What is a command you accidentally taught your pet?
What is a command you accidentally taught your pet?
My goldendoodle puppy doesn't ever want to come back inside. I told my beagle "go get your sister" as I tried rounding up the puppy. Now when I say "go get your sister" the beagle runs to the puppy and baits her into chasing him into the house.
"After you".
My dog would walk right on my heels and nearly trip me. Taught her "after you" kind of accidentally and now she goes ahead a distance and then waits for me if I'm not fast enough.
It wasn't a command, but I distinctively remember the first time my cat growled at me for picking him up and I set him down immediately. Now it's his way of telling me to let him down whenever. So I guess he taught me the command instead!
Wife taught our dog to crawl.
She was trying to teach the dog to lay down and stay while she backed away with the treat. Our dog figured that if she kept her belly on the floor and crawled over to the treat it should be fine...
So my wife said "Good crawl!", and kept working on it with the dog. Now the dog crawls on command.
Kinda somehow trained my dogs to expertly remove socks from feet.. Started as a puppy with an interest in toe biting, decided to try to mould it into something positive. Lots of "OWW"s later, she will delicately nibble the tip of your sock to seperate a bit of fabric from the toe, then grab on, and tug straight backwards (you gotta point your toe to help her out) and voila! Sock removed.
Thought it was dumb but 7 years later, my pregnant wife thinks it's the fucking bees knees
My cat has learned how… delicious? ear wax is. I was itching my ear once, she started licking my finger, and now if I even raise my right hand near my head she flips out and runs up into my space just in case it’s ear wax time.
Note I don’t actually have a ton of ear wax or feed it to her, but something about my finger after I scratch my ear just drives her crazy.
Seriously though my ears are clean 😂
The beep one of my monitors makes at power off (at the end of my workday) catalyzes my three cats into immediate action. They could be passed out or hidden, and ignore me when I walk by (I've tested this), but the moment they hear that "beep-chime" they materialize.
They know it means I'm available for cuddles and snacks. Confuses the hell out of them on the occasional weekend when I take a Zoom call for one of my volunteer gigs. I'll also use it to summon them when one vanishes for too long and I need to make sure they didn't get out.
My cat Siegfrieda thinks that "bitte" (please) means "free petting". That's because I usually tell her bitte when she's taking too long to obey the command. For example...
- Zizi! Komm nach Hause! (Zizi, come home!)
- [Siegfrieda ignores me to chase the shadow of a butterfly]
- Frieda, komm nach Hause. Bitte. (Frieda, come home. Please.
- Prrrwwwwn? [runs in my direction]
My cat loves riding around on my shoulder, and also loves food. He figured out that he has a better than average chance of getting treats after a shoulder ride. The counter in the bathroom is the highest in the house, where he can get the closest to my shoulder. So I apparently taught my cat to come running when he hears the toilet seat go up. Does it every. Single. Time.
I taught my half Maltese half shih tzu the command move over. Every time I'd take her for rides she'd sit in my lap and if I needed to go around a corner I'd say move over and put her in the passenger seat. Now if she's in my spot on the couch she'll growl if I try to move her. But say move over and she'll go
My dog now knows she is "the dog". Any time we say the word, she starts listening.
She picks things up that I never imagined a dog could understand.
One of my cats will headbutt me if I say "headbutt", he's like a pokemon or something. Hard enough that I can hear a thunk.
Not quite a command, but I seem to have confused my oldest cat so that he thinks "excuse me" is a threat. He'll be blocking a doorway, and if I say "excuse me" as I try to pass, he hisses and possibly swats, but if I just silently try to squeeze past, we're all good. Currently working to undo that one.
"High five" instead of "paw" for two dogs which wasn't the accident. The accident is they learned to associate high five with wanting something. When they want pets, food, bones, or toys they obsessively high five at you.
My cat does it now too. Maybe they learned it from the cat who saw they got treats for high fives. My wife hates it. I think its hilarious.
We accidentally made our cat yell when we point at her. Not even sure how it happened tbh; some combo of squirt-bottle-get-off-the-counter and very half-assed start to clicker training. At least we have a goofy party trick when we have people over I guess?
We put a battery powered doorbell on the door leading outside. My puppy Veronica quickly caught on but mostly rang it when excited rather than when she needed to go out.
