I Didn't Mean To

This weekend I spent a lot of time (ok, practically the whole weekend) making cookies.  This of course piqued Chiquita's interested with the noises, my activity in the kitchen, and of course the smells.  She's experienced a cookie baking extravaganza before, but this weekend was pretty intense.

She's generally pretty good, listening when I tell her to get out of the kitchen or back away from the oven when I open it.  She doesn't lunge for anything, although she will sniff at the table when the freshly baked goodies go onto the cooling racks, and she does enjoy laying down near the warm oven.

Are these cookies for me?

A few weeks ago, I had made a couple of recipes and then left them on the cooling racks while Chiquita and I went for a walk.  We came back and she was quite worn out and had been well-treated. Dave was out of the house for the day, and in a moment of stupidity, I went into the bedroom to take off my shoes.  And then I remembered I'd left a highly food motivated dog in the kitchen with 8 dozen cookies on the table.

And it was quiet.

I called for her, and didn't hear a sound, not even her nails as she walked across the kitchen floor.  I ran into the kitchen only to find her bent over the floor, surrounded by crumbs.  And then looking up at me with a pathetic look on her face, head tilted and ears back, as if to say, "I'm just sitting here, not doing anything bad."  And then she vacuumed up the rest of the crumbs.

It actually took me a while to figure out where she got the cookie from, because she didn't disturb the cooling racks at all.  And since Dave and I are only training her with positive reinforcement, it was too late to discipline her.  So I called Dave and told him he had to come home because his dog stole a cookie and now he couldn't have any.

I presume it was only a matter of time, but apparently during this weekend's cookie explosion, I inadvertently did a bad thing.  I taught Chiquita the word "cookie."

Last night after dinner, I was cleaning up dishes.  Cookies were again on the cooling racks and Dave was in the living room.

Me (to Dave): Do you want a cookie?

Chiquita (according to Dave): Head raises up and ears are perked.

Dave: She's not talking to you.

Me: What's that?  Do you want a cookie?

Dave: Yes, please.

At the same time, Chiquita jumps up from her blanket and scurries into the kitchen.  The scurry was pretty hilarious because we have laminate flooring in the living room and she couldn't get any traction coming around the corner since she was moving so fast.  After all, she was coming for her cookie.

Dave was hysterics because he connected that she now had expanded her vocabulary to include the word cookie.  So we had to test it.  We each kept asking her if she wanted a cookie and she kept going back and forth to whoever said it (oh, stop--it wasn't torture.  We gave her one of her own cookies that I had made for her.)  It was one of the funniest things I've ever seen.

Except now I feel bad that I have to update her Petfinder.com listing to include she knows commands such as sit, stay, wait, leave it, and cookie.