In which I tie a dog story to something actually interesting..

So, Little Otter is obsessed with Wicket. No one else, just her. And by obsessed, I mean, he sits in front of her and barks his fool head off for as long as you let him He is desperate to get her attention and she ain't havin' it. In fact, we think Wicket is about to start spitting pea soup any day now. She starts with a raspy little snarl that sounds exactly as if a Rottweiler had gotten ahold of some good helium. The snarl gets louder and louder til finally she either horks something up or actually barks back. It's entertaining. Really.

Since Wickie is the only other chocolate cocker at my house, I wondered if maybe he knows he looks like her? Maybe his momma was a chocolate and that's why he's so obsessed? Lots of people believe that dogs are colorblind, meaning they only see in shades of black, white or grey. But actually, it's not true. Dogs see in several different shades and are generally less color-blind than Sam.

In a nutshell: we see colors in the ROY G BIV rainbow range. Dogs only see part of that range. Mostly shades of blue, yellow and red. Funky, huh? Green Yellow and Orange all look alike to them, but they can tell those colors are different from shades of blue or red. And blue-green looks white to them. Like if you put on some of those yellow glasses they have for target shooting it'll give you some idea.

You can read more about it here, here or here.

Anyway, so my point is, there's no way Otter knows that Wickie is the same color he is. Most likely, he's just drawn to her for some other reason. I can't imagine what it is though. She really, really hates him.