Internet viewers are obsessed with a dog who has developed a bizarre quirk on his daily walk.
Terrissa Crowl’s 2-year-old Great Pyrenees dog has become a social-media sensation, as thousands of commenters debated what exactly her pet is up to on their walk around the neighborhood.
In a video to Crowl’s TikTok account, @terrissacrowl, on December 7, she asked: “Can someone help me figure out why my full Great Pyrenees does a front roll every time we pass this specific patch of grass?”
Crowl paired the question with a montage of her walks with the dog; each time without fail, the pup walks onto the grass and rolls forward, headfirst, tail wagging, mouth open happily.
Crowl showed clips from a total of nine different walks, taken at night and during the day, and each one has a short pause where the dog takes her daily front roll. “We call it a ‘gator roll’,” Crowl added in the caption as she asked the internet for advice.
And TikTok users responded in a big way, watching the clip more than 2 million times and left thousands of comments—though perhaps not with the scientific explanation Crowl was hoping for.
One wrote: “Botanist here, she rolls there every time bc [because] there’s a very tiny banana peel there and she is slipping on it.”
“There’s actually a tiny ant yelling ‘do a flip’ every time you guys pass, hope this helps,” another posted, while a third commented: “Get that dog some butter. She’s on a roll!”
Others shared their own stories, with one writing: “My dog can’t remember a single trick she’s been taught but can remember the exact patch of grass she once found a biscuit laying on and HAS to search for it again every walk we go on.”
While it is not clear what started the pup’s unusual habit, dogs are known to have episodic memories: being able to remember an event from the past without consciously working to remember it, according to a vet-reviewed report from PetMD.
Canines also have associative memory, so they can remember places and experiences based on association. It means that, while they may not remember previous walks, they know that a human putting on shoes means they are going for a walk, or, as perhaps in this pup’s case, that walking past that patch of grass means doing a roll.
Great Pyrenees dogs are known for their loyalty and intelligence, having originally been bred to protect stock from wolves and other large predators on mountaintops, according to the American Kennel Club (AKC).
Newsweek has contacted @terrissacrowl via TikTok for comment on this story.
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