A secret life of pets – that’s how you can call what happens when you close your door and leave. Are you also interested in what happens after that? There is one easy answer: They sleep. But is that really the case?
What do our furry friends actually do when we’re not home? Are they bored and do they wait sadly in their kennels until they can hear us coming back? We know it’s not always like that and not only thanks to modern technologies, home cameras and computers and sometimes, we are quite surprised. Especially when we come back and find out that our furniture has been moved and the whole interior is “improved”. Guilty expressions then say everything.
This is also the topic of my favourite film called “The Secret Life of Pets” that actually inspired me to write this article. As a proper American blockbuster, the film has a thrilling plot about a lost and found dog, terrier Max, and his friends. However, besides various crazy things the main characters do at home, it does not tell us much about the real secret life of our pets.
Nevertheless, the film started an interesting discussion. We started thinking again if all romping the results of which we get to see later is really so funny or if it is a manifestation of separation anxiety. Not long after the film was in cinemas, a YouTube video called “What my dog does when I leave” went viral. It had one million views in a moment.
The video received a lot of attention probably because of our interest in the secret life of our companions and which was even supported in us by the mentioned new film. A three-minute-long recording is from a GoPro cam which is attached to the dog’s body and it shows how the dog stays in his master’s bed and waits for his arrival after a while of running around the house and howling.
The discussion which followed as a reply to it mainly abroad was maybe a bit too emotional and it was all about the question if it is good to let dogs home alone and how to proceed when an animal reacts badly to a short-term (You can read about separation anxiety and how to react to it in a separate article.)
Also, a few studies from abroad dealt with the topic of what pets do when they are home alone. They confirmed that the daily routine of your pet partially corresponds to its natural cycle it would have as a best of prey in wild nature. An animal needs some activity it can do while waiting for its master instead of hunting (our pets like transplanting plants and teasing paper :)). After hunting, there’s a calm stage, i.e. sleeping.
It looks like our pets’ life will always be at least a partial secret. And it is really a topic which raises a lot of other questions, is passionately discussed and people get emotional about it. The thought I got after this film and viral video is that instead of becoming detectives we should become the best pet owners ever and try to spend as much time with our loves as possible. And that’s why we got them in the first place.
For the end, to make it funny, I picked a few photos that capture our furry friends when “hunting” :).
If your cat is going to pee or defecate outside its toilette, it is only seldom just an issue of training or hygiene. Cats are clever animals and they have no trouble to understand, where to go to toilette. Therefore, if they don’t abide the rules of...
We hear about the war in Syria almost every day. But have you ever thought about how does a war affect local animals and that the self-sacrifice must not always be made by an animal for humans, but it can also be the other way around? The person that...
Acupuncture wants to harmonise the body and the mind. Some of you may have tried it, it was a great help to me personally with issues with my back and breathing. Precisely owing to my positive personal experience, the possibility to indulge dogs and...
In the life of any dog, a situation might come up, when it is necessary to put on a muzzle. And if the dog is not used to wearing it, it might mean a stressful situation. I will advise you on how to avoid stress and how to get your dog used to wearing...
Same as in people, also our pets should go to regular check-ups to a doctor. We might neglect this quite often, but it is still something else in animals. A dog or a cat won’t come up to you to tell you, that they’re not feeling well. That’s why an...
You probably have someone among your friends, who has diabetes. However, do you know, that cats and dogs also suffer from this disease quite often?
The name distemper might be familiar to you, but do you know more precise characteristics of this treacherous viral disease? Let’s take it one by one from the historic roots up to the present day
Do you know, what dreams our pets have? Besides myself, also a number of scientists were interested in this question and they came up with various hypotheses. Would you guess what our four-legged friends dream about?
Maybe even you have a small four-legged stressed-out dog at home. In such case, read carefully, maybe you will find something here, what you haven’t tried yet, while trying to get your pet rid of stress.
You have probably encountered the opinion, that much more important than what you’re saying to your dog is how you’re saying it (the tone). But it shows, that dogs are able to understand the human language much better, than we generally credit them for.
p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.3px 'Times New Roman'; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000} span.s1 {font-kerning: none} All of us surely likes to take pictures of our pets. However, the photographs don’t always turn out according to our...
It could seem that the smaller the animal, the less care it would require. However, don’t let yourself be fooled. Even if you have a small mouse at home, a rabbit or maybe a guinea pig, you should adapt the care for them to the season and to situations...
