. I am so happy, and it can rain all it wants to.

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