But about six months ago it kicked in what it's for and she'll surprise us by going across the house to hit the bell and tell us she means business.
So it wasn't exactly accidental but took a year.
Also same as yours, "Go get your sister." She'll go try and figure out what her older sister is up to and bring her back.
We lived in a house with a bunch of roommates when we got our dog, and at some point "fuck off" became "go lie down on your bed and get outta my space"... So now if "go lie down" isn't taking, then "fuck off" works...
My wife and I get up at different times so we each have our own alarms. She gets up first and feeds the cats.
When my alarm goes off? No reaction.
When her alarm goes off? OMFG...
I have one cat that gets several meds that I mix in baby food. I also have two other cats that need to be distracted from the cat getting the delicious (hurk) chicken baby food. So i toss treats across the kitchen to get them far away. I started saying “READY?” right before I would start tossing treats. So now as soon as I say ready, they “go long” and run to the far side of the kitchen to wait for their treat toss.
I can yell Cheese Wrapper at the dog park, and mine will come running.
For a while he learned that "this is the last one" meant we were about to stop playing fetch and he'd pretend to have noticed something odd or been distracted to avoid bringing the ball back and having it taken away. We worked through that one with some treats, so now "this is the last one" means "treat upcoming".
We air dry our clothes on a balcony he doesn't often get to access and he gets to walk out with us when we're doing that and bark at birds and neighboring cats (which is why he isn't allowed out there all the time). He's learned to set up camp next to the door when he hears the washing machine beep after a wash cycle. Also when he sees us grab the container we use for the laundry, in case we're about to go pick up a dry load.
my cat thinks "up" and "down" both mean "get off my lap".
she also recognizes that when I sit and talk to myself (voice chat) is perfect petting and cuddles time. she's well known to my therapist and team because of zoom meetings.
and both guinea pigs and the cat have all decided that we do cuddles about 830pm. I thought it was "after work and dinner, sometime before bed". but the number of times I look up to see what the fuss is, and it's 830 and all 3 are looking at me expectantly... I assume they figure the time by daylight, because it's not consistent when I get home.
When my GF started visiting she commented on how cute my cat was for quietly meowing for food. She said she had a cat that would rake his claws across the wall to get her attention, and demonstrated this just once in front of my cat. That same night the little guy started doing that whenever he wanted anything after just seeing her do it once.
There were two.
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Every time he farted it was awful so we'd shoo him out of the room. Eventually, he'd immediately walk out of the room right AFTER he farted.
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We'd end the day watching TV in the living room. Eventually he learned that the click of the TV meant it was time to go to bed, so any time the TV got turned off, he'd get up and go into his bed in our bedroom.
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My doggo will normally follow verbal commands for sit/down/shake without much issue. But sometimes he gets too excited or obstinate and doesn't want to do it even if I've said so a few times. At some point, I inadvertently taught him that me putting my hand(s) on my hip(s) is the "Ok, we're not moving on until you listen" gesture.
I make him sit before he eats, and if he isn't sitting, I'll just put my hand on my hip and he immediately plants his ass against the floor, tail wagging. He also knows the question, "Are you begging?" if he's too close to someone eating, and he'll put his head down and slowly skulk away for 5 minutes before sneakily returning to his previous position, hoping for scraps. 😆
Border Collie — go get mom. She’d go and find the now ex-wife.
And “Attack!” She’d just stand there and bark like mad.
The dog was sweet; and your biggest problem was she roll on her back and pee on the both of you.
Not really a command but I accidentally taught my dog to play fight me whenever I get home, because I did it when he was a puppy. So now it's like Kato and Clouseau every time. Even when I'm super tired.
My cat thinks the sound of my Playstation powering down means "time for bed". He's not wrong...
My cat and I slow blink at each other a lot. She usually wants to eat breakfast on the catio, but it's not fully screened in yet, so I would prefer she ate inside as it attracts other cats and sometimes ravens. I stand in the doorway and ask her to come in, but if she slow blinks and then keeps her eyes closed while still pointing her face at me I know she's not coming in. That's my signal to put down the damn cat food woman, it's al fresco today!
