He has a few idiosyncrasies that add some depth to his personality. He hates changes. He is used to having the house the way that it always has been. My father got a small space heater last winter that he breaks out when it gets cold. When my dad breaks out the heater, Twig will go through pains to avoid the heater. He obviously doesn't trust it at all. If the heater is sitting out in the living room, he will squeeze between the coffee table and the couch and scramble over three sets of legs rather than walk in front of the heater.
When my parents changed his brand of dog food, he started a new ritual before he eats. He will stand in front of his dog dish for about two or three minutes barking at his food. Once he has barked his food into submission, he seems pretty content to eat it.
He also has a fear of cameras. Every time you point a camera at him, even a cell phone camera, he runs away. I have no idea what caused this phobia to develop, but it was a struggle to finally get a reasonably good picture of him. For some reason, he allowed me to take a couple of pictures of him the last time that I was home.
A few years ago, my parents had new linoleum installed in the kitchen. One of the things that Twig used to get a great deal of enjoyment from was coming in the kitchen when my dad was cooking bacon and licking up the grease that splattered on the floor. That was with the old linoleum. Now that there is new linoleum, he is afraid to set foot on the kitchen floor. You can put one of his favorite treats on the kitchen floor and he will sit and stare at it, but he is afraid to venture out any farther than his two front paws. If it is a really great treat, he will scratch at the floor with his front paws as if trying to pull the treat towards him. It is pretty funny to watch. When he wants to go outside, he has to cross a small patch of the kitchen floor and then go through two doors to get out. He has to see that both doors are open before he crosses the patch of the linoleum. Once both doors are open, he runs as fast as he can across the floor and outside.
My favorite story about Twig is the result of a traumatic situation that he went through. Every time that my mom or my dad would hop in the car to go someplace, Twig would want to go along. If it was a short trip, they would usually indulge him and he would happily sit on the passenger seat and look out the windows while they were driving.
One day, after getting his hair cut, my mom was bringing Twig back home. They were driving down the highway at 55 mph. A car which had been sitting on the shoulder of the road decided he wanted to do a U-turn and turned directly in front of my mom. She slammed into the side of the guys car at 55 mph. It was a pretty bad wreck with air bag deployment and both cars were totaled. Luckily, other than some minor burns from the airbags, there were no significant injuries.
Twig was pretty shaken up by the accident. A few days later, my mom got in the car to go to the espresso stand and get a latte. Twig loved this ride in particular because he always got a doggie biscuit from the lady at the espresso stand. Now he was refusing to get in the car. My parents figured that his car riding days were probably over.
The next day, my dad got in the car to run a few errands. Twig started barking at him and my dad opened the door. Twig jumped right in the car and took a ride with dad. Turns out, he was perfectly happy to ride with my dad wherever he went, but he would not dare to get in the car when my mom was driving. Apparently, the lesson that Twig learned was that he couldn't trust a woman driver. This accident happened several years ago. After a few years of avoiding my mom's driving, Twig relented and is again riding in the car when my mom drives.
Twig is definitely an oddball, but I know my parents wouldn't trade him for anything in the world.
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