Old Dog. New Trick

Can an old dog learn a new trick? Well this old dog showed us that he can! For his whole life he would never ever catch food that was thrown to him. I truely thought that was innate in dogs and it was just something that they do. But I learned that my assumption was wrong. We would throw a yummy piece of human food at Simba and it would hit him in the knoggin (sp?) Time after time for almost 9 years this is what has been happening.


So, we just thought we would always have to put the food right up to Simba's mouth so he could gently take the food from us. How about this for a visual! He was really getting slobbery eating the human food. He didn't produce stringers this time.









One day Randy said to Calvin, "Calvin, watch! I'm going to teach this old dog a new trick." Randy proceeded to get some left-over tator tots and just started hitting Simba's knoggin over and over again. Simba is a very tolerant dog and he was just letting the tator tots hit him over and over. Finally, he got hit one to many times. Simba decided he was going to nip the next tator tot thrown at him. Well, when he opened his mouth he got a treat instead!!!! WOW! A huge revelation occurred in that old brain of Simba's!!!







It has actually stayed in his mind too. We can now throw him a treat and he will catch it. It has been fun watching him with his new trick. We don't know how he can even enjoy the food. We're sure that he swallows all the food whole. But he's happy and content!

Simba must taste something, here he is just as content as can be licking his chops after several treats.