And you are welcome. I love your blog.

I really appreciate your having taken the time to link to all those posts that I wrote. And I can’t tell you how it tickles me to be told that I’m funny and charming in person. I always worry that people who meet me will think I’m a complete dullard. Seriously.

Something else… I love your profile photo in your About section. So joyous.

Have a wonderful weekend!

And, I would agree that all these bloggers are mucho awesome.

But you’ve reminded me too of another type of problem I had the other day with an offleash dog. This big mixed breed (maybe German Shepherd and lab?) came bounding over to Frankie out of nowhere. The owner tried to recall him — by shouting of course! — and then finally ran over and got him away by practically choking him, which upset me further. The dog was being friendly, even though Frankie wasn’t interested, and the owner punished him for being a dog.

Your comment triggered another thought though about the people picking their dogs up. We never know what another dog’s or person’s experience has been. If we’ve had a bad experience in the past we try to avoid it in the future. Maybe that’s why they picked their dogs up.

And, yet another thought just occurred ot me about big and little dogs who don’t know each other. It’s happened in Boulder that an otherwise friendly, non-aggressive big dog’s chase/prey drive kicked in when he saw a little dog chasing a ball at the dog park. The big dog killed the little one. So, big and little dogs off-leash running around can be an especially unfortunate mix.

I think what we aspire to with our dogs is the higher level of dog communications. There is always more than one way to deal with an unpleasant situation. Some dogs seem to have highly ‘sophisticated’ way of dealing with things. They will use calming or neutral signals or simply avoidance and if can work quite well.

Can a dog ‘learn’ this or is it a personality trait that a dog needs to be born with? I think that under the right circumstances they can learn this. Meanwhile though, I believe that dogs have the right to be dogs.

New dog owners should take a course on dog body language just so they aren’t fearful of letting their kids out to play on the “scary” playground.

Now, I know this friend well, and while when she says inappropriate things like this I always cringe, I’m never surprised by it. In fact I agree with her. In my head I was thinking, “Come on, people. Put your dogs down. Can you not read my golden retriever’s body language? Tail relaxed, up and wagging, lips pulled back in an appeasing smile, shoulders aren’t leaning back or forward, and she’s not rushing at you, she’s walking past your group. She will not eat your chihuahua. In fact, she will most likely have to lay her head down on the ground to get lower than your pup if he demands it of her. She’s very perceptive and polite around small dogs, and isn’t interested at all in status. If you’re worried that your little pup is aggressive, mine is the perfect pup for you to “practice” on, since she knows exactly how to handle insecure dogs.”

I wanted to have a conversation. Not scold people for getting irritated that we allowed our dogs to run around “free” on the trail. I didn’t say anything, though (mainly since they were all speaking Spanish and I figured the language barrier wouldn’t get us very far). With hindsight, I wish I would have called the dogs back to us. Should’ve taken that moment as practice for my own pups’ recall.

Ah, well. But still, people. Put down your dogs for gosh sakes. If mine doesn’t get the “hint” and yours has to defend her territory, I get it. I’m not going to blame you or your pup. It was a good lesson that Sadie taught to that PWD pup that day, whether the owner knows it or not! She should have said, “Thank you” for the lesson, rather than getting all bitchy.

I run an in-home dog daycare, and when we have over-exuberant puppies, I tell the owners, “Bella is extremely tolerant of puppies crawling all over her, biting and pulling at her ears, jumping on her… but when she’s had enough she’ll first give them a little snarl-growl as a warning, and if they don’t stop, she’ll then do the bark-lunge.” She never does more than that. The owners always (ALWAYS) tell me, “That’s perfect. My pup needs to learn how to be polite. Thank you.”

If only this lady could have thought this way about her PWD’s lesson.