I used to have a little flock of miniature ducks. They had a specific quack that meant they wanted treats. Sometimes I'd go out and give them treats when they used this quack, but not every time. However, when they did the alarm quack, it meant a predator was near, and they knew that when they did the alarm quack, I would come flying out of the house to shoo away birds of prey, etc. So, they started to do the alarm quack. I would fly out into the back garden only to find them standing in a little line, then when they saw me, they'd start doing the treat quack. They used to do false alarms to get treats. Little boogers.

I had a cat that we got when I was pregnant with my son. after he was born, he would come and wake me up when the baby cried in the middle of the night. then he would stand outside of the baby's room and meow until i went in and got him. then he would come downstairs with us, and while the baby was eating, he had to sit next to me and always put one paw on the baby's leg. i never needed a monitor, he would always come and get me when the baby woke up. i still miss you, Max, after all these years. you were the best cat ever.

Cousin's German shepherd woke him up in the middle of the night when his blood sugar got low. Not trained to do this.

Our cat Finn would meow on key whenever my husband would sing or play guitar. Finn knew it made us squeal with excitement so he was sure to show off during band practice nights.

I had the sweetest golden retriever known to man. She was 100% sunshine.

She ran into my room once and barked like crazy, which was unusual as she was normally so quiet.

I gave her pets and went back to the assignment I was working on. She grabbed my sleeve and dragged me, ripping my shirt in the process.

I finally followed her to find my T1 diabetic dad with extremely low blood sugar.

She was the best girl and I miss her more than anything.

She ran to the litter box just to puke there. Any other cat I know would find the nearest rug.

I have severe CPTSD which gives me horrid sleep terrors.

My old cat, she is gone now, would wake me up if I was having a sleep terror.
Then after I was awake, would lay next to my pillow and purr until I was okay.

I had a parrot named Pickles and one Thanksgiving, my brother and I were hosting in our apartment. Whole family is there, everybody is talking. My birds go off. They're excited because of all the new people and they want to join in the conversation. So the people talk louder. So then the birds talk louder. Then the people, then the birds. You get the idea. Eventually, Pickles just starts squawking LOUDLY and I'm frustrated so I tell him "Pickles! PLEASE be quiet!" And without missing a beat, he turns his back to me and mutters "you can talk about Pickles but Pickles can't talk." He shouldn't have known how to say that. I'm convinced he compiled his own sentence to express his frustration at the injustice of it all. I would've thought I was crazy, but my brother heard it too.

So then all the birds got to come out and eat sweet potatoes.

Once, a younger cat was misbehaving outside by not coming back when called. Our older orange boy decided he’d had enough of us calling her, and jumped over the fence to the neighbours. Great, now we’re missing 2 cats. A few minutes later he jumped back over, promptly followed by our younger cat. She never did that again!

One of my cats gets frequent ear infections, and one time she came to me "asking" me for her medicated ear drops. She was meowing louder and in a different tone than she usually does, as if she was trying to say "hey!" And was rubbing her ear with her paw, and when I stood up to go help her she ran straight to the cabinet where I keep her ear drops.

My cat Kipo takes care of the stray kittens.
We live out in farmlands, and Kipo himself was a stray that eventually warmed up to me and is now the most cuddly lovey boy I've ever owned.

During the winter, he noticed a stray cat picking at our compost scraps. So he came over to me on the couch and yelled at me to get my attention. Gave me the meow that says "follow me" so I did and he took me to the stray cat which ran as soon as it saw me.

This intelligent little man then would not stop pestering me to follow him again so I did.
He led me to the food, and then to the door.
He actively told me the stray was hungry and to feed it. So I did!

Currently there are 2 kittens in our proximity outside. 1 of them is the stray from winter time. Both are far too nervous to trust humans, however Kipo is like a mom to them. I put food out, he waits out there meowing for them, they come up, he grooms them and makes sure they're fed and will even yell back into the house for more food about it.

He extends the same kindness I showed him to any stray cat he meets and I think that is just the smartest and most empathetic I've ever seen a cat, and I've had quite a few of them in my life.

We are currently trying to get the kittens used to seeing humans so they don't run off immediately, and we can take them in and get them some care. Both our cat boys are chill with them so we know they'll all get along cause they already do. Just waiting for them to trust humans.

