
This is Bailey the miniature Dachshund, doing what he loves most — burrowing under fleece bedding. Usually he’s completely buried inside, but he came up for air so I could take his photo. His one variation on this, which I think you’ve seen in another blog posting, is to bury the front half of his body, face and all, in the bedding, while leaving his rear-end sticking out. (I’m not sure if he does this for temperature-control or some other purpose.)
But the problem for burrowing Dachshunds — especially small ones who completely disappear inside a wad of bedding — is that no one else knows they’re in there! It just looks like, well, a wad of bedding. This is bad enough with sighted dogs who will walk right over the lump, but add in a houseful of blind dogs, and being a burrowing Dachshund can be downright risky.
So Bailey’s risk-management solution is pretty simple. Whenever he hears paw-pads headed his way, the bedding stirs and he starts barking vociferously from inside the wad. "Hey, look out, I’m in here!" It works. Sighted or blind, the other dogs steer away from the hidden Dachshund.
Well, it works most of the time. The deaf ones, like Pappy and Dillon, don’t hear a thing, and usually aren’t paying much attention to where they’re walking anyway, so they’re not even likely to notice the bedding moving on the floor. Oh, well. There’s a price to pay for risky behavior.
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