Did I teach her "eyes closed for outside breakfast" or did she teach me "give up when I squinch my eyes closed at you"?
My dog responds to swear words by doing the kinds stuff you see emotional support dogs do in videos- press on your chest, give you kisses, nuzzle your face, etc.
Except she's small, blind, and a bit... intense, so she kinda launches into you if you're sitting, with some intense affection.
IDK why. I guess we don't swear very often, ao when we do, its special, and we swear with enough gusto for her to think we're very, very upset.
I have no idea how my dog learned this, but whenever anyone says “Window”, he rushes to the closest window and stares outside and barks.
My dog learned the sound of the keyboard shortcut to put a windows machine to sleep: Win + X, U, S
He'll be dead asleep on the bed next to me, but the moment those keys are hit he full sprints to the backyard for his final potty of the night while I brush my teeth.
I have yelled "Hey!" so many times at so many pets over the years (dogs and cats) when I caught them messing around with something they shouldn't be that they all started to think "Hey" was their name.
I work from home and there's daily shipping logistics involved. My dog knows the word "UPS" and will immediately alert and generally be insane.
When one of my cats is on my lap, she responds to "ok" as time to get up. Started with, "ok kitty, I need to get up," but now just the "ok" and she jumps down so I can stand up.
My new pup is supposed to sit before getting a treat. So as soon as the seal of the treat bag crinkles, his butt is planted to the ground.
I think it's delightful. My wife insists that we're supposed to link sitting with the vocal sit command. (I want him to be friendly and well-behaved. She wants him to take orders.)
Our greyhound knew what “road trip” meant. He LOVED going for rides in the car, and if he heard one of us say that then he’d immediately be at the door, jumping excitedly…
My dog passed away many years ago now, but "Oops" is one that I hear really commonly because I would drop stuff off the counter when cooking. Just saying "Oops" would have the dog come running to see what good stuff hit the floor.
Also, not exactly a command, but that dog's hearing was so exceptional that he could hear the jangling sound of me picking up his leash while I was inside the house and he'd come running from the back yard across the whole house.
Of course, his hearing was always selective. The things he loved to do he could hear perfectly, while things he dislikes such as obedience training it was like he was deaf lol.
My bichon/poodle mix has learned the sound of a telephone call. Whether it's vibrating ringing, the ringtone sound, the ringing sound the phone makes when you are calling someone, or just the inflected way that I say "hello" when answering the phone. He even picks up on any of the above sounds on TV, and he seems to be able to differentiate between the short vibrate of a notification versus the long vibration of a ring.
I have a lot of phone anxiety which means I often get up and pace around my apartment a lot when I'm on the phone. He thinks this pacing implies that I want to play with him, so he gets super excited, chases me around, and tries to grab my ankles or jump on the furniture and nip at my fingers. When I want to play with him, these behaviours are cute and fun. But he has associated me walking around my apartment with wanting to play which is distracting and frustrating when I'm already on edge from my phone call anxiety.
Other way round actually, I mentioned this I another comment about my neighbour's geese
I pass them every day when I'm walking the dog and always give them dandelion leaves; it's basically goose-crack. They go nuts when they see me, and will even let me pat their heads
My wife mentioned one day that when she's walking the dog, if she passes the geese they go nuts and run up to the fence, honking like mad and it freaks her out.
Took us a few tries to figure out the geese think the dog is bringing the human with the dandelion leaves
I could never get dogs to go around properly a tree on a retractable to unbollox it. Their instinct always seemed to be to go the wrong way and I just cold not get them to do it in such a way they realized that was the fix. My current dog basically just did it as a puppy and then I associated a word with it.
Taught my cat not to use his claws. This was when him and I were playing together one night. The really cool thing about it is he caught a chipmunk one day. And I talked him into letting the chipmunk go by repeating, no claws, no claws!
F O O D
"Alright" means whatever we're about to do, it's just about to happen.
“Nikko, get out of the kitchen” backs up till his feet are over, but still touching, the threshold.
The xbox ding when turning off means I'm getting up. They can be dead asleep, hear the tone, and know they are probably going outside.
I didn't teach her, but one of my dogs turns off the Roomba. She figured out that thwacking the light with her paw stopped it. So anytime it gets near her, instead of moving, she turns it off.