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Showing posts from February, 2021

Does Your Dog Bark When Looking In The Mirror?

Who's that doggie? When  Django  was still young, every now and then,  she  would wake up, stand, and start barking in the middle of the night and I couldn’t figure out why. Then one afternoon, I heard her barking her head off when I was downstairs and she was upstairs. A quick look in my room and I saw her losing her mind and barking at the dog in the mirror…herself. It was funny and endearing. I showed her my hand petting her head but she just would not have it and was convinced that the dog she saw was a stranger, and thus needed to defend herself…against, herself. It became a regular occurrence around the house. If we heard her barking upstairs, we knew she was staring at herself. Yet her barks are loud and I soon began to close the door so she wouldn’t have the mid-afternoon showdown with her ego.  Only now, two years later, did I learn of why she did that. Why dogs bark at their own image Dr. Marty Becker, over at Vetstreet says, the “mirror test is considered an important ev