What is a command you accidentally taught your pet?
My goldendoodle puppy doesn’t ever want to come back inside. I told my beagle “go get your sister” as I tried rounding up the puppy. Now when I say “go get your sister” the beagle runs to the puppy and baits her into chasing him into the house.
When one of my cats is on my lap, she responds to “ok” as time to get up. Started with, “ok kitty, I need to get up,” but now just the “ok” and she jumps down so I can stand up.
my cat thinks “up” and “down” both mean “get off my lap”.
she also recognizes that when I sit and talk to myself (voice chat) is perfect petting and cuddles time. she’s well known to my therapist and team because of zoom meetings.
and both guinea pigs and the cat have all decided that we do cuddles about 830pm. I thought it was “after work and dinner, sometime before bed”. but the number of times I look up to see what the fuss is, and it’s 830 and all 3 are looking at me expectantly… I assume they figure the time by daylight, because it’s not consistent when I get home.
My bichon/poodle mix has learned the sound of a telephone call. Whether it’s vibrating ringing, the ringtone sound, the ringing sound the phone makes when you are calling someone, or just the inflected way that I say “hello” when answering the phone. He even picks up on any of the above sounds on TV, and he seems to be able to differentiate between the short vibrate of a notification versus the long vibration of a ring.
I have a lot of phone anxiety which means I often get up and pace around my apartment a lot when I’m on the phone. He thinks this pacing implies that I want to play with him, so he gets super excited, chases me around, and tries to grab my ankles or jump on the furniture and nip at my fingers. When I want to play with him, these behaviours are cute and fun. But he has associated me walking around my apartment with wanting to play which is distracting and frustrating when I’m already on edge from my phone call anxiety.
She will put her head through any circle if she thinks I want her to, because I would always get annoyed at her when she wiggled too much trying to get her harness on as a puppy.
Anytime someone sneezes, he runs into the room, makes eye contact, and meows kinda loud once. If you don’t acknowledge him, he may continue ‘murr’-ing if he likes you, until you do say thank you or pet him. It’s really fricken cute. I think it’s because my wife sneezes a lot and we’re very consistent with ‘bless you’ and 'thank you’s ourselves. Neither of us are religious or superstitious, so it’s kinda silly, but it seems polite
My cat loves riding around on my shoulder, and also loves food. He figured out that he has a better than average chance of getting treats after a shoulder ride. The counter in the bathroom is the highest in the house, where he can get the closest to my shoulder. So I apparently taught my cat to come running when he hears the toilet seat go up. Does it every. Single. Time.
I have yelled “Hey!” so many times at so many pets over the years (dogs and cats) when I caught them messing around with something they shouldn’t be that they all started to think “Hey” was their name.
Not specifically a command, but my dog knows the sound of me taking my headset off. She figured out that me taking my headset off means I'm getting up, which means there's a chance I'll let her outside.
Mine has learned all the various ways people say "goodbye" at the end of a virtual meeting and gets really excited when she hears one of them. She knows it means I can pay attention to her now.
I could never get dogs to go around properly a tree on a retractable to unbollox it. Their instinct always seemed to be to go the wrong way and I just cold not get them to do it in such a way they realized that was the fix. My current dog basically just did it as a puppy and then I associated a word with it.
My Chihuahua mix is a very eager lapdog, couch potato, and bedbug. However if she is in any of those places and I say, ‘excuse me,’ or, ‘I gotta get up,’ then she knows it’s time for her to move and gets out of the way for me.
My dog is like that. She lays in my spot in the bed until I’m ready to get in, and then I tell her “scooch” and she moves to her spot. When we cuddle in the morning, she knows that, “ok/alright,” means it’s time to get up and go pee.
My cat Siegfrieda thinks that “bitte” (please) means “free petting”. That’s because I usually tell her bitte when she’s taking too long to obey the command. For example…
Zizi! Komm nach Hause! (Zizi, come home!)
[Siegfrieda ignores me to chase the shadow of a butterfly]
Frieda, komm nach Hause. Bitte. (Frieda, come home. Please.
My dog responds to swear words by doing the kinds stuff you see emotional support dogs do in videos- press on your chest, give you kisses, nuzzle your face, etc.
Except she's small, blind, and a bit... intense, so she kinda launches into you if you're sitting, with some intense affection.
IDK why. I guess we don't swear very often, ao when we do, its special, and we swear with enough gusto for her to think we're very, very upset.
My cat and I slow blink at each other a lot. She usually wants to eat breakfast on the catio, but it’s not fully screened in yet, so I would prefer she ate inside as it attracts other cats and sometimes ravens. I stand in the doorway and ask her to come in, but if she slow blinks and then keeps her eyes closed while still pointing her face at me I know she’s not coming in. That’s my signal to put down the damn cat food woman, it’s al fresco today!
Did I teach her “eyes closed for outside breakfast” or did she teach me “give up when I squinch my eyes closed at you”?
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