Zooka is around 5.5 months old at this writing.

This is the stage where we head into adolescence, so we can sometimes see behaviors crop up that we have not previously seen.

This past week, he has found a couple of carrots from our garden that either did not get harvested or got dropped along the way. The first one, Zooka carried it around and ate half of it. He decided it made a good chew for a bit. Not a problem, lots of dogs like carrots!

What was interesting, though, was what he did with it when he decided he was done chewing on it.

We were out on a walk and he headed to the edge of the scrub oak.

Then he set it down and tried to bury it. Somewhat halfheartedly, as he didn't dig a big hole or anything. Mostly just sat it down in the leaves and pushed leaves and dirt over it. Then we continued on our walk.

A few days later, he noticed a leftover squash sitting in the garden that had been left behind. The garden is gated/fenced, so I opened up the gate and we went in to check out the squash.

He quickly lost interest and discovered the leftover carrots.

Pulled one out of the ground and decided to carry it with us. He didn't really chew on it much, mostly just carried it for a few minutes.

Then he decided he wanted to save it for later, I guess.

He went to the base of a tree and started digging a shallow hole. Set the carrot in it and then spent a couple of minutes pushing dirt and leaves with his nose to cover it up. He was pretty concerned about making sure it was covered up well.

Then I convinced him to move on and head inside since we were at the end of our walk.

Prior to this, I have not seen him try to bury anything. I find it funny that he wants to bury carrots. I mean, he literally unburied a carrot to move it somewhere else and re-bury it!

Our Greyhound, Zuzu, used to bury things. She was our first dog who ever did that.

Once in a while, she would try to bury raw meaty bones we gave her to chew on in the back yard once she was done chewing on them.

Mostly she tried to bury bunnies she caught once she realized I would not let her bring them in the house. (Except for the one time she got past me.)

Does your dog bury things? What do they bury? Where do they bury it? Do they go back and dig it up or leave it buried?

We all have things we like to stash somewhere safe and save for later. Some of our dogs do, too!

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