Hugo & Beanie

Of all the things I write about, I have yet to really write anything about my two dogs, Hugo & Beanie. They are both Pembroke Welsh Corgis, both boys, not related, and about half a year in age difference. Hugo is the tri-color and Beanie is the fawn (for you Cowboy Bebop fans, think Ein.) Although both are very intelligent, Beanie is clearly much more intelligent than Hugo. Hugo is a very quick learner, because he just likes food, and will pretty much do anything he can to get a treat. Their two personalities differ greatly, I often find Beanie sitting on the couch with one arm propped up against the sofa end looking rather deep in thought; while Hugo looks at you and smiles vacantly. Hugo is the more active and playful of the two, and will easily find all sorts of ways to entertain himself such as running around with one of his many toys and chasing Beanie around the house.

Beanie being the more analytical of the two, I find that he may very well understand what I’m going through. I get the feeling of understanding when he stares up at me with his sad eyes. It is a great comfort that he hops up and curls up next to me in bed even in such warm weather. But Hugo makes me laugh. His little idiotic quirks and his attempts to entertain himself just make me laugh when I look over and see that he’s learned a new little dance, or emote. Blissfully ignorant of the people watching him he suddenly stops and just smiles at you, and continues on his merry way.

A friend of mine told me stories about a trick his uncle does with his dog, in that he has his dog lay down, and then he places a treat a few feet in front of the dog and makes the dog stay until given the “ok” command to get up and take the food. Curious, I decided to test this with Hugo & Beanie. Beanie was fairly quick to learn and he is the more obedient when it comes to commands. Hugo has a VERY hard time resisting anything when there is food to be had. So it took a few tries before I was able to get Hugo to adhere to the rules of the trick. Now, up until about a week ago or so, I was able to get one dog to do the trick at a time. Now I’ve started to work on having both dogs execute the trick in tandem. So here are a few videos I shot tonight. Eventually, I want to get to a point where I can leave the room and keep them concentrated and strictly adhering to the rules of the game. This will be hard. With Hugo, he just cannot resist the temptation long enough, and once one dog goes, they both do. With Beanie, as soon as I’m out of eye sight, he’ll ninja the treat and probably lay back down pretending that he never got up – with Beanie, intelligence = craftiness. Here’s a little video of this new trick. Nothing fancy yet, but eventually, I’ll set up the camera so that I leave the room and see what they do…. Oh and a word of caution, in the middle of the video, I shout No because Beanie tries to cheat, so don’t have your volume all the way up. You have been warned.

Now here are some of their other tricks, notice how Hugo immediately starts begging. He knows he gets a reaction when he does this, so pretty much when ever he wants attention, he’ll do this move, and unsuspecting people immediately fall prey.

Then there’s Beanie. So long as I place the item in front of him and tell him no, he’ll resist. If we had a contest on who can out last each other, I think Beanie would win.