Major dog victory
In the last 6 months, dogwalking has become my responsibility. This has not been without its problems.
Despite what Sexy Husband believes, I love our dog. She’s a ridiculous monster, and a drama queen, granted, but she’s not a bad dog. She does, however have a couple behavioral quirks that cause problems for us when we walk. The major among these are that she does not listen to me very well, and she can be aggressive toward small dogs.
I’ll remind you that we live in Seattle’s most densely populated neighborhood, where there are tiny dogs a-plenty. It’s rare for us to go an entire day without encountering some tiny adorable yapper. Her typical response is to freak out a little bit, start jumping, burst the little one’s personal bubble then get snippy when the little one gets defensive. As you can imagine, other dog owners do not find this charming, and it makes me very uncomfortable. She’s never done any damage to a little dog on my watch, but I’m always really wary about how she’s going to act. So, I made some changes to our walking routine. Instead of letting her run up on little guys (or anybody, actually, dog or human), I’ve been making her sit and wait whenever we encounter another dog, or anything exciting, on our walks. Since we’ve started this system, she’s had almost no encounters with little dogs, even (especially) the ones that live right across the street and bark at us all the time from their bay window.
Except last night. Last night we headed out for our walk, and saw the nicer of the pair of schnauzer mixes out, and she didn’t see us. The Little Lady got all excited, but in a way that she doesn’t usually. Instead of pulling toward the other dog and wagging, she started playbowing, wagging, and jumping up (not out), pretty much simultaneously. And the best part? When I said, “just wait,” she sat (and wiggled) until the tiny dog came up to her. And then they played! Just played! No snapping, no growling, no whining! Just dashing around, smelling under bellies, and so many play bows. The play bows are particularly surprising because this dog is both considerably smaller and younger than Little Lady. Usually she’s not flirty with the littler set, but something happened yesterday.
I watched incredulously and chatted with the other, similarly incredulous, owner, and called a stop to it before things got out of hand. But still! Holy cow! I felt like I had won at dog ownership. I’m not going to run off to the off-leash park right away, but this whole experience has given me hope for a future where the Little Lady and I can have a more adventurous life together.
