When someone is very emotional around me, I hear the Star Spangled Banner, enter a hospital sick room, watch certain sad or touching movie scenes, I often can feel and/or hear myself have a "catch" in my throat. When another person is around, you try to muffle this noise or cover it somehow as it's a dead giveaway that the little throat sound is a precursor to an emotional cry of one sort or another.
Tibbe is now 5 years old. For the last year or so, he's been doing something very near the emotional throat "catch", a little sound he makes in his throat seemingly when he's very tenderly emotionally involved.
When he sees a cat or squirrel in the yard through the window, he gets very emotionally involved in wanting to get out to it but I guess he's not tenderly emotional because he makes no such throat noise during those moments of raw emotion - he cries out in howling angst in his desire to get outside, growls, barks or whatever but he doesn't have the "catch" in his throat.
But sometimes when he is in my lap or across the room and I tell him I love him, or if he's coming running in from outside and I'm praising him for "good potty outside" and/or "good Tibbe come", for doing an obedience trick well, I hear the little sound in his throat. When I am holding him and rubbing his back, head or tummy, loving him and telling him what a good boy he is, I also hear the little throat "catch" noise, just as I might make sometimes when hearing the National Anthem or watching a sad moment in a movie, about to cry out and covering it.
When my late Jilly got to be about 4 years old and she was feeling very loved or proud, she would instantly fold her little ears back, very close to her head, sort of squint her eyes and extend her face up toward you, even if you were across the room or yard and you said something loving or praiseworthy to her. Tibbe uses his ears that way sometimes but usually he does the little throat "catch" in those same instances. It is so endearing - just as Jilly's close-folded ears were - a seemingly subtle canine acknowledgement of a sweet moment.
I've asked his vets about it and they don't correlate it to anything but a terrier being emotional and taking things so "personally" as terriers do. No other sounds follow on or anything - just that little throat noise always associated with tender or praising, loving moments when he's very happy, feeling loved or feeling very proud of himself.
Does anyone else's Yorkie or terrier do this little "catch" in the throat during tender, emotional occasions? Should I worry or just keep feeling my own "catch" when I hear it?