Our puppy can watch another dog perform an activity or have us show her how to do something one time and then know exactly how to do it herself. We got her as a rescue a few weeks ago and are pretty sure she never got to run or play like a dog should be able to (the first time she decided to run, she flopped around like a few weeks old puppy but she's 6 months) and she acted like every toy or treat we offered her was us tricking her into doing something wrong and she was going to be punished for it. I take her to the dog park a lot to try to get her used to other dogs, especially bigger ones, and one day she sat between my legs watching a dog play fetch for about 15 minutes... From that point on she's known how to play fetch and brings the ball back to me every time. She hadn't ever been in water before and wasn't sure she liked it, but after seeing that same dog go into the creek and lay down one time, she began to do that exact same thing every single time we go to the creek.... And yesterday, we were walking towards the creek and saw another dog chasing the ball into the water and swimming. My puppy immediately decided she wanted to try it and full on swam for over four hours.

There's other instances of behaviors and skills she's learned too, but every single time it's been because she watched a different dog do it once, literally only once and for a few minutes maximum, and then knew exactly how to do it and has been able to consistently perform.

We have a toddler that leaves her food everywhere. Our dog knows she isn’t supposed to eat her food but if she finds an abandoned plate of food (all plates are plastic for our toddler) she will eat the food and carry the plate and drop it into the sink so we think one of us cleared the food and put the plate in the sink.

My husband is gone for work most of the week so it’s just me and we have pet cameras. Our dog is getting fat.

My dog’s little brother got lost on wooded hills, went dark, pitch black night. People looking with flashlights for a few hours. Eventually I realised I should let my dog look (that litter all followed him around as puppies before they got owners).

We used to play “Find” where I’d hide his toys, and he seemed to know a lot of names, so - without any real expectation of success - I tried [Find] [brother’s name]. He wouldn’t normally go far from me at night so even if he understood I didn’t think it’d work.

He promptly ran up and down north-south a few times, then did widening circles sniffing the air, then disappeared off into the night. 10 minutes later he ran back with his brother behind him.

It’s really just nudging instinctual behaviour but I found it a remarkable display of abilities that humans don’t possess.

My childhood dog Bart (Labrador/German shepherd cross) learned to wait after being washed and then shake once we walked far enough away not to get caught by the spray.

He also had a box of toys and you could say "get your ___" and he would go and fetch the right toy.

We never taught him either of those! He was found on the side of the highway and was just the bestest, sweetest, most smartest boy.

She started alerting me to seizures just weeks after getting her. Just being 12 weeks old and knew I had found a possible service dog. Ended up being an amazing one for 6 wonderful years. Rat Terriers are wonderful breed if right for you and your lifestyle.

My dog had major surgery, and was recovering in his protective onesie and cone of shame.The meds made him nauseous, and I couldn't get him to eat, which made everyone upset.

Enter the black cat who had up until that point (two years) treated the dog like an unwanted houseguest she couldn't get rid of. She took one look at the sad pile of dog on the carpet, turned around and walked into the garden. Not 20 minutes later she drops what I can only describe as a filleted mouse torso in front of the patient. She'd chewed off the head and the appendages, and basically presented him with only the juicy bits. Before I could do a damned thing my dumb dog horked his bloody gift down and the cat was out the open patio door again.

For the next two weeks no matter how I tried to keep every door and window closed, nothing could stop her. I have no idea how she managed it, but she'd wait for me to take my eyes off them for a second, and BOOM new corpse on the floor, happy dog. She seemed to know exactly how fast I could get to any location, and timed her drops perfectly. I threatened/told the people in the house daily to make sure she couldn't get out, or in with illegal cargo, but we were all just laughable pawns in her game of chess. She'd go to the other side of the house, make a ruccus, and when we'd go investigate she managed to get around us and to the dog with his lunch.

Two weeks. Every single day. At least 3 lightly prechewed mice. It was as revolting as it was adorable.

At the end of the two weeks she stopped removing bits from the mice and started dropping them whole, until one day she dropped a very alive one and flounced off while chaos reigned in the living room. That was the day she(and the vet) declared the dog "healed", and she went right back to slapping him if he tried to play.

She did this for every subsequent surgery the dog went through, and when I had my hysterectomy two years ago I came back from the bathroom and on my pillow was a lightly flayed and prechewed mouse.

I miss that cat.

