Great Pyrenees love to dig holes almost as much as they love to bark all night & their single minded focus on their task is really pretty amazing.

Our girl Boo excels at digging giant holes which she will hunker down in to keep cool on hot days. There are several of her holes scattered around her outside area and she is constantly working on making them bigger. I am embarrassed to admit how many times I have fallen in to one!

Since our Pyrs are livestock guardians, their main job is to keep an eye out for predators such as coyotes. Boo will get way down in her hole so that only the top of her head sticks out & that way she can keep an eye out for predators without them seeing her, or at least that’s what I imagine goes on in her head.

It is the same concept as a bunny freezing in place when they see you because as we all know, they think if they are not moving then they are invisible.

But the funniest reason they dig is because they think something is in the ground that they can actually hear & get to.

Adam has become an expert at digging for things that don’t exist. He is a real sweetie & I love him dearly, but he is not the brightest of our dogs. However, what he lacks in smarts, he makes up for in determination.

We will be out for a walk & suddenly, out of the blue, Adam decides that there is “something” out there. He will start sniffing & snuffling, circling around his target area, and then it begins, full on frantic digging!

The digging will go on and on, & then there will be a break in the action where Adam stares in to the hole he has started, as if there is actually something to see in there (which there isn’t). 

 

Once he has finished digging, Adam will stick his big bazoo in to the hole because maybe he can actually smell something in all that dirt, which he can’t because there is nothing there!

 

But wait, because it is entirely possible for Adam to shove his head even further into the hole in search of the non existent whatever it is he thinks is in the ground.  

This whole process will go on and on until I drag Adam away, or he thinks he has found another “something” somewhere else.

You may be wondering how I came up with the title for this post.  Digging to China was a common expression when I was a kid, don’t know if it is still in use, but it certainly applies to our dogs.  And since I am always fascinated with where unusual expressions come from, I poked around on the web & found out that “the first prominent mention of the phrase comes in the middle of the 19th century. In 1854 Henry David Thoreau wrote in Walden, “As for your high towers and monuments, there was a crazy fellow in town who undertook to dig through to China, and he got so far that, as he said, he heard the Chinese pots and kettles rattle; but I think that I shall not go out of my way to admire the hole which he made.” 

If you enjoyed my latest story, I would love to hear from you!
 

Diana