A couple nights ago, Trish, Roli and I were hanging out on our porch. Trish and I were each sitting on chairs with Roli on the floor. I went in to turn on a light and Roli took the opportunity to quietly climb onto the chair I had been using. Admittedly, he uses it more often than I do so I’m sure he sees it as his.

I knew he would get down if I asked, but I didn’t mind so much and decided to sit on the floor for a bit. I spend too much time sitting on chairs anyway. It did make me wonder though. Had he been thinking the same way I was? “I’d like to sit in that chair, but papa has it so I’ll just sit here on the floor.”

It reminds me of an even funnier incident shortly after we adopted our last Husky, Silverbear. He stole a spot on our beanbag chair, but we had to get him off due to resource guarding issues we hadn’t trained out of him yet. We threw a toy to lure him and he tried to save his spot by leaving one foot on the chair as he stretched to get the toy! We laughed as we asked each other, “Where did he learn that trick?”

It makes me wonder if our animals learn that we don’t take stuff from each other, but if it’s not taken it’s fair game. If they could talk, would they be like a child calling “First dibs!” or a teenager calling “Shotgun!” to get the best seat?

What do your animals learn from you?