Woman Works From Home as Dog Has 'Kennel Cough,' But There's a Problem
Dogs are known for being intelligent creatures, but some owners don't know that they are so clever that they can even fake being sick to get their attention.
In a May post shared on TikTok by @nuggawuggaboi, a pet owner from Atlanta revealed that her dog Nugget faked having a cough to make her stay home from work and spend time together.
"I stayed home because I thought you had kennel cough, and come to find out, he's really been faking it. He doesn't have kennel cough," she says in the video.
She found out that he was faking his illness once she realized that every time she said she hadn't heard him coughing, he would start the fake cough to make sure she didn't get suspicious, but it didn't work for the pup.
"Now I knew that he knew how to fake cough, but I had never heard the cough that he was doing before, so I'm thinking he didn't get the kennel cough from the daycare, but he just wanted me to stay home."
@nuggawuggaboi When you work from home because you want to monitor your dogâs #kennelcough just to find out your dog is faking #bordoodle #doodlesoftiktok #fyp #humandog #dogfakesinjury
⬠original sound - Nugget
Dogs have an average intelligence similar to that of a human toddler and can understand between 100 and 200 words, according to an article from Fetch by WebMD.
Most dogs are capable of problem-solving, and some can even learn to count and do simple arithmetic. While they might not have a perfect understanding of words that humans say, they understand the basic sounds of important words.
Studies have found that dogs respond the same way to nonsense words that sound like familiar command words, while they don't respond to nonsense words that don't sound like command words.
The video quickly went viral on TikTok and has received over 731,200 views and 94,600 likes on the platform so far.
One TikTok user, Dr. Shana Jones, commented: "I couldn't even hear you over him coughing so loudly. WYM?"
TikToker Weirdly I'm Okay wrote: "My yorkie did me like this and faked a paw injury. Spent money at the vet. For them to tell me 'he's working you.'"
Commenter Kels wrote: "That cute baby! He said but I wanna just be with yooouuu."
Newsweek reached out to @nuggawuggaboi for comment via TikTok for comment. We could not verify the details of the case.
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