Dogs and gaps

One of our dogs, Caoilin (“Keelin”), was a powerhouse who hated spaces on ground surfaces, such as the grated iron bridges that we walked on near our home in Virginia. Here’s our sturdy girl, that we described as a German Shepherd that had spent too much time in the dryer (shrimpy as she was):

When we moved from Ann Arbor back to Virginia in 2013, we took a detour through rural Virginia and stayed at a VRBO that had cattle and thus cattle grids on roads, particularly driveways. (The roads that we stopped on during the trip also had cattle grids). Neither Caoilin nor our other dog, Seamus (“Shaymuss”), liked the gaps in the grids that were effective at stopping cattle. Seamus (the younger and more likely to find avoidance techniques), wanted to be led around the grates, even if that meant he had to navigate ditches. Caoilin? Leap right over those four-foot wide suckers! She got very good at it, as if she had found a whole new game. We were amazed. I know I took pictures or videos of her, but we can’t find them at the moment. We will update if we find them!

I’m thinking of our former dogs as we see Saoirse freak out at the bare floor boards, which have gaps of up to half an inch.

This morning, as I was taking her outside—over the floorboards in the hallway to the back door—Dan was in the basement “kitchen” and right then poured her food into her bowl, a sound she knows well. She looked down to follow the sound and freaked out: she could see the basement downstairs in the gaps that are up to a 1/2-inch wide, but couldn’t go down there. (Dog cognitive dissonance, as it were.) As she recognized the gaps, she nearly refused to walk across the boards. The need to pee won. She will only step on them when she is accompanied by one of her humans.

It’s probably helpful that Saoirse doesn’t match Caoilin’s leaping tendencies (at least in this case) from one hardwood floor to another so we don’t have to refinish more floors, but it’s sad to see her concern!