This morning when I was feeding my dog, he did something a little strange.

I’ve taught Hamish to sit and wait while I put his food dish down . Then I point to my eye and say, ‘look’.

He looks me right in the eye. It’s a focus  routine I’ve taught him because when you have a high energy and enthusiastic dog, you really do need a way to get their attention back in a snap.  I’ve found that ” sit and  look” works well in a lot of situations where his ability to focus may go sideways on us and I need to get it back quickly.

After we do the sit and look routine I tell him ‘dinner time ‘ and he dives into his dish and chows down like he hasn’t eaten in about 100 years.

Everything went the same as usual as I got his meal ready- he tried to dive into his food bag, he tried to counter surf, he ran into the living room and found a couple of toys and dropped them at my feet- I think it’s to reward me for feeding him FASTER.

When I went to put his food bowl down he sat on his own, which he does sometimes. But when I told him to ‘look’ he looked over my left shoulder instead. So I pointed to my eye and said ‘look’ a couple of times.

He kept looking over my shoulder.

I tried again and he looked at me and I said ” dinner time ” but he didn’t move. He went back to looking over my shoulder and he did not move a muscle.

Hamish doesn’t refuse to eat unless he’s sick so I was concerned for a moment about that.

I kept trying to get his attention and he kept his eyes locked over my shoulder

Were his hackles up? Did he act like something out of the ordinary was happening?

No, he was fine.

The fact is, as he went through his routine I had the feeling he wasn’t doing it for me.

We got back on track and he wolfed his meal down as usual.

In all, this  wasn’t an unnerving experience, but it was a curious one.

A curious incident, a day after Halloween.