2 - 2008 - RodneyOlsen.net

Once a month Dog Behaviour Consultant and Trainer, Kathy Kopellis McLeod, joins me during my morning radio programme on 98.5 Sonshine FM to talk about dog behaviour and answer questions from listeners.

We had a great time today. We took a slight detour from our regular chats and talked about the extra names we give our dogs. We weren’t talking about their real names, we were talking about the nicknames that our dogs seem to gather.

After a while, we widened the scope and started throwing in a few cat nicknames.

Dylan rang up to tell us that his dog, Nev, gets called everything from Bubby to Poop and lots more in between.

We had several other people call in and talk to us about the names their four-legged friends have acquired. The segment was a lot of fun with some very amusing ‘pet names’ for dogs and cats of all shapes and sizes.

I even told a few stories about how I’d named a couple of my pets. One was named after a fictional character created by comedian Grahame Bond, and another was named after one of the guys from the band GangGajang. Have a listen to the audio to hear the details.

What are some of the pet names that you’ve used for your pets? Are there any that you find too embarrassing to use when others are around? How did you come up with your pet’s real names and nicknames?

If you want to have a few laughs, just click the play button on the audio player at the bottom of this post.

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Don’t mention any of your passwords while you’re standing near the fish tank. You may come home to find your computer’s been hijacked by your goldfish.

You might feel safe talking about private matters near your pet fish, thinking that they will have forgotten all about it in six seconds, but don’t be fooled, they do remember and it took a 15 year old named Rory Stokes to prove it.

Rory’s findings were reported a couple of days ago in this article at News.com.au. He proved that pet fish have a memory that lasts at least six days and possibly longer.

A 15-year-old South Australian school student has busted the myth that goldfish have a three second memory.

Rory Stokes, from the Australian Science and Mathematics School in Adelaide, conducted an experiment to test the commonly held theory that goldfish have short memory spans.

I always knew that the short term memory thing was an urban legend. The fish in the big tank at work rush towards the glass when they see a human heading their way first thing in the morning. They know that a human will feed them in the morning. Once they’ve been fed they ignore any other people wandering past for the rest of the day.

One of the things Rory wanted to demonstrate is that it’s cruel to keep fish in small tanks. The short term memory theory was always a good excuse when people wanted to put fish into a tiny container. They would use the excuse that fish weren’t aware of their cramped environment becuase it looked new to them every six seconds.

I will admit that I’ve never understood the attraction of keeping fish anyway. I think they make a darn good meal but they’re not my idea of a pet.

Now all we need is to find a way for fish to communicate with us. They might then be able to remind us of the things we forget. If their memory lasts for six days or more, that’s about five and a half days longer than some people can remember where they’ve left their keys.

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Archive - February 21, 2008