The best video I’ve ever seen in my entire life
What the world needs now is….more videos of Shelties and babies playing:
24 Responses to “The best video I’ve ever seen in my entire life”
-
Michele Braa-Heidner says:
This is so fabulous! The joy that is expressed here from both the dog and the baby is so beautiful!!
June 5th, 2010 at 4:43 pm EST -
Catherine D. says:
I have Keeshonden (bigger, fuzzier) and we call that behavior “Tribble on amphetamines” :)
-
Delphyne says:
That just made my long afternoon much nicer! Thank you – that Sheltie was sure having fun. I think she was trying to get the binkie from the kid’s mouth – and doing zoomies on that slick floor must have been fun, too! Like skateboarding!
I can now understand more fully how Romulus and Remus were raised by a She Wolf.
-
Sandra S. says:
Totally OT, but I was wondering if you’d get a chance to look at my new post over at the New Agenda (http://thenewagenda.net/2010/0.....to-be-too/). I kind of wanted to get feedback from you, since I respect your writing and insights a great deal, and they’ve influenced me a lot in the last couple of years.
-
Violet Socks says:
What I love about this video is that the baby and the Sheltie understand each other perfectly. What better evidence that dogs and humans have co-evolved to read each other’s social signals?
We have Shelties in my family, and I’ve seen them play like this plenty of times (when they’re young). Never seen them play with a baby though.
-
Violet Socks says:
Sandra, I will go look at your post this evening.
-
Gayle says:
That’s sweet. They’re both having such a wonderful play time together.
My dog does this with other dogs and with adults too. He tends to be afraid of little kids though, probably ’cause I don’t have any.
-
Lynnerkat says:
Thank you- would be nice if people were as kind and fun.
-
Violet Socks says:
Sandra, I read your post and I liked it very much. I agree with you! Possibly not surprising, since you agree with me…
The whole Sarah Palin feminism thing is just too ironic for words. The people who are all concerned about the purity of feminism are the same people who spent 2008 making a mockery of feminist ideals.
-
Lori says:
My mom had a Sheltie when my son was born. I went down to visit when he was a year old. He was up and running by then, so Socks attached herself to him and never left his side. She wouldn’t let him get far without barking and rounding him back up to me. It was amazing to watch. Mom lived on 25 acres on the side of a mountain in Arkansas, and she had her work cut out for her. But she seemed to love it.
-
cellocat says:
That was incredibly cute. It is so fun to see and hear the pure joy expressed by babies when they’re really laughing like that. My daughter loves the cats, and they make her giggle, but dogs can really crack her up in just that way. Perhaps someday we’ll get a sheltie (if I’m not too allergic to it); my husband grew up with one and they had a mutual love affair. His dog would “herd” him around, and go with him when he wandered off to visit the neighbors.
Super fun video.
-
Sandra S. says:
Thanks, Violet. I appreciate you taking the time to read it. I probably should have credited you, since your discussions of Palin have been pretty instrumental in shaping my perspective on this.
-
Three Wickets says:
@Violet Captive to the cult of male progressive bloggers who found their calling with Bush and the wars. I don’t remember third wavers being as appropriated by leftist men pre blogger years. Nader was never an outspoken advocate for women.
@Sandra Thank you. Extremism, provincialism, hypocritical dogmatism are driving me to drink.
-
LabRat says:
Lovely. I had shelties growing up. Sadly as with many breeds whose wonderfulness can do them in through popularity, there are many weak temperaments out there, but I was lucky enough to have the ideal- gentle, sweet, stable, sensitive without being shy or reactive. She taught me how to teach across species lines.
Nowadays I have a male Akita like this- we have no children, but he attaches himself to any that come within his orbit and plays gently with them, usually while lying down so he doesn’t loom. God help anyone that happened to threaten them while under his watch, too.
-
Violet Socks says:
Does anybody know if the non-herding breeds ever play like this? Play in most species (including us) is usually a kiddie version of adult behavior, and I think what the dog is doing in this video is based on herding behavior.
-
LabRat says:
Does anybody know if the non-herding breeds ever play like this? Play in most species (including us) is usually a kiddie version of adult behavior, and I think what the dog is doing in this video is based on herding behavior.
Short answer “they can, but it’s not generally their first choice the way it is for a herder”. Now for the really not at all short version.
All of the dog breeds developed around specific utilities have links of certain of their behavior chains either enhanced, muted, or suppressed altogether. Herding behavior is a big enhancement of the stalk, circle, and separate portion of canine hunting, with the chase-and-kill portion of the end suppressed. As a result, they’re obsessed with motion and space, and their games tend to be based around it. The sheltie in the video is playing a very basic space and pressure game where the motion and the action is paused by dropping into the canine stalking crouch/down position.
To again use my dogs as a contrast/example, I have a primitive breed with an intact predatory behavior chain. Kang, my female, will sometimes initiate a game with Kodos (the male) by dropping into that flat stalking position, then rising to a crouch and creeping forward, then running in and pouncing on him. What follows is a combination of those same space and pressure movement-based games- but instead of stopping there, it usually quickly flows into somebody pouncing on the other and a wrestling match with a lot of biting and head-shaking and other bits of that final sequence mixed in- all in good fun, of course. It’s loud and looks dramatic, but everybody understands it’s a game and nobody gets hurt. There’s also a fair amount of rearing up like bears, crashing together, and “wrestling” in an imitation of the way dogs will fight in a dominance battle.
