The Dastardly Book for Dogs. Chris Pauls

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      Feigning injury

      It’s easy to goad your owner into handing over that Cumberland sausage. Mope around the house, add a slight limp to your gait and you’ll be eating from the table in no time. Be careful not to overdo it. Anything too theatrical or hammy and they’ll sense that you’re faking it. You want to be convincing in a way that doesn’t warrant too much concern, so don’t fake anything too serious. The last thing you need is a surprise trip to the vet during the dinner hour. An injured paw is always plausible and usually easy to pull off.

      Reverse psychology

      This technique is brilliant and rewarding but difficult to employ. Say an entire roast turkey with dressing appears on the dinner table. You promptly trot out of the room, find a toy and pretend that you would rather be doing anything, anything at all, besides eating that delicious turkey that you don’t even really care to taste. Act as if delicious golden-brown turkey bores you to tears, and that you cannot wait for your owners to be finished with their totally uninteresting tenderly roasted dinner with all the trimmings. Believe it or not, they will wonder where you are and why you aren’t there begging at the table. Then they will come to find you and feed you. That’s right – they will bring the food to you. Reverse psychology is a simple, effective tool that works wonders. Unfortunately many dogs find it physically impossible. It’s worth a try, though. If you have the discipline, this one pays off handsomely.

      While the time and energy invested in learning and executing begging techniques is high, the effort is low – and the pay-off rich and buttery. Remember: Stay strong, stay fast and stay put. Your owner loves you. Your owner is weak. Your owner will fold.

The Roots of Barks

      Have you ever wondered how the barks we use every day came to be? Perhaps one day an ambitious pup will list the etymological roots of all the nearly 180,000 barks currently in use, but until that dictionary is written, here are the origins of some of our favourites.

      Ruhruhruhruhruh. Meaning ‘someone is at the door’, this bark is derived from the ancient Indo-European barks ‘rrrrrrr’, meaning ‘alert’, and ‘mmbuhmmbuh’, meaning ‘visitor’.

      Ooowwww! Ooowww Asztalos, a Hungarian Kuvasz, is considered the first dog to identify the distance to the moon based on how long it took his howled name to bounce back to earth. After this landmark discovery, in 1379, Asztalos’s first name became synonymous with moon-directed howls.

      Grrrrr. The Grrrrrs were a pack of Pharaoh Hounds charged with sitting at the royal throne of Amenhotep IV (aka Akhenaten). Their job was to instil fear and humility in foreign envoys by emitting a low, threatening growl throughout the course of a visit with the pharaoh.

      Woof. Though there is some debate about woof’s etymological roots, it is generally accepted that the common greeting was first used in the early part of the fifth millennium when the Chinese refined animal-husbandry techniques. The Chinese would introduce themselves to their canine workers by saying, ‘Wo-duh ming-d’zi …’ (‘My name is …’), and the dog would respond likewise, ‘Wo-duh ming-d’zi …’ Over time, dogs learned to simplify their language for more efficient communication, and the greeting became shortened to ‘wod’z’, which in turn became ‘woof’.

      Arf. In Olde Bark, ‘awrk’ meant ‘at the ready’, which a dog would bark out at the beginning of a joust to signal the opposing riders to raise their lances. When the bark crossed the English Channel into France, ‘awrk’ became ‘arf’, and the meaning expanded. Today we use ‘arf’ to command an owner to lift a ball and prepare to throw it.

      Ruff. Like many slang terms in our society, ‘ruff’ originated in the dog’s home and was first popularized by inmates. Bad doggies in the Battersea Dogs’ Home used the word around the keepers as part of a complex coded language. When a dog would plot an escape, he would mumble the word ‘ruff’ under his breath because it could be uttered with minimal jowl flapping (which keepers looked for as a sign of mischief afoot). The word is now used whenever a dog wants to skedaddle, even though an owner is content to stay in the house.

      Yip! Yip! Yip! A relatively new bark, ‘Yip! Yip! Yip!’ derived from a Spanish bark that came into fashion quite circuitously. Queen Isabella II of Spain had an esteemed Ratonero Bodeguero Andaluz (translation: Andalusian Wine Cellars’ Ratting Dog) named Rodrigo who suffered from a terrible stuttering problem. When the terrier would find a rat in the queen’s wine cellar he would try to alert the cellar master in Spanish by saying, ‘Aquí!’ (‘Here!’). Unfortunately all Rodrigo could muster was, ‘Aq – aq – aq!’ Rodrigo was embarrassed, but the queen loved her Ratonero Bodeguero Andaluz so much that she ordered all the dogs of Spain to bark with a stutter. Around the turn of the twentieth century, ‘Aq – aq – aq’ was crudely Anglicized into ‘Yip! Yip! Yip!’ but it remained the bark of choice for the dogs of heiresses and royalty alike.

Swimming

      Swimming is not a chore like bath time. Swimming is all about splashing around in cool water and enjoying the experience. Outdoor bodies of water might have some soapy suds like a bath, but there will be a lot more room to move about and have a good time, unlike when you’re confined to a crummy tub.

      Humans will swim on occasion because they need to. Maybe it’s to get up to the bar for another drink, or because there’s quite a bit of shiny money at the bottom of a fountain. Luckily we don’t need to concern ourselves with understanding their rationale. All we care about is making sure that when they do go near water they let us get in and have a wild time.

      Dogs should be careful not to enter the water immediately following a meal. Always wait a minimum of fifteen seconds after eating before swimming.

      Entering the water can be accomplished in two ways: running or diving. Running into the water is fun but it isn’t nearly as impressive as diving.

      Diving involves jumping off solid ground, flying through the air and then landing in water. The best part is when you’re in the air, so you should definitely take a quick look around.

      A common launching-off point for a dive is called a dock, and usually you’ll be entering a lake.

      In the event that you have the good fortune of swimming in a manmade pool, look for the diving board. Here you can bounce way up high and have ample hang time to execute a special dive.

      We advise you to stick to diving in the traditional environments mentioned. It is not a good idea for dogs to dive off a cliff into the ocean, as some nutty humans do. Because we usually land on our bellies, a traditional dog dive from that high up will probably seriously injure or kill you. Only dogs with special training should ever attempt to enter the water from such a height. They employ an advanced technique taught by humans.

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