The door to the stairs down to my laundry room can be seen from the loungeroom and my elderly dog knew this. There was a dog door to the outside at the bottom of the stairs but due to him falling down and knocking some teeth out when he was about 6 he was too scared to go down the steep stairs anymore

So when he wanted to go out to pee he would stand near the laundry door and when we got up he would run around to the side door that led to the verandah and the small less scary stairs that he actually could go down

Also when my son was 16 he worked at KFC on closing shifts (which was about 11pm) on weeknights. My dog knew that when he heard the text notification on my phone at approx that time that it was my son texting me to pick him up. Which meant that my fur baby got to go for a ride in the car, which was his favourite thing in the world. He would jump up from a dead sleep, run to the front door and spin in circles waiting for me to let him out and into the car. He wouldn't do it an any other time when he heard that notification, only on weeknights at about 11pm.

My cat (who passed yesterday) figured out that messing with the stuff I kept on my lowest book shelf was the only sound that would wake me out of deep sleep. It became her code for demanding food or attention. If she messed with the stuff on the shelf, I knew she needed something immediately.

My dog is a big sweetheart and an older girl, she's a 12-year-old corgi, and has never snapped at anyone, bitten, etc. She's honestly more like a lazy cat, she loves to just lay around, eat, and sleep haha. A couple months ago, we went to visit my parents, and as I was in the guest room standing by the bed talking to my husband and my corgi was snuggled up next to him, my mom came in. She was trying to tease me by renacting a scene from a comedy we had all recently watched, by grabbing my arms and raising her voice in a silly way while trying to pull me out of the room.

We only found out this last year that she is bipolar and all the medication various doctors tried to give her over the years didn't work because she had been misdiagnosed. Now that she's finally stable, we are starting to build a much healthier relationship, but I have cPTSD and startle extremely easily, and just her presence can still be triggering.

So when my mom grabbed me suddenly like that, even though she was trying to be funny, I froze and was momentarily terrified. My normally laid-back dog FREAKED OUT, howled in this weird high-pitched way and immediately leapt off the bed to get between my mom and me. I was fine after a second, but I was so impressed how quickly my dog read the situation and understood I felt like I was in danger, then released her inner corgiferocity to protect me.

Escaped doggy daycare. She apparently, took blocks from one side of the room stacked them up into a tower and jumped the fence. Luckily, the area was enclosed she “escaped” into. They had never seen that before.

I jokingly told him I was hiding his medication in his meal and that he wasn’t aware.

He understood and looked at me in horror and flipped the little bowl.

They do understand..I had to change my approach.

My son has mild autism and my little cat taught herself to be his therapy cat. Any time a melt down is close, she will come out of no where and rub herself all over him as a distraction and defuses him very quickly. She was never trained to do this.

There's so many horror stories out there of men leaving their wives after the wife gets cancer.

Well, this one woman was diagnosed with cancer and she thought her husband would do that so she filed for divorce. He begged her not to. He wasn't going to leave her. He was going to stay by her side no matter what. He was her ride or die. But she wouldn't listen.

She's now cancer-free and regrets her decision and has been trying to get back together with him. He's remarried now and has told her to f**k off in every single way.

I have a cousin who I'm not close to (for obvious reasons) that has always been very racist. So imagine our surprise when he dated, married, and had kids with a Mexican woman.

Six years in he divorced her and said *in court* that he just couldn't stand being married to a Mexican any longer. He told the judge he "thought she'd be less Mexican after the wedding"

Thankfully, she got the kids in the divorce and she moved them far away from that part of my family. I still get Christmas cards from her, she's a wonderful lady.

My buddy's dad:

* After parking his yacht in the slip in Key West, he handed each dockworker a $100 bill and handed the harbormaster $200. He would do this every time he took the boat out.

* In Key Largo, he insisted on taking the same yacht out during low tide, despite several warnings against it. He ran the hull alongside a rock, causing several thousand dollars worth of damage. He insisted he didn't like the control setup at the helm, sold the yacht at a huge loss, and bought a new, bigger boat the next day.

* He bought a twin prop airplane to fly between his offices, even though it takes an hour longer than driving to prep the plane and hangar it.

* He bought an Audi R8 for winter driving.

He's also one of the nicest people you've ever met.

Clients in the lobby of a place I used to work:


Mom to 16yo daughter: "Do you want to fly to Greece next week, Dad has a business meeting there and I thought we'd rent a villa by the ocean."

Daughter: "What?! No! Katie and I are going to a concert next week!"

Mom: "Oh....okay well what if we bring Katie and you two can stay in your own villa."

Daughter: *sigh* "Fine. Whatever. I'll ask her. But you owe me if I'm missing that show for another trip.".