This morning around 8 the noises of heavy equipment arriving came floating in my windows. Banging and clanging and driving down a ramp sounds were followed by chainsawing and more clanging and scraping.

When we finally headed out for a walk around 9, Chico walked as far as the driveway where the work was going on, and stopped. He wasn’t willing to walk in the other direction either, so I headed back in the original direction. He went a few feet and stopped. Some treats and games got him a bit further, but he really didn’t want to go, so I headed back home again. When we got to the top of the driveway where the work was taking place I started down the drive to see if that was what he wanted.

Indeed it was. The guy driving the dump truck looked at me, turned off the engine so he could hear, and I said, “He’s desperately curious to see what’s going on down here, he won’t go past the driveway until he take a look.” Chico dragged me past the now silent truck to look at the backhoe, still clanging away. “Look,” I said, “it’s a big machine, you know about machines. Here’s a cookie for the machine.” And he didn’t bark at the machine and we went on our way.

And a few minutes later, I started to wonder…did he drag me down there just so he could have a cookie for the machine? He does know that he gets treats for not barking when heavy machinery goes by the house or works nearby, it’s not impossible that he the association is so strong that he seeks out machines so he can be rewarded for not barking.