Meet Athena, our Bearded Collie / Poodle. She’s smart, stubborn, talkative, and hyper.

Athena has always loved other animals, and was thrilled when we brought a new kitten, Artemis, into our home. It took Artemis a few months to warm up to Athena, but once she did they became friends for life. In fact, when our other cats rub up against Athena, she gets nervous (she’s been burned one too many times by a friendly rub followed by a playful swipe from a kitty paw). When it comes to Artemis though, Athena always welcomes her presence.

There’s one thing you should know about Athena though – she has trained the cats better than we ever could. It all started with the furniture scratching. We tried everything to get them to stop scratching our furniture. At first we did the spray bottles (we stopped when we learned that we were misinformed and spraying water wasn’t the way to go). When that phase didn’t work we tried spraying smells they were supposed to hate, redirecting them to places they should scratch, putting up tape on the furniture etc. Nothing would work though.

Finally, we were told to act like a cat back at them and hiss when they were doing something we didn’t want them to. This actually worked better than anything else we had tried, but it was still constant hissing.

Somewhere along the way, Athena caught on. We theorize that she may have also been annoyed by the sound of the cats scratching the furniture, or perhaps she had been burned one too many times by the playful swipes from one of our particularly crazy cats. Regardless, she took matters into her own paws.

One day, we were sitting down and watching a show, and we hear the scratching on the couch starting up again. I had barely even started a hiss when before I knew it, the dog shot up, barked, and feigned charging at the cat – just enough to make the cat book it up the cat tree. My husband and I looked at each other, and figured it was just a coincidence, but a hilarious one.

But then it happened again, and again, and again. Every time a cat would scratch at the furniture, she would get up, bark once, and act as if she was going to charge at them. She didn’t do it when they were scratching at their posts or cat tree, it was only on the furniture. Athena took the job upon herself and seems to love her new self-proclaimed role of guardian of the furniture, wagging her tail and prancing up to us every time she saves the couch for some pets and appreciation.

And don’t worry, the cats still love her. They rub up against her, play with her, and annoy her every chance they get.