Sidney's OCD?

[wendykei]

This is a weird thing that Sidney does, so I thought I'd post it to see if anyone else has experienced this... but Sidney is obsessed with people's LEFT feet. Weird, huh? People never believe me when I say this, so I finally made a video of us when we were playing yesterday. The thing is we play like this all the time, so I thought maybe it was just MY left foot, but he started chasing this woman's feet at the dog park the other day and she was like, "Wow, Sidney's obsessed with my left foot for some reason." And when I told one of my friends about it, he started running around to get Sidney to chase him and Sidney went after HIS left foot too. (We all think it's hysterical -- also, who knew that dogs could differentiate between right and left!)

Here's the video... Any thoughts?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNTBAD1aSiU

[marycas]

Does it matter if he is approaching from the front or rear?

If it's always the front, I would do a quick test to be sure he was indeed seeing out of his left eye

Otherwise, I vote for OCD appicon

[wendykei]

Hmmm -- I never thought about his vision, but there's been no other sign that he's having vision problems in his left eye. I will test this when I get home!! Thanks for the suggestion!!

But I do think he's done this when he's behind me as well. For example, when I am running away from him, he'll run up from behind me on my left side and attack my left foot. Then he gets in front to try to impede my left foot's forward progress.

[imogene]

I think it is a good idea to have his eyes checked and I definitely would not encourage or reinforce the behavior. I know it's cute, but he could escalate his obsession, and think of what would happen if he did that to someone less comfortable with Dogs or if he tripped someone. :eek:

[wendykei]

To clarify, Sidney does not do this except when people are deliberately playing with him and calling him, for example, to get him to chase them or whatever. He's never done this to some random person when we're out, say, for a walk.

[imogene]

I still would not encourage it - I watched a program about a dog obsessed with rocks to the point where he was ending up with broken teeth and bloody paws. His owners giggled and laughed when he started paying attention to rocks when he was a puppy. They weren't laughing and giggling a year later, when he had a full blown unhealthy obsession. I think you need to be careful that Sidney had rewarding healthy interaction with people. It would be horrible if he got excited and aggressive with someone's foot. Maybe you could transfer his attention from people's feet to a toy and make it a good thing. :)