(Colleen, could you please give me a picture of Josephine to add here? I would love to do that; I'd be happy to edit the post.)
Colleen was very specific about wanting a dog that was smart, but not so smart that they would cause trouble in order to be rewarded/incentivized to stop the trouble, as with a treat.
Catherine (as always the subject of my blog posts) is a very smart dog, with her own approach. (Assertiveness, maybe a bulldog thing.)
She craves affection. Perhaps it's because of, or part of, our bond. As I say a lot, I would not have adopted a bulldog—but she adopted me. That's how I wound up adopting a dog from our neighbors across the street. I dogsat Catherine during the day 5 days a week, for almost a year before I adopted her. (Perhaps I needed the dog sitting more than Catherine did.)
So this afternoon, after breakfast [sic[, Catherine growled, as usual, telling us she wanted to go outside and poop. When we came in, I sat down again. As she came down our front hall, she was growling, and barked softly a couple of times. Then, when I could see her, she looked at me, and barked. Not an angry bark, not a guarding bark, but a happy bark. (I know her well enough to know this.) Not softly.
She doesn't do this at meal times. She just guilts us. And when we feed her from the table (yes, I know, but it's fresh fruit, or peanut butter—I always check the AKC website first) she'll growl a little, then give up.
So anyway, Colleen, count your (secular) blessings.
(Capitalization, punctuation, and other errors due to using speech-to-text dictation, and inability to edit on my phone with one hand on Catherine, throughout.)
