Animal Smarts...

[Midori]

I'd just like to know how smart people think their animals are and how the animal use reasoning how much 'human' they understand.

I'll give you a few examples mostly with my horses... since they do more human understanding as of late then my dog and cats.

Yesterday I didn't rain mass amounts I was able to go see and work with my horses. My mare Coso's tail was matted with burs after almost a week of neglect, since it'd been pouring almost 5 days straight. So since I was with a few friends I let them concentrate on Sunny and I picked burs from Coso's tail by hand to save her tail. Sunny had all of one bur in his tail yesterday since most don't stick in his tail since it's very, very stright they usely just fall out.

Today Sunny had almost as many burs in his tail as Coso did after 5 days of negelect. It was like he went and drug his tail through the burs over & over again just so in hopes I'd spend extra time grooming him.

Also Sunny & Coso have a strange understanding of human language. Sun gets very defensive at feeding time and will kick, bite, and charge at Coso. But I can tell him 'be nice to Coso or she will get feed first' and most of the time he'll stop everything he was doing to her and play suck up with me.

Coso was taught to kiss by my mom but seems to understand that it's also a way to show affection and has been known to give kisses to people she simply likes or knows that helped her. After almost two years of not seeing my aunt (who sold me Coso to save her life) the first time she saw her she walked over and kisses her.

This is also only a handful of 'human like' things I've seen my animals do and I was wondering if anyone has ever had animals that do strange things like this.

[Shard]

*aawww!!* I sometimes wish that I had been brought up in a place where I could have had horses.

My cats... aren't that bright. I mean, one of them (my 3000$ vet bill cat) was worth saving because he at least could be taught to 'shake' and speak - he says "more" when I scritch his back. But both of those, like all the other behaviors that I've taught my cats in the past, are just their own normal behaviors on command.

The 2nd dumbest cat I own, Rex, is also the most loyal and caring. When I go to bed in the day time, it's because I'm not feeling well. So he'll come by and put his front paws on my hip and guard me. (not coincidentally right where my hand falls to scratch his shoulder....)

With as many cats as I have, and 6 of them related, it's neat to see how behaviors are shared in ways. Toots uses his paw to grasp things, and Squeek does that only he does it on command (shake). Purrcephone chirps at the feather toy - and sounds so angry about it when I won't give it to her... n stuff.