Our Pawspective: Q&A - Feeling Left Out

  

Welcome to our opinion and advice column! Got a burning question that can only be answered by well-mannered, well-groomed, awesome corgis? You are at the right place! Send us an email at miaplusbailey@gmail.com for our pawspective on your question! 

    Question: How do I get my humans to listen to me and interact with me more? Sometimes I feel so left out and ignored.  I don’t want to be barking all the time because I want to play or go out or am hungry; humans really do not seem to like that.  How do I use other ways to get my humans attention but still get my point across to them?
-       Molly in Issaquah, Washington

Bailey: Molly, I have two words: Mind Control. It is a subtle art and takes training of your human.  You have to make them think that it is their idea. If you have seen Star Wars, think Jedi Mind.  At least, that’s what I do.  There is a lot of concentration involved.  Say, for instance, I want one of my humans to turn the television on.  They might be sitting down, eating dinner or staring at a computer or what have you.  I will park my butt near them and begin to stare at them for increasingly longer and longer periods of time.  Any time that I feel them look up towards me, I will look over at the tv, as if I am watching it, even though it is not on.  Humans can feel when they are being stared at.  Eventually, your human will realize that they want to watch tv, and will get up and turn the tv on.  Through practice, I have been able to make humans do my bidding in shorter and shorter periods of time. Be warned, this does not work for everything. Some humans are more resistant to certain acts (my Mommy seems particularly resistant to feeding one snacks from the table, while my Child has no problem with it).  Best of luck in your future human training endeavors.

Mia: Molly, remember that you are their princess (or prince). Your comments, suggestions, and needs are essential to your human!  I find that humans are become easily overwhelmed by our sheer awesomeness, and need a lot of reminders regarding our needs and wishes. I mean like a lot. Like, Mommy knows that I eat breakfast no later than 6 a.m. every day; however, some days I have to remind her.  She calls them “weekends,” whatever that means.  Why sleep in when there are so many things to smell and chase and play with?  So, if I want Mommy to get out of bed and feed me breakfast, I will put my face up on the bed and poke her with my wet cold nose. I usually have to do this at least once every 60 seconds or so for about 10 minutes until she will actually get up.  Another thing that I do is bend the house rules.  So, Mommy hung a bell on the kitchen door for me to ring with my nose when I have to go outside to do my business. But sometimes I just want to go out and play, because it’s nice out, or I want to feel the grass, or there are things that I want to smell outside!  So I will ring the bell until Mommy takes me out.  And she will wait until I go potty. Only I don’t, I just play.  This makes Mommy very frustrated, because she never knows when I ring the bell whether I have to go potty or if I’m just playing. But I think humans need to learn to have more play time, especially with us! They need to enjoy our awesomeness more, because we are totally, so ridiculously awesome! Anyway, I hope I gave you some ideas for helping your humans learn to enjoy your awesomeness even more!