Kang doesn’t really know how to play any other way and figures dogs that don’t like it can go hang, which is why she never gets to go to the dog park. Kodos, on the other hand, will adapt to what other dogs are comfortable with- including the herding style. One of the sweetest things I ever saw was him bringing a shy border collie that was new to the park out of his shell by repeatedly offering to play that same space and movement game the sheltie is playing with the baby. Every time the BC made any move toward him, he’d bounce, play-bow, and spin away- then glance over his shoulder grinning to see if he was getting a response. Eventually the BC was happily moving him all over the park, clearly getting a major thrill out of herding the big dog that had looked so scary to him at first. (Akitas have bristly, stand-off coats, forward-tilting ears, and a high tailset due to the curl- to a dog that doesn’t yet know that’s just how they look all the time, they look like they’re bristling in an assertive dominant posture.)
I figure Kang isn’t as willing or able to adapt because she was the second dog and always had a playmate who shared her playstyle- before her, Kodos had to learn how to convince other dogs to want to play with him if he wanted to play at all.
Anyway, long story not at all short, if you want to see something close, watch the way sighthounds play- they also play low-contact, movement-based games. But they won’t initiate anything like the exaggerated start-and-stop space and pressure games herders do.
-
slythwolf says:
Play: truly the universal language.
-
Violet Socks says:
Thanks for that, LabRat. I could talk about dogs all day. Do you read Get Fuzzy? I thought of Satchel’s play group when you mentioned the dog park.
We’ve had several Shelties over the years, which is why the play behavior in the video is familiar to me. One of our little boys will go nuts like that, zipping all over the house, trying to get somebody to play with him.
However, most of our Shelties are also fixated on retrieving games. They all love ball. And I mean LOVE ball. And one of Molly’s cousins got so obsessed with a chuck-it toy that she wore her canines down.
-
Violet Socks says:
My late lamented soul mate, a tiny little Sheltie named Katie, had what I think you would call an intact predatory endgame — ahem — her favorite game was to pull and tug and shake things. Shake shake shake. She was a pipsqueak, but in her mind she was a giant. An alpha dog all the way.
-
LabRat says:
I could talk about dogs all day.
So could I, which is fortunate. A different species we locked into co-evolution with sometime around the same time we became modern humans and started to civilize- endlessly fascinating!
I don’t read Get Fuzzy, but it’s less out of not finding the comic funny than it is out of not subscribing to paper newspapers anymore and consistently forgetting to check it. Dog parks are wonderful microcosms of both canine and human behavior… sadly many attending aren’t watching.
What did occur to me hours after posting that is that both of our dogs DO voluntarily play that game- but only with their humans. Their first choice is to play full-contact pounce-and-wrassle games, but putting mouths or paws on humans has been outlawed since early puppyhood, as has body-slamming. (Only possible choice with dogs that grow to 100 lbs or over.) Their second choice would be to play chase games in the way of sighthounds, but we won’t chase them in fun to avoid developing or reinforcing any habits there (Kang already likes to steal things in hopes we’ll chase her for them), and we also won’t run wind-sprints to be chased for their entertainment. OUR first choice would be fetch with balls or frisbee, but they could not *possibly* care less, so that’s out too. Jumping and bouncing toward and away from each other as in the video is the default choice agreeable to everyone- even though they’re not herding breeds and we don’t prefer them. So I guess Kang doesn’t so much not know how to play those games, as she won’t deign to with other dogs. She is rather typical of her breed in that she views herself at the top of the totem pole over every single one of them as default, or at least all the other females.
Kang loves to shake her toys too. Unfortunately I have seen her enact this in a non-play context- she is much faster than a few of the local wild rabbits and squirrels think pet dogs are.
Akitas are supposed to be hunting-guarding dogs, and I joke we got one of each; Kodos’s mind is dominated by watching his surroundings and acting protectively. He’ll chase if the opportunity comes, but it’s not what dominates his behavior. Kang is a hunter, and while she’d probably guard if she had to, she spends most of her free time sniffing around places she’s seen animals and looking for things to chase and pounce, in play or no. It’s interesting to watch.
-
Ciardha says:
My mixed breed dog, Ralph (1977-1995) was part border collie part cocker spaniel. When he played he did some of those same actions. He was more mellow than border collies and very good natured- my younger sister was only 7 when we got him and she “wallered” him some, as young kids affectionate with animals tend to, which he put up with- never biting her. He was a lot more mellow than border collies are, but he had the high intelligence of a border collie.
I put some picture of him from the early 1980′s up on photobucket:
The “I want to play” grin
http://i113.photobucket.com/al.....ralph1.jpgPlaying with a “puppy pacificier” in a border collie-like play position
http://i113.photobucket.com/al.....alph2a.jpg
Looking “serious”
-
Violet Socks says:
Aw, he looks like a real sweetie, Ciardha. A prince among dogs! I can just imagine what a good companion he was.
-
Violet Socks says:
By the way, Molly had her bath today and smells like baby powder. We have been talking about how pretty her paws are now.
-
Delphyne says:
Post a picture of pretty Molly, Violet – pretty please?
Ciardha – I can definitely see the BC in Ralph. What a handsome guy he was! I’m on my s2nd Border Collie now – love them and all the herding breeds.
