Hiding Bones

[Bekah]

Liddy "hides" her bones after chewing on them for awhile, then returns to them later. Some of her favorite places to hide bones are in the corner, on the hearth or on your lap. When Liddy is in the process of finding a good hiding place, she will cautiously look around the room to make sure no one is watching her (least we steal one of her precious chews).

Does anybody else's Cairn do this?

[kerry]

Bruschi hides treats, socks, bones, and toys! He is so funny! He did it since the night we brought him home he was trying to dig in the corners. He has such an instinct for things I never had another dog ever do this like him. Maybe once in a while but this is a daily thing with the cairn. He is very entertaining. If you give him a treat he brings it to someone else in the family and puts it at their feet and stands over it until he decides to start eating it.

[CathyAnn]

Bekah....sounds like typical Cairn behavior to me!

Our two do this frequently. They especially like to bury them outside in our bark mulch and let them "ferment" for a week or so. Then, they try to bring them in all muddy and soggy......hehe!

Cathy

[Eliz222]

Scout use to do this all the time!!!!!!!!!! Her favorite place was in the couch, behind furniture, under pillows, and behind doors. Ever since we adopted Finch, she has stopped. I think Finch tries to get "her" bones, so she chews on them instead. Scout use to hide them before chewing on them...sometimes hiding them for a month!

[jlr79]

Abby hides her toys. Under furniture, behind furniture...she is so funny!!!!

Jan

[abe's dad]

Abe does this too He will hide stuff all over the house but his favorite is in our bed under the pillows. Sometimes when we are going to be out for a while I will hide treats for him. He almost always finds them.

[Apollo8it]

When Apollo was a pup, we would find treats hidden all over the house. We would even find them in our bed along with a few toys too.

[Bekah]

Aw, the pictures are so cute! I really love the one of Apollo basking in the glow of his hidden treat.

[Scully'sMom]

Oh I LOVE these pictures!

Scully "hides" her bones in a very unusual manner. She will go over and dig for a little bit at a spot, put the bone down, and then take her nose and "cover it with dirt." She then will look like she's tamping the dirt down. It's a scream! She does this beautiful job of burying it and it's sitting out there for everybody to see.

[bradl]

That is one of my most absolute favorite things dogs do. I call it 'air burying' - it looks so instinctual it's like a mysterious glimpse into some ancient and unknowable genetically hard-coded part of their being. I imagine we probably do similar things we aren't even aware of.

Another hilarious thing is if you point out to them that you know it's there, they get all huffy and snatch up their treasure and bury it again somewhere else, often in just as plain sight!

[Eliz222]

Finch does the "air burying" thing too...it's really funny to watch! Scout, "before Finch days", use to walk from room to room looking for her favorite spot to "bury" her bone. Sometimes she would do this for an hour.....walking from room to room all around the house!

[toomanypaws]

Whenever I change the bedding on their beds, it's always Abbey's bed that has hidden treasures under her pillow. She will also take some of her favorites into her crate away from Kiara & Hannah.

Kiara has this favorite squeaky toy that she loves to play fetch w/ outside. When I call her in, she'll bring the toy and stash it somewhere in the screen room so no one else can have it.

[jlr79]

I love the pictures of Abe and Apollo!! Abe looks sooo comfy and Apollo looks so pleased with himself!!! They are precious!!

Jan

[CathyAnn]

Yes, my two do the "air burying" thing with their noses and paws! It really is too funny to watch them "hide" things in plain sight!

Cathy

P.S. Great pics!!!

[HappyCairn]

Two of mine also do the "air burying" thing to. What a hoot! My cairn can open the bathroom cabinet doors and prefers to hide his in between towels.

[wheezie23]

Tucker is a notorious "air burier". But I am constantly finding his treats in my closet, in my shoes! I always see him slinking off to my closet with his toys in his mouth. Just another endearing trait of cairns, I see!

thela

[Greg]

Here's Petey tring to hide his soccer ball in his favorite hole

[Carolinasmom]

Our two do this frequently.  They especially like to bury them outside in our bark mulch and let them "ferment" for a week or so.  Then, they try to bring them in all muddy and soggy......hehe!

Cathy

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I read not long ago to be careful with this b/c the buried bones can pick up bacteria and it can make a dog dangerously sick! So I would say if it looks particularly nasty, throw them out just to be safe!

Carolina will go hide hers in a corner in some other room and then forget it's even there. There's one in our spare bedroom right now that's been there for months. When I see her heading down to the basement, which is quite a junk pit, I take it away from her b/c it'll never be seen again if it ends up there!

[CathyAnn]

Hmmm......thanks for the warning.

But.....we're talking about a dog that considers poop his favorite snack!!

Cathy

[FinnsMom]

The "air burying" must be popular, my Rocky does it too! Is so cute...He hides extra treats or bones in corners of things, verrrrrrry carefully, with his little nose...sometomes he barks at it lightly, like inside the corner of the coffee table leg, sometimes in his bed, or in the corner of the family room, or on my bed between the pillows(I had to take it out of the bed last night!) It funny when he notices that I am watching him, he keeps looking at me, then at the "buried" treat, where he thinks you can't see it, as if to say, "I hope she doesn't see where it is!"

Wanda

[Carolinasmom]

Hmmm......thanks for the warning. 

But.....we're talking about a dog that considers poop his favorite snack!! 

Cathy

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thanks for the laugh!

Still chuckling...

[Kathryn]

Air-burying! Good to know what this is called! Even my childhood mini dachshund did this...

Our last cairn, Annie, was particularly fond of "air burying" a few chunks of her dogfood. We always figured she was saving some just in case we ever forgot to feed her. Most of the time she "air buried" her treats right out in the open, but sometimes she would get creative and hide them under rugs or the furniture. Once, a week after we had visited my mother-in-law in California, she called to say that her cleaning lady had found a piece of the dog food under a rug and wondered whether our dog was house-trained. (Hmmmpf.)

We got Allie about two months after losing Annie. We thought that, by then, we had found all of the "hidden" treats. We were wrong, though. We found one final chunk of kibble under a floor lamp in the living room.

[Padfoot]

My favorite part of the air burying with our dog is that as he wanders around the house, looking for that perfect hiding spot, he whines and whimpers softly to himself. We call these his "Gollum" moments. You can almost hear him reassuring his "precious" that he will take care of it, and find the perfect hiding place so that no one will take it away from him!

[Bekah]

Last night Liddy and I played hide-and-seek with the remains of her new bone. First she would hide it, sometimes by air-burying, sometimes by sticking it in a corner. Then she would bark at me to go find it. When it was my turn to hide it, Liddy would follow me around and as soon as I hid her bone she'd grab it and run (the little cheater!).

Once when I had to give up the game, Liddy hid her bone on my lap and then used her nose to nudge my laptop closed so I could see the bone.

This went on almost all night and she seemed pretty pleased with herself for having thought of a game that entertained her owner so much.

[Mama Kim]

Piper always hides her bones. We find them in the cutest places.